Expert Says You're Deluding Yourself If You Think You're Productive On Six Hours of Sleep (chicagotribune.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Chicago Tribune: Getting through the workday on little sleep is a point of pride for some. But skimping on shuteye could be shortening your life and making you a less than stellar employee, according to Matthew Walker, founder and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley. "Underslept employees tend to create fewer novel solutions to problems, they're less productive in their work and they take on easier challenges at work," said Walker, author of "Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams," out Tuesday. Operating on short sleep -- anything less than seven hours -- impairs a host of brain and bodily functions, said Walker, who is also a professor of neuroscience and psychology. It increases your risk for heart attack, cancer and stroke, compromises your immune system and makes you emotionally irrational, less charismatic and more prone to lying. When asked, "What do you say to people who sacrifice sleep to work?" Walker said: "I often ask the question in return, 'Is the reason you've still got so much to do because you haven't gotten enough sleep and so you're inefficient while you're working?' We know that efficiency and effectiveness are increased when you're getting sufficient sleep and it will take you longer to do the same thing on an under-slept brain, which means you end up having to stay awake longer. So goes the vicious cycle."

Comments

In all fairness....

[Vermonter]

I'm no more productive with 8 hours of sleep than I am with 6.

Re: In all fairness....

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who sacrifice liberty for security or comfort deserve neither.

Re:In all fairness....

[TheRaven64]

There's a lot of wiggle room in that phrase. The first is the 'well regulated' part. At the time the constitution was written, 'regulated' meant more or less the same as 'efficient' (as in, a well-regulated machine is one that runs well). The second is that most militias were fairly informal in times of peace and were, often, more of a deterrent than an actual force. Native tribes would be less inclined to attack if everyone in a town owned a gun, and the fledgeling Federal government would be less inclined to send representatives to try to enforce overbearing laws if they'd run into an armed militia (even in theory).

That said, if you want to reduce gun ownership in the USA, then the easiest (and completely legal) tactic would be to class all gun owners as members of a militia and call them up at random to fight in whatever foreign wars are going on at any given time. I bet gun ownership would drop off pretty quickly if people realised that owning a gun meant that they might actually have to be somewhere that people would shoot at them...

Re: In all fairness....

[Terwin]

What's happening now doesn't fit with it's purpose either but there you go. There are no more injuns to defend from and the federal government just flat out cannot be kept in check by an armed populace unless the intention is for battle with government which just no.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure,” -Jefferson 1787

So yes, battling with the government was indeed one of the things that the original founders deemed not only appropriate but necessary.

Re:In all fairness....

[sls1j]

I'd love the unintended consequences of this. We'd reign in foreign meddling pretty quickly.

I like being more productive

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always known this, and wished bosses were smarter about it. Meaning, when I'm working on a weeks or months-long project, who cares if I come in an hour later, especially if it means I'm far more productive?

Re:I like being more productive

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially with the current traffic. I need to be at work at 8 in the morning. But to arrive at 8, I've to leave at 5:30 which means I've to get up at 4:45-5:00.

If I could start at 10 in the morning, I would only drive 45 minutes and could leave home at 9 and could sleep until 8:15. I wouldn't even need an alarm clock because I wake up around 7:00. This would mean I could even go out for a walk, or do some exercises. I could spent some family time and even bring my children to school.

But nope, 8:00 is set in stone. And all bosses think like this, which is why the traffic is so dense before 8:00 and why people spend more and more time in their car.

Re:I like being more productive

[sexconker]

I like how the "9-5" job standard is actually "8-5" now.

A few decades ago it really was 9-5. And on that a regular Joe could afford a house, a car or two, a spouse who stayed at home, 2-3 kids, a dog, and retirement.

Re:I like being more productive

[youngone]

Are you a communist?
Longing for the days when shareholder value was not being extracted from each worker in an efficient way!
You're probably one of those people who kneels during the national anthem too!

Re: I like being more productive

[vtcodger]

Landlines per se weren't all that expensive. At least not in North America. Mostly about the same as today in current dollars. But non-local calls -- any call to places beyond walking distance -- were expensive. Long distance costs were outrageous. International calls were well beyond outrageous.

