Swimmer963 comments on Rationality Drugs - Less Wrong

26 Post author: lukeprog 01 October 2011 11:20AM

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Comment author: Swimmer963 01 October 2011 07:29:27PM 5 points [-]

I had a year when I thought I was losing my mind; in retrospect, it may have had something to do with getting no more than five hours of sleep a night.

Five hours of sleep a night for a whole year? I'm amazed you functioned! One five-hour night and I'm moderately functional, maybe a slightly shorter attention span and more mood swings than usual. Two nights in a row and I'm a zombie unless I drink a lot of coffee. Three nights and I'm a zombie anyway no matter how much coffee I drink. Unless I get 9+ hours of sleep every night, I will feel sleepy at various points during the day.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 02 October 2011 10:06:27AM 2 points [-]

It is highly personal.

9+ hours of sleep per night for a month will probably make me feel bad. Average of 6 hours per night may be slowly wearing myself out, but this rate seems to be sustainable indefinitely.

But then, if I do not do anything stressful, I can do with 4 hours per night for a month..

Comment author: matt 04 October 2011 11:45:16PM 1 point [-]

4.5hrs of sleep every 24 on everyman 3 since January and I've never felt better!

[full disclosure: the first couple of months were tough and involved much experimentation with schedules close to everyman 3.]

Comment author: Crux 04 October 2011 11:48:06PM 3 points [-]

Never felt better? Do you do any hard exercise?

Comment author: matt 05 October 2011 03:54:34AM 0 points [-]

Not "hard". Four hour body inspired exercise routine. I'm fit and healthy with as little exercise as I can get away with (pushups, situps, etc. 3 days per week; 2km walk with sprints 3 days per week).

Comment author: [deleted] 05 October 2011 06:19:09PM 0 points [-]

Do you do anything hard involving your long-term memory? Do you use spaced repetition, and if so, has it suffered?

Comment author: matt 05 October 2011 07:59:03PM 1 point [-]

I'm a programmer and manager of programmers. I don't use spaced repetition (I mean to… I've cron'd it to open every morning… but I close it every morning that I figure I don't have time… and that's every morning). I've not noticed any memory deficit.
I think that amounts to: no information.

Comment author: Swimmer963 05 October 2011 02:48:16AM 0 points [-]

Neat. However, how regimented does your sleep schedule have to be in order for it to work? (My main problem with sleeping enough isn't that I have trouble going to bed early enough, like seems to be true for a lot of people... It's that some days I have shifts at work that start at 6 am and then I'm busy until 10 pm, and some days I get home after 11 pm and have to work 6 an the next day, and somehow even though I sleep 8-10 hours a night on the other days, I never really seem to catch up. (Also, can't nap during the day, at least not on demand. I taught myself to do it a bit during first-year university, but my schedule no longer allows napping anyway.)

Comment author: matt 05 October 2011 04:03:30AM 0 points [-]

I can usually move naps ±90 minutes with very little negative consequence (±30mins with no consequences). I can skip a nap with coffee at the cost of adding an extra hour of sleep the following night (I had to give up coffee to make normal naps work - trace caffeine doesn't stop me from napping, but does stop the naps from being effective).

Re: "can't nap during the day… on demand" - the adaption period will fix that.