
Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation - hachiya
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/thomas-edison-and-the-cult-of-sleep-deprivation/370824/
======
dasil003
One thing that having a kid taught me is that sleep deprivation really hurts
my productivity as a programmer. It may be that some people can sleep 5 hours
and function just fine, I'm not going to say everybody needs the same amount
of sleep. But when it comes to work ridiculous hours I've yet to see someone
regularly claiming 100 hours work weeks outperform me over any length of time.

If I can get in the zone and achieve peak productivity for 8 hours that is an
extremely successful day. If I do that and then get 16 hours of exercise,
healthy eating, and sleep then the next day I'll have made more progress in my
unconscious and hit a positive feedback loop where elegant solutions to
difficult problems present themselves effortlessly.

Contrast to my youth where I'd regularly "work" 12-16 hour days. Then I had
the mentality that 5pm is a half-day, so if progress wasn't great by then I
still had another 7 hours! This can lead to a negative feedback loop where you
spend more hours trying to compensate for poor performance earlier.

I'm not claiming this as a universal truth, some people probably have greater
capacity than me, but I know how easy it is to fool oneself.

~~~
monochr
>I'm not going to say everybody needs the same amount of sleep.

I am going to go one step further and claim that anyone who says they work 10+
hour days regularly and are still productive is full of shit. I have seen too
many of those people either burn up or not actually be able to keep up with me
when crunch time comes and a two day caffeine and less legal binge is the only
way to do what you know needs to get done to ship.

What I have seen for people who supposedly work ridiculous hours is a largely
useless body warming a chair and keeping middle management happy by being
easily visible and "manageable".

~~~
kamaal
>>I am going to go one step further and claim that anyone who says they work
10+ hour days regularly and are still productive is full of shit.

I don't completely agree with that. People who achieve amazing things working
even 16 hours a day are pretty common. I have done that many times in the
past. When I did my engineering here in India. Preparing for public exams, and
entrance exams- I have regularly worked on subjects like Math and Physics
almost 15-17 hours a day. Most of friends who cracked the exams did the same.
It happens all the time.

When I worked at the call center, I would show up at work at 1 AM in the
night, get back to home by 11 AM, sleep till 4-5 PM in the afternoon and then
work towards learning programming till 12 in the night again. I would do this
thing every day, for months. Most Indian IT giants who get outsourced projects
routinely over work their employees, I worked for one in the early part of my
career.

But again its also about practice, and how much you can take. Most of it
psychological. You can never do anything, you have convinced yourself that you
can't do.

You will be surprised how long you can go sleepless, when that is the only
option you have.

~~~
danielbarla
In my own experience, in the "short term" it really comes down to motivation /
inspiration. If you are sufficiently motivated, overworking yourself seems to
be far less painful, and productivity doesn't really seem to be impacted. I've
certainly pulled all-nighters before with code going into production pretty
successfully.

I specifically put short term in quotes because I'm not sure how I would
define it. It probably depends on a lot of factors, but I wouldn't stretch it
past several weeks. Way past that, motivation also seems to be highly
impacted, and you become the kind of tired, error prone zombie who stretches
out their 8 hours of work over 16.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
One of XP's guiding principles is "Never work overtime for longer than one
week."

It's OK to work an 80-hour week. You can get a lot done. But the next week
needs to be a 40-hour week, or the pace isn't sustainable.

It isn't necessarily an iron-clad rule, but it's a pretty good rule of thumb.
Past one week, you're just hurting your productivity.

My experience bears this out as a fairly accurate guide.

------
klipt
"Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain

The conservation of sleep across all animal species suggests that sleep serves
a vital function. We here report that sleep has a critical function in
ensuring metabolic homeostasis ... the restorative function of sleep may be a
consequence of the enhanced removal of potentially neurotoxic waste products
that accumulate in the awake central nervous system."

[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6156/373](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6156/373)

TL;DR: sleep is necessary, otherwise it probably wouldn't have evolved in so
many different species. If you're really lucky (and a dolphin), you can get by
with only sleeping one hemisphere of your brain at a time:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-
wave_sleep](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep)

~~~
watwut
Related google tech talk:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8)

Somewhere in the middle he describes experiments they made with sleep.
Essentially, they took a person, made them sleep a lot and then measured
performance difference. Performance went up.

