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Computer Programmers Only the 5th Most Sleep Deprived Profession

Posted by Soulskill on from the it's-the-sun's-fault-for-coming-out-before-noon dept.

garthsundem writes "As described in the NY Times Economix blog, the mattress chain Sleepy's analyzed data from the National Health Interview Survey to find the ten most sleep deprived professions. In order, they are: Home Health Aides, Lawyer, Police Officers, Doctors/Paramedics, Tie: (Economists, Social Workers, Computer Programmers), Financial Analysts, Plant Operators (undefined, but we assume 'factory' and not 'Audrey II'), and Secretaries."

4 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Issue for me is pattern recognition. by Kenja · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Over the years, I seem to have trained my brain to seek out patterns in everything I encounter. This makes sleeping rough as any back ground noise resembling human speech causes me to become fully alert as my brain tries to make sense of what it heard. Only solution to this I've found is a good white noise generator that operates on the same frequency patterns as speech.

    Course, I could just have the brain worms. Who knows.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    1. Re:Issue for me is pattern recognition. by ilsaloving · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You mean I'm not the only one? Although in my case, I created a repeating track of ocean sounds.

      The critical part of doing that, is that you have to make the track long enough that your brain doesn't detect the repeating pattern. My first attempt made it only 5 minutes long, and in surprisingly short order, I was going, "Okay here comes that particular crash of waves against the rocks..."

      You also have to do something to deal with the start and end. I used audacity to add a 3 second fade in and out, at the start and end respectively. Then use an mp3 player that features a crossfade between tracks. and one-track repeat.

      Oh, and then you take your speakers and put them on your window sill, pointing outside. The sound reflects back from the window and it sounds (somewhat) as if it's originating from outside.

      Is there a hyphen in obsessive compulsive disorder? >.>

    2. Re:Issue for me is pattern recognition. by srussia · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Over the years, I seem to have trained my brain to seek out patterns in everything I encounter. This makes sleeping rough as any back ground noise resembling human speech causes me to become fully alert as my brain tries to make sense of what it heard. Only solution to this I've found is a good white noise generator that operates on the same frequency patterns as speech.

      The opposite keeps me up: pattern construction.

      When listening to white noise, I have had the experience of faintly hearing a particular song, which I assumed was just coming from some neighbor's house. After a while I realized that the song kept on going and going far longer than it should be.

      I figured out that the song never ended because I didn't know how its arrangement ended. In other words, my brain was attenuating frequencies that did not fit the song as I knew it. I was literally hearing a sound pattern by cherry-picking from the available acoustic stimulus.

      That keeps me up at night.

      --
      Set your phasers on "funky"!
  2. Re:7 hours is sleep deprived? by ironjaw33 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Looking at the most well rested and least, there's only a difference of like 4 minutes. Really, 4 minutes makes the difference between a good night's rest and being "sleep deprived?"

    They don't show the standard deviation either, which could be huge.