This is one of the reasons I hate the eight-hour work day. Between that and all of the other shit you have to do in a day (commute, chores, eating, exercise etc.), it seems like there's little to no opportunity to just have a life. I know it sounds like first world problems (people used to work 100 hour weeks), but I think our culture needs to change before we can really put the onus on people to improve their sleeping habits. I'd love to get 7-9 hours of sleep, but I just don't have the time.
One important thing the article doesn't cover: we now have good reason to suspect that chronic sleep deprivation can cause brain damage. Not just a long term decrease in function, but actual cellular damage.<p>In a major triumph of medicine, we now know that brain cells shrink during sleep (about 60% in rats), allowing cerebrospinal fluid to flow about 10 times as fast [1] [2], helping to cycle out built up toxins and waste products and eventually drain them into the bloodstream. It was previously a medical mystery how the brain was able to eliminate toxins without being connected to the lymphatic system (although it's since been shown that the brain is directly connected to the lymphatic system to some degree as well [2])<p>As far as I know, it's not proven that this contributes to the cognitive effects of chronic sleep deprivation. But it would make an awful lot of sense, and also help explain why sleep debt becomes more difficult to pay off the longer you let it sit around, and why the damage possibly even becomes permanent.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24429-sleep-boosts-brains-self-cleaning-system/" rel="nofollow">https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24429-sleep-boosts-br...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system</a>
But do I need to be more productive?<p>It's a tradeoff - I can go home and spend more social time, leisure time and put more personal time into my projects if I sleep less. The 2-3 hours of extra time I get by sleeping like crap allows me to do things I wouldn't otherwise get to do. Productivity couldn't improve these if there's no time left in the day to do them.<p>It costs me at work, I'm sure of it, but it hasn't gotten me fired or even significantly prevented me from doing my job, so why would I change it? There's no need to be obsessed with scraping every last ounce of productivity out of myself at work. I like my job, but feel no obligation for that.
If you feel groggy in the morning or just not well–rested even after 7-8 hours sleep, get your sinuses & lungs checked.<p>Could be sleep apnea, but in my case I felt congested all the time. What I thought was allergies was actually the linings of my sinuses inflamed to the point of closing off air passages.<p>Unclear if the root cause in my case was acid-reflux into the sinus cavities or exposure to dust from ground zero.<p>The resulting surgery kind of sucked (free tip: don't have your sinuses roto-rootered in the winter) but ever since I've been able to sleep a solid 6-7 hours every night. I now wake up rested, don't feel groggy, typically without an alarm.
I don't you can generalize things like this. I am sure there are people who can get by on 6 hours or less naturally. But the problem starts when people who need more try force themselves to sleep less. I have done a lot experimentation with this and had to accept that the only sustainable way for me is to sleep around 8 hours every night. It would be cool if I could make do with 4 but it's just not in me.
I can't be alone in being exhausted at these studies. Doctors and Lawyers have spent the better part of the last century working on little to no sleep. Academics too. As an engineer, I would regularly work through little sleep because the process of loading a large project into my head to work on it would take more time than the gains from being more well rested. I'm older now, and no longer work as an engineer. I value my sleep and appreciate how much more I can task-switch on a good nights rest, but the idea that I'm not being productive when I'm grinding through work that has to get done and I'm tired seems an overwritten idea.<p>I'm not arguing against rest and recharging and clearing your mind. I just don't see what these articles are trying to prove. When I was in college I had several stints of no sleep days to finish projects. Even into my early engineering career, I once billed 40 hours straight. Was I as "productive" per minute for that entire time as if I had slept through 5 nights? No. Would the work have gotten done faster than those 40 hours if I had slept for 8 hours in the middle a few times? No. I had a deadline, and there was nothing getting around the work needing to be done.<p>The argument seems to be against a constant sprinting mode, which I don't think any company employs. Humans burn out after continuous work for weeks, sometimes months. But a week or 3 of little to no sleep to get through everything you need to? It's worked for a long time. Arguably building up muscle memory while forcing rote things to be learned while on little sleep works. What are we trying to prove by this? That "the man" is out to abuse workers? Of course he is. But did anyone make partner at a law firm by claiming he's going to more productive by working less? If you're goal is work life balance, go ahead. But if you're goal is to excel in a field, then it probably involves some sleep deprivation. PG wrote an article about the reason startups were suited for youth is that you could push through unreasonable hours to crank a lot of life into fewer days.<p>Sorry for the rant...just wondering if I'm alone in thinking this
I feel like my natural body clock is a 28-hour day. If I have no reason to get up I'll sleep for about 10 hours, but then I'm not ready to sleep again for about 18 hours.<p>I'm guessing the 10 hours is just making up for sleep debt and that might taper off if I could sleep as much as I wanted every night. But the realities of life (kids in school, work, kid's activities, etc.) mean that I have to be awake by about 6:45am and being in bed and asleep before 10:00 just doesn't happen very often either.