Re:I like being more productive

[houghi]

And here I am in communist Belgium with their stupid Unions. Where I work the IT SCRUM meeting is at 10 and you need to be there. Some start a lot earlier, so they can go home earlier. Some start at 10, and they walk right into the meeting.

Other departments will have flexible hours as well from 7:30-10 to start. Depends a bit on the department how flexible they can be. Some are extremely flexible, others are not flexible at all. e.g. call center is not flexible as there needs t be a predictable amount of persons available. Legal wants to start early and leave early, so they start at 8. I prefer to work late, so my hours are:
10-14 15-18:30, yes an hour lunch, so I can go and eat in peace and quiet. During my 15 minute break in the morning and the afternoon I do a bit of /.

Downside is that I have no idea what to do with my 35 paid holidays. I am also forced to use metric and can't take a gun to work.

Traffic? Company pais my public transport, so I am 50 minutes door to door of wich 30 minutes is a train that is not full at all (because I start later) and the rest is walking to/from the train.

Re:I like being more productive

[houghi]

This is how it is in Belgium and my hours:
10-14 and 15-18:30
Those are mu working hours and what the company pays. The hour lunch, they do not pay and I leave and do nothing for the company. Some people will have 30 minutes lunch (minimal amount by law) and a few more. So lunch is never company time.

We sometimes have a lunch meeting (2 times a year) and I could officially still take my hour break, but I do not want to be an asshole and the sandwiches they bring are nice. As long as it is an exception, nobody has an issue with it.

The 15 minute break in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon are paid by the company and you can do what you want. Many will vape or some or just stand outside or do some personal surfing. This is paid company time.

My travel time is also 2 hours per day. That is about average, yet some will go to 4+ hours. I have plenty of time to go out with friends during the week and go to a nice restaurant or have a few beers. Weekends are free. But most of the time it is: coming home, prepare some food and do some online stuff or reading.

However I do not do that 52 weeks per year, 40 years in a row. I have 35 paid holidays and that makes a HUGE difference. That is 7 weeks per year or more than 1 week per 2 months. I HAD to take some holidays, otherwise I would lose them and pay so much taxes on top of taxes that I would be working for free. So going to Spain for 10 days in November.

What happens if 2 people can't do their job in 40 hours, but it should be 60? That is 120/40=3 people doing their job.

Disadvantage is that the CEO does not earn 300x as much as I do. Terrible, I know. He gets perhaps only 10 times as much. Poor guy.

Re:I like being more productive

[Hodr]

I guess I see what point you are trying to make, I just don't think you are half as clever as you believe you are. Especially if you are comparing your programming job (I have never worked a an IT job that didn't have flexible hours) with say, a service industry job in the US.

But for the counterpart, as a software dev in the States.

I mostly work from home, and while the official target is 80 hours a pay period no one really cares (or checks) as long as you participate in the vtc/web conferences and get your work done.

If I do choose to go in to work, its about 3 miles (5k) so I can walk or ride my bike or take my car and be there in no time.

I get all Federal holidays (10 days) plus 8 hours per pay period of vacation (26 days) , 4 hours of sick (13 days). So 36 days paid vacation plus whatever sick I choose to use (If I don't use it, it carries over until I retire or change jobs, then it gets paid as cash).

And I also cannot take a gun to work and am sometimes forced to use metric.

Re:I like being more productive

[gnick]

Do you mean before they abandoned the gold standard in 1971 and inflation went through the roof?

That's not the only thing that was happening with the economy at the time. We had a major manufacturing bubble for a couple/few decades after WWII while all of our competitors were busy rebuilding their infrastructure. Eventually, those countries became competition again. So the situation where a married couple with 3 kids landed in a 4 bedroom house with 2 cars while one person worked an entry level manufacturing job didn't just fall apart - It was an anomaly that it was ever realistic.

Wow, that's clueless with the power of an Ox

[rsilvergun]

the folks I know losing sleep to work are doing it because the wage stagnation that started in the 80s and's been going strong since decimated their wages so that they work two jobs to make ends meet. Even the folks who don't have two jobs put in extra hours in a desperate bid to move up because companies stopped giving cost of living raises in the mid 2000s.

