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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."

14 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder... by hvm2hvm · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wonder why the secretaries can't get any sleep... *wink* *wink*

    --
    ics
  2. 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 dougisfunny · · Score: 5, Funny

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

      You should go check.... three times.

      --
      This is not the funny you're looking for.
    3. Re:Issue for me is pattern recognition. by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hmmmm... ... maybe you can't sleep because you stay up all night trying to perfect looping ocean sound tracks.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    4. Re:Issue for me is pattern recognition. by b4dc0d3r · · Score: 3, Informative

      Hope this doesn't bruise your ego, but everyone's brain is basically a giant pattern recognition device. Not everyone is tuned in to sound, though. I hear white noise (HVAC usually) as a rock band playing. Probably the distorted guitars and drums fit a similar spectrum. I have "transcribed" a few tunes, and they largely lack structure but don't match anything I or my friends recognize. Since I don't pay attention to lyrics in music, the vocals are usually nonsense syllables I can't make out.

      An old episode of Radio Lab was investigating dreams, and one bit of info was that by having people play Tetris for a while before sleeping, they either thought about Tetris before sleeping, or reported dreaming about Tetris. The idea there was that it was part of the review/learning process.

      I contest that and think that instead, since you were just doing Tetris pattern recognition, your brain is still in that mode while getting random input from your visual system. The first stage of sleep frequently being confused with being awake, it's hard to say for certain whether these people were actually dreaming, or awake and recognizing patterns, or really much of anything.

      Mothers report being able to hear their child's cry in a crowded room - they are used to recognizing that pattern. Conclusion: stop listening to people, start listening to instrumental music, and you'll have a free radio in your head at all times.

    5. Re:Issue for me is pattern recognition. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Perhaps somebody can explain to me why the notion that "a bunch of external noises keeps people awake" seems to be such a fucking revelation to slashdot readers?

      I mean... how is this even a thing? News flash: LOUD (relative to ambient) NOISES WHILE YOU TRY TO SLEEP TENDS TO WAKE YOU UP. It doesn't mean your brain is "super extra powerful" or that you're "super mega ultra sensitive to patterns as a result of your intense brainpower."

      It means that:
      1) You probably have atrocious sleep hygiene, and don't reserve the bed for sleeping and fucking;
      2) You probably sit up until very late with an LCD screen shining in your face, playing games, watching porn, watching movies or tv shows, etc., the result being that you arrive at bedtime in a fairly excited, wide awake, "daylight" mindframe;
      3) You probably don't give yourself a reasonable amount of time to sleep - i.e., going to bed at 1 am, knowing you have to wake up a 6:30;
      4) You are probably fairly sedentary, a bit overweight, and suffer from mild sleep apnea which disrupts your sleep patterns;

      Fix those, then let's talk about how you all have a special secret ability that only engineers of your massive intellect and vast mental capacity could attain.

  3. secretaries??? wonder who they are up late with... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    secretaries??? wonder who they are up late with...

  4. 17 minutes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Because we sleep 17 minutes less than Forestry workers? 17 lousy minutes? I sleep longer than that in crummy meetings.

  5. 7 hours is sleep deprived? by Missing.Matter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?"

    1. 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.

    2. Re:7 hours is sleep deprived? by metlin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ...and they've not included professions where most people I know get almost no sleep. I'm a management consultant, and between the travel, work, and client outings, we consider ourselves lucky if we get 5 hours of sleep on a week day. And compared to my i-banking friends, I'm practically a lazy ass. Ditto for a lot of people in consulting (management or IT), finance, and law (I did see lawyer and financial analyst there, but those numbers look like a joke).

    3. Re:7 hours is sleep deprived? by metlin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And oh, I forgot: soldiers and people in the US military. Those folks have pretty brutal schedules, too.

  6. 7h3m vs. 6h57m by Rene+S.+Hollan · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't think that three minutes really makes that much of a difference between first and fifth place, when it represents less than one percent of the mean of those two points.

    More surprising is that they think programmers get anywhere near 7 hours sleep a night: I average 5 Sunday to Friday, and 10 each on Friday and Saturday, for an average of 6h26m. In my youth, I got a LOT less (working 100 hour weeks was not unusual).

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    In Liberty, Rene