I feel like when I get 8-9 I am much more productive and have a much better mood. Seven for me is sort of the point where I can go throughout the day but I will be distracted. Six or less is really bad for me.<p>I really notice when I get less sleep I make a bunch more comments on HN / reddit or use Twitter much more.
I'm much more interested in why a body needs an amount of sleep, what processes it is conducting, and how you can affect those processes.<p>What happens in the 7th hour that didn't happen in the 6th? If it's a fourth REM cycle, why do we need 4? What does the fourth do that the third didn't? Why do REM cycles take that long? Can you make them take more or less time? Can you determine lack of sleep from a brain scan? Can you tell the difference between a 6th hour brain and a 7th hour brain? Does anything you eat or do during a day affect how long this process takes? What about hydration / nutrition?<p>I'm sure these are all answerable, but I'm not sure most people know the answers, and this article certainly doesn't get us any closer to understanding.
I think the headline is misleading. Let's say I stay up late to do X, Y and/or Z. These things to mean have meaning. In doing them I feel a sense of accomplishment. I've been productive.<p>Now I show up to work the next day. Certainly less sleep has some effect on me. But that doesn't devalue the increased productivity from the previous evening.<p>The brain is a limited resource. There might be occasional short term hacks/cheats. But on average you'll have X gallons in the mental tank. This is true. If you spend that at home then yes you will be "less productive" at work.
Maybe I'm weird, but I've never deluded myself about the impact of a lack of sleep. My entire life I've strived to get 7.5 to 8 hours a night. I'm not that successful lately, but I make it a priority.<p>What I don't get are people that brag about not getting much sleep. It's clearly unhealthy. Would you brag about your poor eating habits? Or not following a medication regimen?<p>I know the science is still early, but I have no doubt that poor sleep has a significant, long-term, permanent impact on health.
Most of the problems being discussed here in this thread regarding work hours per week, commute times, finding time for leisure and exercise and family time, the time spent dropping off kids at school, etc -- there are mostly unique to America. Americans could really learn a lot about how successful you can be despite spending less time at work, as well as less time fretting about other things, by looking at any of many countries on the continent of Europe, who offer a much better work/life balance but with no sacrifice on work output.<p>Some of the most talented and productive developers I know are in the Netherlands, France and Germany, and have a lifestyle that would be considered impossible by many in the States.<p>The brain needs time to recharge, time away from "work", time to think about work without actually doing work, and the punch that gets packed into a shorter work day can be much greater if the brain is working at optimum capacity, which usually doesn't happen if it is taxed for loads of hours day after day after day.<p>For me personally, my best ideas come when I am away from a computer, and my brain is free to wander. The more time I sit at a computer, ironically the less likely good ideas will come. Most work environments in the States have not learned this yet.
>> If you were not to set an alarm clock, would you sleep past it? If the answer is yes, then there is clearly more sleep that is needed.<p>Totally wrong. I just finished 4 months of military training. Sleep deprivation was part of the training. We were constantly sleep deprived. It impacted our performance, that was the point. That said, I'm one of those people who always seems to get up 2 minutes before the alarm. Even in my sleep-deprived state, less than four hours a night for weeks, I still woke up before my alarm.
Why not sleep 8 hours a day if needed (Personally, I'm even more useless on less than 7-8 hrs of sleep)?<p>I am sure you can reinvent the wheel and then some in what's left. People are productive when they are productive, you can come up with the idea to change the world in 60 mins...or never in your lifetime.<p>If Einstein had lived to 150 it's not a given that his contribution to the would would have 2X...
I recognize the thrust of this argument, and anecdotally agree with it from my experience,but it's not practical advice. Work 12 hours, spend at least 30 minutes each way commuting,work out, prepare and eat meals, and you're at pretty nearly 15 hours, without counting preparing for work. Sure,you have time for sleeping 8 hours,but only if you eschew any personal life and find your work sufficiently exciting to not see any need for recreation/fun all week. Dropping to about 6.5 hours of sleep at least doubles time for those things each work day.<p>I've tried maintaining 8 hours of sleep daily in such conditions. What I've found is that I'm productive for two days. By Tuesday or Wednesday night, I'm frustrated and bored, and spend 3 or 4 hours doing something interesting and, bam, week derailed. For me, 6.5 hours is the compromise that works. Plus, I sleep 9 hours on Friday and Saturday nights.
