
What happens when two kids sleep only two hours a day? - ghotli
http://www.dymaxionduo.com/
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scott_s
Again? This comes up every few months. A good discussion that explains why
it's not a good idea: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=652650>

On that thread, I found crocowhile's comments particularly good.

~~~
caitlinwoodward
Thanks for the link to the other thread. It has some good discussion. Some
good stuff to think about.

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scott_s
Also:
[http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih3/sleep/guid...](http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih3/sleep/guide/info-
sleep.htm)

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gcheong
Please don't attempt to drive a motor vehicle or operate heavy machinery while
doing this.

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csallen
Anyone know how old these two people are? Their writing is at such a level
that I'm surprised they're young enough to refer to themselves as kids.

~~~
ghotli
Early to mid twenties. They both have supportive work environments and a whole
host of people helping them through the days. Theoretically it will take them
a few weeks to get used to it.

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anatoly
I don't get it. Why are they calling themselves kids?

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crux
I had actually assumed they were doing it with their children. And wondered
how long until they were investigated for child abuse.

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electromagnetic
I thought similarly, or that it was perhaps 16-18 year olds taking it upon
themselves for a science project or something. However I'm now assuming it is
people in their mid-twenties who apparently regard themselves so free of the
inherent responsibilities of life that they refer to themselves as kids.

I'm 22 and married. I immigrated to Canada (and the legal responsibilities
inherent in this would likely scare the life out of these two 'kids'). My
friends and family members of similar age to us have children (in fact our
marriage is directly responsible for one of them), and I will likely have
children before the two authors consider themselves 'adults'. I have
responsibilities and obligations, like I assume most twenty year olds do, and
I consider myself to have very few responsibilities in comparison to many of
my friends and relatives.

It must be a privileged life to be able to consider yourself a kid well into
your twenties, I stopped thinking of myself as a kid when I had to get a full
time job at 16. I definitely stopped thinking of myself as a kid when I was
handling an intercontinental relationship and funding international travel,
which as I said before has resulted in me immigrating to another country.

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joe_the_user
I don't even agree with the above post but since when do coherently argued
points like this get down-modded so much?

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electromagnetic
Thanks, at least on HN the majority balances out the down-mods so that
coherent posts stay balanced. We're not reddit yet where any non-conformism
gets down-modded to non-existence. I frequently try to upvote posts I disagree
with that are well written.

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simonista
Cool blog design. One column per person style is something I hadn't seen
before.

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WalterGR
The navigation on the front page is terrible. It's impossible to know that "n
days left" means n days left _of normal sleep_ , and hence those should be
read first.

I was able to figure out the nav only after clicking the links and checking
the "posted-on" dates.

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wildjim
Quick note, before I read the article:

Watched a documentary recently, experimenting with 3hours/day. It was
cancelled after a week because the "victim" was showing dangerous side-effects
and beginning to show major-organ dysfunction, apparently from the stress
caused by lack of sleep.

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caitlinwoodward
What was this documentary called? I'd like to see this, too.

~~~
caitlinwoodward
Also, the more I think about this...

One cycle of three hours hardly encourages the body to enter REM. That person
might've only gotten one 30 min sessions in that 3 hour cycle. Once we have
transitioned, our body will be getting four 30 minute sessions of REM.

Again, I want to emphasize that I'm not an expert on this, I've just read a
lot. I think my thoughts would align with other polyphasers, though.

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BoppreH
Funny, I've heard a lot of stories of people _starting_ this sleep schedule,
but not a single one of someone that managed to _maintain_ it. Let's see how
this one goes.

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kellishaver
I know people, and indeed, get like this myself sometimes (though not as often
as I used to), who will have natural cycles in which they are awake for hours
on end and sleep only 1 or 2 out of every 24. But even for those who seem to
be naturally wired to do so, it only lasts for a few days before either their
body or their mind needs sleep so badly that they a) fall asleep in the case
of physical exhaustion, or b) must take sleeping aids to force themselves back
into a normal pattern so they can think clearly again. Polyphasic sleep sounds
good in theory. In practice, well, there's a reason why sleep deprivation is
used as a form of torture.

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fossguy
Just have a kid and you will learn by yourself. If he is colic, you will get
even less.

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dotBen
On paper this kind of sleep cycle looks attractive for the typical geek.

But I wonder what the long-term health implications are, and how this fits in
with relationships etc.

Also, I worked with a guy who did Uberman polyphasic sleep and he seemed out
of it a lot, like he wasn't firing on all cylinders, at work.

