I believe many people in the startup world would be interested in this question.<p>What happens to your body, when you sleep 7-8h, but you extend the period of time you are awake?<p>I, personally, can't sleep longer than 10h, no matter how long I was awake before that. Lately, I've been experimenting with my schedule (out of necessity to meet certain deadlines, mostly) and I found that I feel relatively OK, when sleeping regular 7-8h and working longer hours, ultimately going over 24h per sleep-awake cycle.<p>Obviously never getting your sleep at a certain time of the day (every day you move the time you go to bed with the number of hours you extend your day with) has an effect of the quality of your sleep and ultimately you get less sleep.<p>So, is there any research that you know of, comparing these 2 different types of sleep deprivation:<p><pre><code> - sleeping less but keeping the 24h cycle duration;
- sleeping regular amount of hours per cycle, but extending the cycle (through your awake time) to over 24h.</code></pre>
Pretty sure that would count as habitual sleep deprivation, and thus you'd incur brain damage on a regular basis. Plus your productivity will go straight into the dumpster after about a week or two.<p>As someone who's no stranger to sleep dep, I strongly advise you to avoid that course of action.
If this is how you deal with having lots of work, you might want to instead quit your job, or better yet re-negotiate your terms of employment<p>Sleep deprivation destroys your productivity. It's equivalent to being drunk. E.g. "Chronic restriction of sleep periods to 4 h or 6 h per night over 14 consecutive days resulted in significant cumulative, dose-dependent deficits in cognitive performance on all tasks." (<a href="https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/26/2/117/2709164" rel="nofollow">https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/26/2/117/2709164</a>).<p>The idea that "oh I can just can stay awake longer" <i>might</i> have merit. I doubt it. But the whole premise is flawed, even if it is workable.<p>The premise is that working longer is better. It's not. Productivity is about achieving your goals with minimal wasted effort. If you're spending your time thinking about "how can I have more hours to work" you're not thinking about the important thing: "what work am I doing that is unnecessary."<p>You can get order of magnitude reduction in effort by having the right idea, or the right shortcut, or the right set of priorities. Staying awake more might give you 25% more hours at the cost of massive cognitive deficit, and a completely broken set of priorities.<p>More on productivity and sleep:<p>- Productivity: <a href="https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/" rel="nofollow">https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/</a><p>- Why your startup has you working long hours: <a href="https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/06/21/why-company-want-long-hours/" rel="nofollow">https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/06/21/why-company-want-lon...</a><p>- References to research on long working hours and sleep deprivation: <a href="http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons" rel="nofollow">http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons</a>