
How to Avoid Sleep Debt - ramchip
http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/railroad-sleep/getting-sleep/sleep-debt
======
hawkharris
Speaking about sleep in terms of debt is somewhat misleading. A sleep deficit
can't be "paid off" as you might pay off a financial obligation. If you
overdraw from a checking account, you can settle up by making one larger-than-
usual deposit. If you stay awake for three days, then sleep much longer than
usual doesn't give you a full cognitive recovery. It might be more accurate to
think of staying awake as taking out a loan with very high interest.

EDIT: This is a difficult concept to understand because it sounds like a
semantic difference. Here's an interesting article that explains it in more
detail:

[http://www.npr.org/2013/08/15/212276021/of-neurons-and-
memor...](http://www.npr.org/2013/08/15/212276021/of-neurons-and-memories-
inside-the-secret-world-of-sleep)

~~~
Dylan16807
On the other hand, if you get 50 hours behind on sleep, you only need a
handful of extra hours to get back to normal.

It's both better and worse than actual numerical debt. Paying it off is
painful and slow, but you don't have to pay off the original amount.

~~~
anvandare
Well, not really. During the time where you're building up those 50 'lost
hours', your body is performing worse. What you owe in sleep you'll
(immediately) pay for in reduced quality of wakefulness: lower mental acuity,
worse immune system, poorer physical performance, slower recuperation, etc.

Nature only barters, not lends.

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tacoman
I work primarily in operations on an entertainment service not too dissimilar
from Netflix. Every couple of months I have pager duty for a week. I'm lucky
to get 6 hours of consecutive sleep in a day. It seems to take a week to
recover from it. Everyone I know who works in operations on services with
similar availability requirements seems to have the same problem. It can be
extremely difficult at times especially when you're under pressure to get
something resolved and your cognitive abilities are shot.

There isn't much point to this comment I guess other than to say that yes,
good sleep is very important and more important than people realize.

~~~
eikenberry
Do the developers not share in pager duty for their apps at your company? I
thought this was now standard practice anymore. I've never seen a company
where the devs are on pager duty with the kind of reliability issues you
describe. And yes, these were all companies with very tight uptime
requirements.

~~~
Crito
If I am guessing his company correctly, then most development teams indeed do
their own pager duty with typical oncalls lasting one week. Some teams have
extremely heavy ops load and have support people or even support teams that
focus on doing ops and reducing op load.

There are several possible causes of such an unusually high ops load. Maybe
it's a failing in that team _(teams typically track operation load carefully,
as it can serve as an early indicator of something in the team dynamics going
wrong)_ , that team might be under pressure from management to push out new
features on a tight schedule _(leaving less time to get things right, or to
fix known issues)_ , they may have had the unfortunate luck of inheriting a
service written quick and dirty by one of the VP's favored "get shit done
fast" teams _(a problematic phenomenon that fortunately seems to be becoming
less common)_ , or it may just be the nature of their particular work for
whatever reason.

I _have_ seen teams with extremely high operation load get support teams based
out of other timezones, so that 24/7 ops coverage can be done mostly by people
working during their regional business hours. Why that hasn't been set up in
his case, I cannot say.

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IbJacked
I thought I saw a study that showed sleep debt not to be as cumulative as in
this guide, that the amount needed to catch up topped out at something like 10
or 12 hours. I don't have a link, though, so I guess my post is equally
suspect :)

~~~
MereInterest
It is the difference between chronic and acute sleep deprivation. Go 100 hours
without sleep, and sure you'll be hallucinating at the end, but you recover
after about 16 hours of sleep. On the other hand, get slightly less sleep than
you need, and it builds up over time, and requires an equal amount to get
back.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation#Counteracting...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation#Counteracting_the_effects_of_sleep_deprivation)

~~~
Dylan16807
That's not what it says. It says that the recovery is slower for chronic sleep
deprivation, not that it takes 'as much'. Do you contend that it could take an
entire decade to dig out of a large sleep debt two extra hours a night?