~~~
shard
I vacillate between thinking that if our body fights this hard against
polyphasic sleep, there must be something wrong with the idea, and that
sometimes we need to overrule our body's natural tendencies, such as wanting
to eat lots of fats, sugar, and salt, and to not exercise properly.

Also, I'm concerned that I would not be able to discern any degradation in
mental capacities due to my degraded mental capacities.

(Confession: I tried polyphasic sleep once, but didn't make it past the third
day.)

~~~
dotBen
To your point, I don't think my former work colleague knew he was kind of out
of it.. I can only describe it if he had been up all night smoking pot and was
still feeling a little of the effects the morning after.

To the health point: I think polyphasic sleep may also increase your desire
for high fat, sugar and salt foods because it destroys the meal cycle.

~~~
caitlinwoodward
I can't speak for Blake, but I have a horrible meal cycle as it stands
already. Inconsistent in everything, mostly nutritional value.

Already, a few months ago, I tried to schedule myself into small healthy
snacks every couple hours, instead of a few large and pretty unhealthy meals.

With this strict schedule on sleep, I'm eating within the first hour of waking
up. (Eating a couple apples seem to help for the late night snacks.) Small
breakfast after the 6am nap, small dinner right after my 6pm nap, etc. Some
healthy-ish snacks sprinkled it the middle (but no too close to naptime).

~~~
a-priori
That sounds like a good plan. Food, sunlight and physical activity are signals
for circadian cycles. You should try to incorporate each into every waking
period, at least in the beginning.

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blakepalmer
I'm very sun-driven. I need to find a good way to incorporate that at night.
It's been much, much easier for me to stay awake when the sun is out. Thanks
for the tip!

~~~
btilly
That's because light resets your biological clock.

Full spectrum lighting may have a similar effect on you. (It is sometimes
prescribed for preventing seasonal affect disorder.)

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petercooper
It helps going into this sort of thing to know you don't have any underlying
mental problems. I used to pull crazy sleep schedules as an early
20-something, but as a late 20-something even mild sleep deprivation leads to
muchos weird psychological situations for me now.

If I were giving any advice to early 20-somethings nowadays, I'd say save up
your sleep deprivation experiments until you have a baby. You'll need them :-)

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jdietrich
Interesting experiment, but I can't navigate beyond the 'About' page because
of all the Flash.

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caitlinwoodward
My first time experimenting with sifr. Thought I'd try it out and see how it
worked. =\

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Tichy
Please resubmit in a month or so. It sounds as if they haven't started the
experiment yet?

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BoppreH
They did, but are on their second day. I agree, there should be periodical
updates here. I'm very curious about this.

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blakepalmer
There's an RSS feed and a Twitter account if you guys want regular updates. We
definitely want to let people keep track of what we're doing. Gives us some
accountability as well. It's easier to keep going with the experiment when you
have friends paying attention.

The Twitter handle is <http://twitter.com/dymaxionduo>

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ck2
That is a bit crazy extreme. I sleep 3 hours every 12 hours and it works great
for me.

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kwamenum86
YAPSE

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hackermom
A swedish student, Thomas Jönsson, performed a similar "polyphasic sleep"
experiment 2 years ago. He slept 2.5 hours per day; 25 minutes every 4th hour.
His aim was to improve his potential and performance on a wide front, and he
increased results in several contexts (learning, and physical exercise being
the most notable ones). He kept his experiment going for about 6 months. He
was 23 years old at the time.

~~~
csallen
Interesting he was able to improve physically. I've always been tempted to try
an extreme sleep schedule, but one thing has kept me from doing so -- I go to
the gym regularly, and evidence has shown that sleep is an essential part of
muscle growth.

~~~
blakepalmer
I've wondered about this as well. I've been exercising, and I'm curious as to
how sleep will effect that. I'd be intrigued to see research on the topic.

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ddemchuk
Really nice blog design, I like it a lot. I've always thought that a split
post design like that would be interesting for any sort of blog that revolved
around the participation of a couple/pair.

Good luck