Sleep a lot meant sleep enough to recover from sleep dept and then around 8
hours every night.

------
secfirstmd
I once worked with a guy who only ever slept about 4 hours a night for years.
He would then run a full marathon into work every morning. I can tell you
right now, his body was there but his ability to do anything other than make
small tactical decisions was destroyed. Having a strategic meeting about the
direction of the company was pointless, as you could nearly see has brain
unable to compute and think at that level. The end of the story was that he
died on Mount Everest and the company has basically collapsed because of his
poor management and some other financial irregularities.

~~~
laxatives
Wow, he sounds like an extremely interesting person. Is there any written
documentation on him? Maybe a blog or an article or something?

------
hrjet
> Over time, children’s books and magazines began to promote this type of
> Edisonian asceticism.

I remember reading a children's book on goblins. The theme was that these
goblins worked late nights and helped humans with their chores while the
humans snored and slept.

The book was actually a prize given to me in grade one for something that I
did well in pre-school. Since it was a prize, the book was especially dear to
me and I would read it over and over.

Now that I think about it, I have always been a "sleep deprived" person since
childhood. I wonder how much of my life was shaped by that single book!

------
redmaverick
Saw this in a twitter update.

Losing sleep to hit a deadline the next day is valid, but it isn't a
productivity enhancer. I have always needed a full 8hrs for good work. -- John
Carmack

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pkulak
Was that really the end of the article? I feel like it was about a quarter
done...

------
zokier
I have relatively poor attention span, and have trouble maintaining good sleep
patterns. What I've found is that there is a sort of "Ballmer Peak" (
[http://xkcd.com/323/](http://xkcd.com/323/) ) when I'm slightly under-slept
where I can focus far better than when I'm fully rested. Of course it is a
narrow zone and not really sustainable.

I wonder if that is the general experience in our attention deficient
generation, and if that might be a contributing factor in people preferring to
cut their sleep.

------
nhilma
The cult of sleep deprivation is definitely the norm in the startup world.
People seem to be proud to not sleep much. Makes me question how sustainable
it is

------
ironash
Over the years I've found that I definitely need 8 hours sleep but didn't
often get it. I would normally manage about 6-7 hours and would soon build up
a deficit. This had a definite impact on my well being and performance at
work. Recently I've started using a timer instead of an alarm clock to ensure
that I always get eight hours. If I go to bed later I get up later. On the
rare occasions that I go to bed substantially later (e.g. attending a concert)
and so can't allow eight hours, I still cope well because I'm already well
rested. Ditto for when my young son wakes in the night - previously this would
have killed me.

I know this isn't viable for everyone but my employer allows flexible working
hours.

~~~
boyaka
The whole deficit thing is interesting. I've felt that I do that too, but I've
also heard people say that sleep doesn't work that way. It definitely could
just be that any time I'm sleeping more than 8 hours I'm just being lazy.

~~~
ironash
I don't think it's a zero sum game and I'm pretty sure other factors are
involved e.g. stress, alcohol intake, volume of exercise, etc). I do know that
my perceived quality of life is improved when I'm getting plenty of sleep, and
for me that requires about eight hours.

As I wrote in my initial comment the occasional disturbed night is not a big
problem when I'm well rested. Under those circumstances I never feel the need
to get extra sleep to compensate for the lost hours.

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jqm
I have found to stay maximally productive and creative I have to switch it up.

If I just get in a routine it seems like things flag. The best thing for me is
to laze off and sleep for 10 hours a day... casually poke around at some stuff
for awhile. Then, have a burst of output and sleep 5 hours for a couple/few
nights while spending the remainder in a flurry of concentrated activity.
Then, back to a regular normal routine for a stretch. If I try any one of
these for long it seems my productivity and interest flag though.

I don't know if it's just me or if we evolved to have periods of rest and
stress.

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laichzeit0
There's an easy counter example: weightlifting. By taking Edison's example as
a maxim he'd have all people interested in weightlifting spend day and night
at the gym and hardly resting. I suppose he'd recommend you take 2-3 minute
catnaps between sets to recover.

