Lumifer comments on The mechanics of my recent productivity - Less Wrong

86 Post author: So8res 09 January 2014 02:30AM

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Comment author: chairbender 09 January 2014 06:41:47PM *  3 points [-]

Everything I've read suggests that that is not a sufficient amount of sleep to achieve peak performance. I would think that, if you're interested in learning as effectively as possible (especially such difficult material), it would be more effective to get more sleep. Is there some reason you decided that this was enough sleep?

EDIT: Looks like I may be wrong about this not being enough sleep, after doing some more searching.

Comment author: Lumifer 09 January 2014 07:04:06PM 6 points [-]

it would be more effective to get more sleep.

If you are sleep-deprived getting more sleep is very effective at raising your performance. If you already get enough sleep, sleeping more won't help and might even decrease it.

Comment author: chairbender 09 January 2014 08:00:03PM *  0 points [-]

I think you may have misread what I wrote. I pointed out in my original comment that, from what I've read, 7.5 hours seems to be not enough sleep. So it would follow that getting more sleep would increase performance. I know that excessive sleep also causes problems, but that's clearly not relevant here.

Comment author: Lumifer 09 January 2014 08:11:20PM *  11 points [-]

from what I've read, 7.5 hours seems to be not enough sleep

Sleep requirements are individual and vary widely. The 7.5 hours is just the mean of a fairly wide distribution.

As a data point, I live in a house with someone who requires about two hours of more sleep per night than I do.