
Good Sleep, Good Learning (2012) - galephico
http://super-memory.com/articles/sleep.htm
======
preston4tw
Mirror: [https://web.archive.org/web/20150906101549/http://super-
memo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150906101549/http://super-
memory.com/articles/sleep.htm)

------
PokeTheCiTy
This one is still on:
[https://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm](https://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm)

Seems interesting but I have to say it is too long to read it now. Too bad the
pdf download redirect directly to the suspended account.

------
mikekchar
Just as a matter context, Piotr Wozniak is the author of SuperMemo, the first
significant spaced repetition software (SRS) application. The SuperMemo2
(usually referred to as SM2), devised by Piotr, is used in most SRS software
including Anki (arguably the most popular free software SRS app). My
understanding is that Piotr obtained a PhD for his work on these algorithms.
SuperMemo was a commercial enterprise, but I seem to remember there was some
falling out with the business side of things and Piotr left (though I haven't
really followed supermemo for a decade and things may have changed).

Piotr has some interesting ideas. His writings tend to be very much like this
article -- bury you in details, some of which you wonder about the relevance.
He is a fairly intuitive in his approach and is very much convinced about the
conclusions he reaches. He always has a large amount of data to support his
conclusions, but a criticism I've had in the past is that the data is not
always free of bias.

I only mention this as there was some suggestion that the submission was a
disguised ad. Even though I don't agree with everything that Piotr writes, one
can't deny that his ideas have helped a lot of people. He has always been very
generous with his ideas and his data. His business partner was not quite so
generous and I believe this was one of the reasons for the fallout. Whatever
you think about the content of this article, my personal feeling is that you
can be sure that it was written with the intent of helping people better
themselves and no other motives.

------
mafuyu
The DSPS section is a spot-on characterization of my sleeping patterns:

""

People who suffer from DSPS often resort to their own implausible solutions
that include:

-(poorly managed) free running sleep with an inevitable phase delays that ultimately result in sleeping through the day -skipping a night of sleep at a point when the bedtime reaches an outrageously late hour (i.e. usually after the dawn) -stabilization of the sleep pattern with medication (incl. melatonin) and artificial zeitgebers such as an alarm clock or a mom who pulls a sleepy student out from his or her bed for school"

Emergency: Melatonin: If your "protected zone" is stretched to the limit. You
may consider an occasional pill of melatonin (e.g. 2 hours before your optimum
bedtime). Remember that melatonin will affect your creativity and alertness,
and should not be used on a regular basis.

""

I read this as I was preparing to sleep at 10 AM by taking a melatonin pill...
I'll give his basic algorithm for fixing DSPS a shot over the holidays.

However, I don't think his characterization of melatonin is warranted. I take
melatonin around 15 minutes before I sleep, similar to what gwern does in his
article ([http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin](http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin)).
This article suggests taking it 2 hours beforehand. It's been working fine for
me for a year now, but it's interesting to see that in the natural melatonin
production graph further down in the article, it peaks several hours before
sleep.

------
chei0aiV
uploaded the PDF here : [https://transfer.sh/l4JOD/good-sleep-good-learning-
good-life...](https://transfer.sh/l4JOD/good-sleep-good-learning-good-
life.pdf)

~~~
Kenp77
Awesome, thank you!

------
jey
Mirror: [http://super-memory.com/articles/sleep.htm](http://super-
memory.com/articles/sleep.htm)

Past discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5244619](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5244619)

(Maybe not an exact mirror, but substantially the same article.)

------
mgiannopoulos
Account suspended?

------
znpy
Is there a pdf or epub version somewhere? I'd love to save it on my e-reader

~~~
random778
EPUB: [https://transfer.sh/zIKhO/gsglgl-
piotrwozniak.epub](https://transfer.sh/zIKhO/gsglgl-piotrwozniak.epub) (3.7
MiB)

PDF: [https://transfer.sh/17RsID/gsglgl-
piotrwozniak.pdf](https://transfer.sh/17RsID/gsglgl-piotrwozniak.pdf) (13 MiB)