~~~
RollAHardSix
I think it would be more Edison would have you work to your output in the gym,
and then move onto doing independent research on weightlifting during recovery
times.

------
Htsthbjig
Measure yourself.

If you believe you can work equally good with sleep deprivation you should
test it.

Start measuring how productive you are hour after hour, WRITING down(very
important) not only how much you do but also your energy level. Do this for 40
days.

Now, for 40 days do the same but sleeping what you need, no timer clock.

Compare the results.

When I did it for a completely unrelated reason, the results were so shocking
to me. I actually believed that sacrifice meant better results. It does not
have to.

Probably you don't need to sleep much if your job does not require much from
you, just meeting people, staying there and so on.

I do triple or quadruple my productivity. I do program machines, and those
things make work for me, but what they do has to be perfect.

Remember Chernobyl or the Air France disasters. The mostly trained and smart
persons become stupid after sleep deprivation.

------
lkrubner
I worked in small startups for many years, and then later I worked in big
companies for a few years. From my own experience, I would say sleep
deprivation has no point in a big company. It only makes sense in a small
startup when you are trying to hit some very specific and life-altering
deadline, such as a meeting with a potential investor, whose money might
determine the fate of the company.

I recall a long stretch from 2003 to 2006 (myself and my friends were doing
our own startup) where we were often working crazy hours to meet deadlines. I
recall at one point a guy was going to come in and possibly invest half a
million dollars -- that would have changed everything for us. I recall I
worked for 20 hours, then I slept for 2 hours, and then I worked for another
20 hours, just so we could have a bug-free demo when the guy showed up. I
recall another time when we had to meet with a potential investor at 12 PM on
Thursday, and I started work at 11 AM on Wednesday, and I kept working, and I
kept finding bugs, and I worked through the night fixing everything, and I
worked right up until the meeting. Then the meeting ended at 1 PM -- I had
worked 26 straight hours.

Sleep deprivation only makes sense in the life of the startup because that
part of your life that you spend in a startup is suppose to be finite. Paul
Graham covers this in his essay "How to make wealth":

"Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole
working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty
years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially
well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast."

[http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

Sleep deprivation will always be a part of startup life -- that is natural.
You face deadlines that determine whether the company will continue to exist.

In a big company, sleep deprivation doesn't make sense. I made this mistake
when I first moved to big companies, and it took me awhile to unlearn the
habits that I had acquired at startups. In a big company, your individual
contribution is no longer a large part of of what makes the company go (you
can shape the destiny of a company with 4 people, but not one that has 400
people). And in a big company, there are no particular deadlines that truly
determine the fate of the company -- nothing that has the same urgency as "We
are running out of money so we need tomorrow's potential investor to invest".

In a big company, in the future, I will be cautious about working an 80 week.
But if I do a startup again, I know what I am signing up for.

------
noir_lord
16 hour day at 30% output Vs 8 at 70%.

I have maybe 6 good hours in any day which I jealously guard for programming,
the other 2 is side work (no brain required for a lot of it), emails,
financial stuff, general office work.

I guard my sleep like an ultramax.

------
dreamfactory2
Something that took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out is that I
don't need 8 hours sleep every night, just on average. The correct sleeping
time turns out to be half the time I was previously awake for.

~~~
tripzilch
Interesting observation. Although, if you go purely with that guideline,
you'll find yourself out-of-sync with day and night pretty quickly.

You'd need an additional constraint to make sure that the duration of a
sleep/wake cycle adds up to 24h, on average.

Some soft constraint such as "try to go to bed at a sensible time" will
probably do it though.

------
5partan
Four billion years of evolution? Professor Russell Foster from Oxford
University has no clue, evoluton learned us to sleep polyphasic, like babies,
where you need far less sleep than the 8 recommended hours. I'm sure even
Thomas Edison took regular naps.