Sure, the extra work they do might not be the best but good enough is always good enough. People are losing sleep because they're being taken advantage of and made to work longer hours. As an added benefit if you're doing the work of 1.5 employees that's less people your company has to hire, meaning more competition for your job, driving your wages down further and leading to you working harder. See where this thing's going?

Re:Wow, that's clueless with the power of an Ox

[Solandri]

because the wage stagnation that started in the 80s and's been going strong since decimated their wages

It actually started in the 1970s with the Arab Oil Embargo. But people wanting to blame it all on Reagan like to pretend it started in the 1980s.

That's why Reagan is generally considered a pretty good President (among those who lived through the 1970s and 1980s). Yes growth was stagnant. But compared to what was happening before under Ford and Carter, it was a marked improvement. It's a little amusing to hear people complain about how terrible things are today. It's damn rosy compared to stagflation and the interest rates approaching 20% which eventually got us out of it.

Re:Wow, that's clueless with the power of an Ox

[NicknameUnavailable]

No, I don't. None of this resonates with my experience. I've been doing great and I started working AFTER the wages stagnated. /shrug

Not knowing anything different isn't living better.

Experts say

[JohnFen]

Experts actually say that if you think everybody requires the same number of hours of sleep, you're deluding yourself.

Not me

[PPH]

Getting through the workday on little sleep

Now please turn off my office lights and close the door behind you.

The consequences would be worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Not getting 8 hours sleep a night has nothing to do with work. It has to do with having a life outside work. In order to get 8 hours sleep a night I'd have to be in bed by 7:30pm and asleep by 8:00pm, because I get up at 4:00am, do physical training for a competitive sport, then go to work by 8:30am. If I make no stops on the way home from work I'm home at 5:30pm. 2.5 hours is damned little time during a weekday to get things done you need to get done at home to prepare for the next day. I can't give up training, and I certainly can't afford anything without working. Even if I gave up my training I'm supposed to call 'work, eat, sleep, repeat' a life? That'd kill me faster than getting 6 hours sleep a night (plus a short nap at lunchtime). It's all well-and-good for some researcher to waggle a finger at everyone and tell them "You're going to DIE, SOON, if you don't get 8 hours sleep a night every night!", but it's not realistic unless you're either independently wealthy and don't have to work, or are so dull that work/sleep/eat/repeat is somehow enough for you.

Re:The consequences would be worse

[Kjella]

Not getting 8 hours sleep a night has nothing to do with work. (...) because I get up at 4:00am, do physical training for a competitive sport, then go to work by 8:30am.

If you work out for like four hours every day I hope there's an Olympic gold medal in your future. Because that's just not normal levels of training even for competitive sports, that's trying to become the world's best. And I know there's some track-and-field events and various other obscure sports where sponsors are hard to come by and people do that as a side gig on top of a day job, but no wonder it takes some sacrifices.

Re:The consequences would be worse

[Anonymous Coward]

You're getting 6-7 hours of leisure time in the day, but you are dedicating 4 of those hours to working out in the morning. You are choosing to use your time split up during the day, but you still get that free time. Stop treating your morning workout as a unavoidable chore, and realize that's what your hobby is.

That doesn't sound so bad.

Bullshit

[AuMatar]

People are different. They have different needs for sleep. If I sleep for more than 6, I feel like utter shit. Headaches and lethargy all day. I work best on about 6, and am function on down to 4. Above that I'm less productive.

Re:Bullshit

[zifn4b]

People are different. They have different needs for sleep. If I sleep for more than 6, I feel like utter shit. Headaches and lethargy all day.

That's evidence of sleep deprivation. If you got proper sleep for a few days, you would feel like a new person.

Re:Bullshit

[bingoUV]

You might say that, but do you have scientific evidence ? You'll have to :

1. Compensate for the placebo effect - what if you have the headaches and lethargy because you think sleeping more than 6 hours is bad for you? One way for doing this is to make you think you slept 6 hours but you actually sleep 8 hours. If sleeping 8 hours is not physiologically possible for you, first that would need to be fixed. If it can't be fixed, the conclusion is that it is unknown how well an 8 hour sleep schedule works for you.