 _After chronic partial sleep restriction, the recovery process of cognitive
functioning seems to take longer than after acute total SD. Performance in the
PVT was not restored after one 10 h recovery night, but approached the
baseline level after two 10 h nights in a study with seven consecutive sleep
restriction nights with 5 h sleep /night (Dinges et al 1997). Using the same
test, three 8 h recovery nights were not enough to restore performance after
one week of sleep restriction_

~~~
MereInterest
Ah, thank you. I was attempting to find a source for something that I vaguely
remembered, while rather tired. The irony of delaying on sleep while reading
an article about sleep loss was not lost on me.

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pcarmichael
I'm trying to get my business off the ground while raising two kids under 5.
I'm constantly between 5-6 hours of sleep a night. It's a vicious cycle - the
longer it goes the more I need to work late to catch up. Yet the later I work,
the less efficient I become. I know that I need a good sleep reset, but there
never seems to be a good time. Exercise become difficult to schedule, and I've
definitely gained weight over the last several years. It's not good, but the
decline is slow and hard to recognize in the moment. It's been so long (4
years now?) that I think I've forgotten what feeling rested feels like.

~~~
GuiA
The "trick" is to set up a hard rule. If you get up at 6.30 in the morning, be
in bed at 10p no matter what so that you will fall asleep by 10.30p-11p at the
very latest (8h of sleep).

Also, no laptop/phone/tablet/etc. in the bedroom - just books/magazines.
Reading before bed is the best way to slowly move towards sleep and not keep
yourself up for hours the way that looking at a screen does.

Yes, sometimes you feel like you can work for an extra couple hours, etc. -
but at the end of the day it's a choice you have to make. If you genuinely
care about being healthy, put {sleep | healthy food | exercise } before
everything else. The first few weeks might be a bit rough, but the rest will
follow.

~~~
moultano
Also, if you can't turn your brain off and are having trouble sleeping
initially, 0.5mg of melatonin is wonderful and effective.

~~~
avenger123
I've thought about using this. Do you use use it often?

My understanding is that taking it consistently isn't a good idea. Using it
the odd night that I'm restless seems like a good idea.

~~~
WalterSear
Do you have a source? I haven't seen anything that suggests it isn't
unhealthy. It take it almost daily, have done so for over six months, and have
never slept better or had as much energy. It's also given me the energy to get
in better physical shape.

~~~
avenger123
I don't have sources that outline the issues on why taking it for a long time
is bad. I have talked to a pharmacist and other articles stating that it's a
temporary fix.

Here's another article mentioning that it should be taken for 3 months at
most:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-j-
breus/melatonin-s...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-j-
breus/melatonin-sleep_b_820426.html)

~~~
vilhelm_s
The three months is because there have been studies showing it is safe for
that long. But afaik there have been no studies suggesting that it would not
be safe to take it for longer.

Gwern has a page (with a very pro-Melatonin message) with lots of links:
[http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin](http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin)

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Aloha
I don't think the need for sleep is a constant. It can vary season by season,
and week by week.

Sometimes I find I need 8 or more hours to feel rested, others I wake up on my
own after four and feel as though I've slept a full night. Usually I run at
about 7.5 hours, and thats when my body wakes me up. When I was working
graveyard I found I needed more sleep overall than when I work days.

~~~
adrianN
For me it definitely varies by season. I don't use an alarm clock and I go to
bed roughly at the same time every day (+- an hour at the very most). In
summer I wake up around six, in winter I sleep until nearly eight.

~~~
kijin
If you're not using an alarm clock, then it's probably sunlight (or warmth)
that wakes you up. The sun rises earlier in the summer.

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izendejas
This kind of problem is really fascinating to me. On the one hand, we're all
pretty ambitious and would love to do more and that can cause one to sleep
less. On the other hand, the more jam packed your schedule the easier it is to
become less productive. I'm actually working on an app for myself and hope to
release it soon, but it amounts to guiding me on a 5-10 minute workout every
morning.

I've found that doing so helps me overcome grogginess, gives me an energy
boost and even helps me alleviate headaches--which is incredible.

So for anyone that feels tired no matter how much you sleep, just do something
like the 7-minute workout or tabata workouts (I have my own routine I'll share
with the app) and you'll hopefully get a nice energy boost which will last you
a while and you'll gradually notice your metabolism will improve, etc. This is
not scientifically proven, but exercise is pretty awesome either way. :)

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jordo37
This is interesting, but week on science or quantitative data. Some of the
randoms stats sewn throughout don't even agree with each other.

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conectorx
Oh my god, my kids are going to harvard to learn that if they dont sleep
enough, they will be sleepy during the day.... This is funny and sad :(

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tommu
Not a very helpful article for the insomniac. Surely a bigger problem for many
people is being able to fall asleep at all, let alone sleep for a required
number of hours.

~~~
mwfunk
The article wasn't about dealing with insomnia, so I'm not surprised that it
lacked useful advice for dealing with it.