~~~
mercer
On the one hand, I think you're probably right. I've had good experiences with
implementing unorthodox sleeping habits.

On the other hand, I think we as a species have proven ourselves to be
remarkably good at adapting ourselves to different circumstances, and 8 hours
also seems to be a working approach, as well as one siesta during the day.

The biggest problems I faced with polyphasic sleep was that 1) the world
assumes 8 hours nightly, so it was hard to maintain after being a student,
even as a freelancer, and 2) it required more conscious effort than 'normal'
sleep to maintain, partly because of 1. It often resulted in me getting too
little sleep in the end, because life would throw a wrench in the schedule...

Still, it's utterly fascinating. In case you haven't read them yet, the blog
posts by Steve Pavlina on his experiences implementing polyphasic sleep are
quite fascinating (much as I'm pretty sure I don't like the guy, to put it
mildly).

~~~
5partan
See my above answer why you need less sleep when you sleep segmented.

As you realize correctly, its a social thing, not a evolutionary thing that we
don't sleep segmented anymore.

I read Steve Pavlinas blog, still don't get it why he couldn't win over his
wife to adapt to his sleep cycle, with all the benefits he pointed out :)

------
arfliw
AdBlock has blocked 17 ads on this page

~~~
gozzoo
Ghostery found 23 trackers

------
decentrality
The argument is made that evolution is based on a light-dark cycle, but is
also based on predators who prefer to catch prey asleep. Survival favored
those who could awaken and stay awake until a threat has passed or until
sustenance was secure. Sleep is often a luxury, and not due to unhealthy life
always. And often we are entranced by what we are doing, living our dreams.
Sleep is personal and largely subjective, there is no universal truth on it as
long as we all have different lives.

~~~
mr_tophat
Sleep is not a luxury; it is an absolute necessity for our mammalian brains to
function properly. It is a stretch to call it subjective. While it may be
loosely thought of as subjective in the sense that we are capable of staying
awake for varying periods of time, it is not something that we are capable of
healthily carrying on without. The times of day/night that we need to sleep
are pretty consistently and inherently set in our brain, and the amount that
is optimal has been extensively studied.

The simple fact is that our brain does a lot of work throughout a day, and, in
its standard operation, waste materials build up that, in large enough
quantities, cause dysfunction or, when pushed to extremes, damage of the
brain. During sleep, the space around our neurons and glial cells expands,
and, as I understand it, the postulated function of this is to permit better
flow of cerebrospinal fluid through our brains and thus flush them of waste
material. I had mammalian sleep explained to me this way by an Anatomy and
Physiology teacher - quite simply, sleep is not something that our brains can
go without, and a properly functional brain (that is properly producing
melatonin) sets and enforces a pretty strict circadian rhythm wherein we are
awake during the day and asleep during the night. That is not to say that we
are not capable of flexibility in this regard, but pushing our limits in
regards to sleep is not a healthy practice.

Natural selection tends towards favoring the individuals in a population that
display traits that make them superior survivors and reproducers within the
population's environment - while you say that it would tend towards
individuals who were capable of maintaining proper function without sleep, I
would argue that sleep is a sort of built-in necessity of our complex and
highly developed brains and that proper function of our brains can not be
maintained without it. I would hypothesize that any individuals that were born
with genetic traits that incapacitated or limited their ability to sleep
(i.e., genetically induced insomnia) would be at a pretty extreme disadvantage
compared to other members in the population. Although there are many nocturnal
predators, none have been enough of a threat to our species that it has
limited us in any significant or tangible way, and nor have any of them become
so well adapted that they regularly threaten or prey upon us while we sleep.

Natural selection does not do much in the way of acting on neutral traits -
neutral genetic traits tend to remain relatively consistent in a population as
long as the environment remains relatively consistent such that, relative to
the environment, those traits do not become particularly advantageous or
disadvantageous. While there are exceptions wherein extremes are favored, it
seems clear that any disadvantages posed by sleeping at night (in regards both
to our modern species and our ancestors) are far outweighed by the advantages
of being fully alert and functioning during our regular operational hours.