2. Less productive? What if placebo effect is working here? What if you evaluate you productivity as low because you know you slept more than 6 hours ? Productivity will have to be defined more objectively for that statement to make any sense in science.

3. Different levels of how deep you are sleeping could affect your results. You will have to measure that too to be more scientifically rigorous.

Re:Bullshit

[david_thornley]

Have you ever had a sleep study done? You could have apnea, and you'd feel a lot better if you fixed that.

Reagan was a terrible president

[rsilvergun]

a momentary blip in oil production shouldn't have caused 50 years of declining wages. Trickle down economics did. Here's a good list of reasons Reagan stunk on ice. And yes, I'm aware Clinton carried on Reagan's legacy to win the presidency. I never said I liked him either. A Republican's a Republican. Even with a D next to their name.

Re:Reagan was a terrible president

[Galactic Dominator]

Don't forget Reagan's war on the family farm. Mission Accomplished!

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED2809...

Re:Reagan was a terrible president

[NicknameUnavailable]

It's more globalism than anything else - trickle down economics is shit, but it was stable for awhile. The issue is the people doing the trickling realized they could outsource things more cheaply and started lobbying for open borders, free trade, etc to build global corporations which move to wherever the cheapest labor is at a given time. Nations have borders for a reason, it's more than just for defense.

Re:Reagan was a terrible president

[Galactic Dominator]

Sure he can. Read history. It's true enough technology contributed to a world-wide decline of family farms, however the impact in US was much higher during Reagan's terms due to his approach to farmers. You'll also notice the smaller family farms were effected much more harshly than corporate ones.

> When mass production came into play, they had to convince farmers to move out of rural communities to come work at factories in the city.

No, this is not what happened.

Re:Reagan was a terrible president

[david_thornley]

Corporate income taxes are not paid on labor costs. If the company officers think it will be more profitable by abusing workers, it doesn't matter what the corporate tax rate is, they'll abuse workers.

So what do I do?

[Ol Olsoc]

I've always slept arounf 5 hours a night, unless I was sick - which happens about once every 5 years.

I go to bed, fall asleep, and then 5 hours later I wake up feeling refreshed and rested. So should I drug myself in order to get the "correct" and healthy amount of sleep? Or do I go to a doctor and tell him that some expert told me I was killing myself. so I need treated for insomnia. I really don't want to just lie in bed for three extra hours.

I call Bullshit. I know what I feel like when I'm tired, I know what I feel like when I have had enough sleep.

Re:It's True!

[Ol Olsoc]

You need so many hours to reset/repair your brain. And your body needs repair in the additional sleep. If you short yourself you might get away with the brain for a while, but they are both tied together so your thinking will eventually get cloudy. Not to mention the eventual breakdown of the body and/or brain.. Or you can deny all of this and wait till you get older.

What you say is true, but it really depends on the individual, despite what this guy says. I've alawys done 5 hours, and unless I have a cold, I'm awake without an alarm, and feel good with 5. I go to sleep when I'm tired, and wake up when I've had enough sleep. I'm old enough, and except for nagging old sports injuries that come back to haunt me as arthritis pain, Im doing just fine.

Re:Dumshit bosses

[swilver]

Every time I read something like this, I just can't help but think that Americans are primarily wage slaves. This can't happen in Europe. You can refuse, and they cannot fire you without several formal warnings (and a warning can't be "refuses to work 60 hours a week").

They simply cannot make you work 60 hours a week, and they have to *ask* you nicely if you want to work overtime (with extra pay) on the weekend or evenings.

They also cannot spy on you, expect replies to mail/SMS/whatsapp outside office hours, fire you without reason, etc. In Europe, your boss is just another person with a different role, not somebody that must be obeyed without question or face consequences.

I get exactly 8 hours every night

[gosand]

That is what I track on my health incentive plan at work, so it is true.
I also am never stressed, work 40 hours a week, am always happy, eat the perfect diet according to what they think is perfect (which it isn't), and exercise exactly how much they think I should exercise.

Warren Buffet disagrees

[rsilvergun]

as does everybody in the 50s and 60s when corporate and marginal taxes were much higher and we had record growth and prosperity. If anything it spurs them to work harder instead of hoarding cash and power.