> the Foundation suggests anywhere from six hours to 11 hours of sleep per night for individuals between the ages of 18 and 25 may be suitable, or six hours to 10 hours for those between the ages of 26 and 64.<p>A four to five hour deviation is quite significant. That's a difference of 80% between the most amount of sleep needed and the least.<p>> "I suppose the rule of thumb in adults is about seven to eight hours, but is that based on any really solid science? I would sort of say not," said Russell Foster, professor of circadian neuroscience and head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford.<p><a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vv7eqx/why-do-different-people-need-different-amounts-of-sleep" rel="nofollow">https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vv7eqx/why-do-dif...</a>
There is a very good talk on youtube by William Dement from Stanford that is longer-form than this: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8</a>
This is the first time I've ever read about sleep problems caused by a simple glass of wine before bed. About ten years ago some study came out linking red wine to heart health, and I remember one smug kid at school making fun of the Mormons because the article had just "proven their religion wrong". Meanwhile health organizations were recommending you not start drinking because it's also addictive. I've heard that the drinking culture in the US has changed lately, as it is being seen as less and less healthy (I've been abroad for about 5 years).
The genetic variability of humans seems large enough that simple rules about sleep, like nutrition, are probably wrong for many people. Get more sleep if you are tired all the time? Maybe that would work.
Sleep need is variable, work is variable, motivation is variable. It's more likely that sleep is a spectrum, hence the 8.34% variance in required minimum sleep for adults, or how general quality of health affects ability to maintain sleep. It's even possible that sleep has nothing to do with our health and productivity other than being an indicator of it, and not necessarily a cause for it. Thanks, pseudo-scientific studies.
I'm productive on six hours of sleep in the sense that I get <i>something</i> done. However, I am quite noticeably less productive than if I get more sleep.<p>Even if I don't feel tired, I notice that my thoughts are more muddled and it's hard to concentrate. If I get 6 hours or less of sleep one night, it's usually not a problem. But if the lack of sleep is over multiple days (like it usually is), then it becomes much worse.
the article states 7 hours is the minimum, but I seem to need a lot more. they state, if you can sleep after the alarm clock goes off, then you should sleep more.<p>So, what if you get 8.5 hours of sleep but you still could sleep, after the alarm clock goes off? there should be some upper limit, maybe 9?
What is it about those that need less? I personally have been sleeping 5-6 hours per night for decades. In my mid-30's I stopped my youthful partying and found I did not need to sleep as much. Now, at 52, more than 6 hours feel like too much and I'm groggy.
Are there any reliable devices that can measure rem phases during sleep reliably and wake you up after 6-8 hours when the rem phase ends? And I'm not talking about sleep apps for phones which work with mics and accelerometers.
Have gotten 6 for decades, but I used to swim/run/yoga. Now I don't do anything because there's no time and am still productive, but need lots of caffeine and morale boosters, like I traded a couple pairs loafer mesh shoes I didn't like for a high end pair of proper fitting ASIC running shoes at Nordstrom's today. In fact I lost a couple hours sleep just thinking about trading those shoes today...
I've slept roughly 9 hours every night my entire life. I can't imagine giving up good sleep for anything. Hell, going to bed is usually my favorite thing to do outside of hobbies.
Fuck sleep. I'm waiting for the day when I can click a button on my phone to go to sleep instantly and wake up instantly on a timer. No natural feeling of sleepiness. I hate the time lost to sleep. What does it matter if I lose 5 years in my old age? I gain so much time in my younger years. It's like smoking. It's harmful and will kill you in the long term. But why do you care about living to a 100? You will have n other problems.
Not a single study or piece of research referenced by the article. "Some professor with a book says..." is not very convincing.<p>This is not a news article, and is not journalism. This is an advertisement for a book.
By use of meditation and yoga I've found the opposite to be true. The system I've used is described somewhat here <a href="http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/lifestyle/health-fitness/10-healthy-tips-to-reduce-your-sleep-quota/" rel="nofollow">http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/lifestyle/health-fitness/10-he...</a><p>Edit: downvotes why?