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Alexei comments on Building case-studies of akrasia - Less Wrong Discussion

14 Post author: Mercurial 14 December 2011 06:42PM

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Comment author: Alexei 15 December 2011 05:23:24PM 7 points [-]

INSTANCE: I snoozed a lot, almost never woke up on time unless I had to, and often ended up sleeping way more than is reasonable or necessary.

TRIED SOLUTIONS: pretty much everything most people would recommend in this situation. More alarms, different alarms, alarms further away, rewarding myself with cookies when I got up on time, practicing getting up, try to feel good about waking up, try to behave as if I was the kind of person that loves mornings, on and on.

WORKING SOLUTION: I got really angry at myself, and I just decided to use the most extreme solution I could. I put up $1000 on stickk.com for a pro-life charity (which I do not support). I wrote up a contract for myself, where I said that (with some minor exceptions) I could only get 9 hours of sleep per night for 30 days. If I fail, the money goes to the charity.

I've succeeded with my contract, and since then getting up on time has been a lot easier.

Comment author: tristanhaze 29 January 2012 02:35:38AM 0 points [-]

Wow, that is extreme. And potentially dangerous. Do you really think you would have followed through in the event of failure? I don't think I could have.

Regarding your problem: if you haven't taken steps to rule out narcolepsy, I recommend you do.

Comment author: CronoDAS 29 January 2012 03:13:00AM 0 points [-]

The symptoms are more likely to be the result of sleep apnea than narcolepsy.

(Incidentally, the earliest description of the symptoms of sleep apnea can be found in, of all things, a Charles Dickens novel...)