btw transfer.sh is great thus far.

~~~
znpy
THANKS!!

------
edem
Account is suspended for me.

------
petegrif
Apparently forgot to pay his service provider.

------
joveian
I just looked at the DSPS section since that is my problem. The "I have
mathematically proven this to work unless it is your fault" thing is really
obnoxious. I've even tried his ultimate "farmer's lifestyle" suggestion that
worked for about a year and then stopped working. Similarly, I've done things
like bike around all day then relax without much light in the evening (all
after getting less sleep than usual the previous night) all to spend over
three hours in bed before getting to sleep.

For me, transdermal melatonin patches have been the single most helpful thing
that actually improves the quality of my sleep, which seems to be my main
issue (I cannot get good quality sleep even if free sleeping on the shifting
schedule). I've been using them (on and off, since I try to use them only when
sleeping at night) for a few months now and they aren't magic but do seem to
help significantly. Other forms of melatonin, including extended release, have
been able to slightly decrease my sleep onset but at the cost of waking up
early (about 4 hours after I go to sleep I wake up and can't sleep again for
at least 3 hours) and they do not improve my sleep quality.

Diphenhydramine, even 25 mg or less for weeks at a time, can help me get to
sleep but does not improve sleep quality. I don't think it seems to make it
worse either. For most people it stops helping with sleep after a couple of
days, but for me I can notice the effects for at least a month and sometimes
two (and just a couple of days off can make it effective again). I'm not sure
how much of this is due to my allergies, which do seem to interact with the
circadian rhythm issues.

Transdermal melatonin seems to decrease my sleep time and leaves me feeling
more rested. Hopefully this continues and I eventually make up from a really
gigantic sleep deficit :/. One point the author covers but could be emphasised
more is that the time you wake up (and potentially but not exactly when
actually get out of bed; for me it is easy to tell the effective wakeup time:
that is when my allergies kick in) controls the time that you are able to get
to sleep. This took me many years to really understand. I'm starting to wonder
if the fundamental cause of delayed sleep phases might be related to sleep
quality (that is, when quality is sufficiently low our bodies tend to sleep a
little longer, but the time from waking to being able to fall asleep doesn't
change).

I don't drink alcohol, but on the caffine topic I've noticed that for me
caffine (well, theobromine at least) seems to accumulate in my body very
slowly, but over weeks of daily consumption even in the morning it will start
to affect my sleep. I find it easiest to avoid almost completely.

For me, the longest I've been able to stick to a fairly reliable schedule is
three or four months at a time and involves spending at least three hours in
bed before getting to sleep almost every day (and twelve hours in bed total
most days). But it is still quite easy to get off that schedule, only partly
due to the difficulty of spending that long in bed every day. On the plus
side, I've found that my schedule can actually vary quite a bit day to day
while on that general pattern and still be ok, so I don't think it is really a
matter of being perfectly strict but of avoiding those situations that cause
the most harm (e.g. it seems that staying up a few hours later than usual can
be ok once a week or so but more often and it can cause the shifting to start
again).

ETA: Learning to better recognize when I've actually woken up has been one of
the most helpful things to me and took forever to recognize even with the
allergies to help. It is very tempting when I haven't gotten much sleep (and
it is 4 in the morning or something) to try to get back to sleep, but once
I've passed that point I can almost never get to sleep again until at least 12
hours have passed. However, if I stay in bed the effective wakeup time in
terms of getting to sleep in the evening can be pushed back, and even more so
if I eventually do fall asleep again.

Another odity that I've noticed is that I get much more restful sleep when
sick for some reason. I think it may be due to the rapid sleep stage cycling,
since there is some other particularly restful type of sleep that occasionally
happens in the morning.

~~~
DiffEq
Have you ever tried anything with PhGABA in it? The known good source I have
found is Biotest's Z-12. From the experience of others using Melatonin will
only last so long before it too stops having a noticeable effect. I used Z-12
for a year and it pretty much resolved my issues and now I can sleep 99
percent of the time just as well as when I used to take it...it must have
helped reset some Circadian rhythm of some sort because I don't need it
anymore to go to sleep or get a good nights sleep.

~~~
joveian
Thanks! I haven't but will look into it. The melatonin patch I use actually
has GABA and my blood brain barrier may not be in great shape, so it is
possible that is more the cause of the restful sleep than the melatonin.

ETA: It looks like PhGABA is also known as Phenibut.

------
lectrick
As a fairly serious sufferer of sleep apnea, this will definitely be a good
read

------
abpavel
Clearly an ad. Are you all blind? Click on the domain name to see the history
of postings.

~~~
DanBC
I see three submissions of this post. This is the only one to get any
discussion. All submissions were submitted by different people. All three
submitters submit from a range of different sources.

Even this search shows a variety of submitters, with only a couple of
substantial discussions.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Good%20sleep,%20good%20learnin...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Good%20sleep,%20good%20learning,%20good%20life&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

But if you think there's something wrong with this article, or domain, or the
people submitting it, you should probably email the mods.

