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Swimmer963 comments on Rationality Drugs - Less Wrong
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I'd like to share one day's worth of experience with modafinil.
I noticed a huge difference in alertness. I was filled with an urge to be doing something every second. I don't believe I was more intelligent (some of the work I did that day turned out to be low quality) but I was much more productive. And happy. I felt like I was just "riding the day" -- that going through life, minute by minute, running errands, checking items off my to-do list, and seeing what happened next, was boundlessly fascinating.
I suspect that, at least for me, and maybe for others, most unhappiness is really fatigue, coupled with the guilt of not having accomplished much in a state of fatigue. Simply not being tired makes me deliriously happy. I am not surprised by the study that coffee reduces depression in women, though I know to be suspicious of medical study methodology. The symptoms of clinical depression look a lot like the symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation (fatigue, inability to concentrate, clumsiness, weight gain or weight loss, dramatic and irrational emotions). It's possible that some people with symptoms of depression are actually sleep deprived (or that a typical amount of sleep for a modern-day working or student life is too little for their biological needs.) 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.
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..
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.]
Never felt better? Do you do any hard exercise?
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).
Do you do anything hard involving your long-term memory? Do you use spaced repetition, and if so, has it suffered?
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.
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.)
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.