

Sleep Deficit: The Performance Killer - agilo
http://hbr.org/2006/10/sleep-deficit-the-performance-killer

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Tsagadai
I know this is anecdotal but I feel it is worth sharing. I've had insomnia for
several years. I've tried treating it with drugs, sticking to routines,
exercise, meditation, diet, controlled lighting, and quite a few other
methods. Eventually, I just stopped looking at it as a problem. I sleep about
5 to 6 hours a night now and I feel great. I just accepted I don't have the
same sleep patterns as everyone else and moved on with my life. I've read
about reaction times and how sleep affects cognition but I really don't
believe it, _for me_. I've tested performance by going shooting and recording
scores after various amounts of sleep and found that after more than 7 hours
of sleep a night I get worse scores.

Science is averages, you might be average or you might not. Test your own
performance and find out what you need. If you only need a few hours sleep and
your performance is not affected, do that. Many people with insomnia worry
about it or try to fix what might not be broken. You might be an outlier and
not the average.

~~~
SquareWheel
I have a 26-hour circadian sleep-rhythm, and so each night I go to bed 2 hours
later than the night before. It made school years absolutely insufferable, but
now I have a job where I can set my own hours and I just go with it. I'm not
able to do certain things like shop during my "awake during the night" phase,
but it usually works out.

I'm not sure if I have much to contribute other than "me too". I can confirm
though that in my experience, drugs, routines, etc just don't work for me.

~~~
espinchi
How can you measure how long your circadian sleep cycle is?

~~~
SquareWheel
The time you wake up one day, to the time you wake up the next, averaged out
over a long period of time. For most people it's right around 24 hours, as it
should be.

Circadian technically means every 24 hours, so a better word may have been
just "body clock": <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm#Criteria>

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peter_l_downs
Doesn't just apply to adults: highschool students do not get anywhere near
enough sleep [1]. Some schools have tried moving to a later opening, which has
in some cases led to better academic performance from the students, but most
schools still start god-awfully early.

[1] My own experience, may not apply to everyone, everywhere.

~~~
TWSS
Not just your experience: <http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/teens-
health/CC00019>

Your circadian rhythm changes in your teens, and too few schools are willing
to work with this rather than against it. The results are sleep-deprived kids
doing crap work in school and getting into car accidents like the one
mentioned at the start of the HBR article.

~~~
gwern
I've collected some citations on the topic: [http://www.gwern.net/education-
is-not-about-learning#school-...](http://www.gwern.net/education-is-not-about-
learning#school-hours)

(Too bad that there doesn't seem to be any large authoritative collection of
relevant material.)

~~~
peter_l_downs
This page, and your entire site in general, are very interesting. Thank you
for taking the time to compile all of these links, I'll have to start sending
them to my teachers :)

~~~
gwern
Well, it's not finished\ _; so if you are going to send'em to anyone, might I
suggest you pick particularly relevant citations and just link those instead
or something like that?

\_ You obviously have no way of knowing this but my convention on gwern.net is
anything in lower-caps is draft/incomplete, and so I don't link it unless it's
extremely relevant (as it was in this case).

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ggwicz
The fact that sleep is not really valued in the "start up" community is a
disgusting reflection of stupid people. SLEEP MORE.

A great resource is a book called `Lights Out! Sleep, Sugar, and Survival` by
T.S. Wiley. They book eventually gets into some controversial territory
without much data to support the claims, but the first half or so is largely
about sleep and invaluable. There's a ton of references for the sleep section.

Tl;dr - get the book I mention and sleep. Human sleep cycles change with the
seasons and you shouldn't be up too much outside the realm of daylight if
possible.

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paganel
> People in executive positions should set behavioral expectations and develop
> corporate sleep policies (...) It’s important to have a policy limiting
> scheduled work:ideally to no more than 12 hours a day, and exceptionally to
> no more than 16 consecutive hours.

This sentence seems like having been taken straight out of Marx's "Das
Kapital", volume 1. I know this is the Harvard Business Review, a bastion of
capitalism if there ever was one, but I gathered that business owners had
smarten up a little in the last 150 years.

If they don't want to do it for the benefit of their employees, they should do
it for the benefit of their family and business friends, because at some point
or another some guy like Lenin or Trotsky could come again and ride the wave
of discontent and the consequences would not be pretty.

~~~
obtu
This article was written for an audience of pointy-haired bosses, and so the
meh scientific insights are followed by groundbreaking! executive! decisions!

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Zakharov
Sleep certainly is important but things like "Educational programs about
sleep, health, and safety should be mandatory" and "Additionally, companies
should provide annual screening for sleep disorders in order to identify those
who might be at risk" sound like well-intentioned wastes of time.

------
matwood
99% had a great video from Tony Schwartz just last week:

[http://the99percent.com/videos/7110/Tony-Schwartz-The-
Myths-...](http://the99percent.com/videos/7110/Tony-Schwartz-The-Myths-of-the-
Overworked-Creative)

Basically, he believes that mental exercises is just like physical exercise.
During rest periods is when your capacity to do the exercise expands, not
during the exercise itself.

------
willyt
Be ready for this when you have kids. Your performance will drop right off for
the first 12-18 months or so for each child. They disrupt your sleep and make
your day physically and mentally longer and more demanding. The number of
crazy things I have done in the car through chronic sleep deprivation is
scary. I love my kids to bits by the way :-)

~~~
nosequel
This is completely true. I was focused completely on work when I was at work
when I had no kids. My first kid brought that building completely down. I
would sit at my desk staring at the screen not knowing that time was even
passing. I finally had to force myself to sleep at lunch in my car in the
parking lot so I could focus enough in the afternoon to not get fired. Luckily
it passed and I started getting sleep after a while. It is amazing the stuff
you think and do when highly sleep deprived.

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jcromartie
As I sit here at nearly 3 AM trying to finish something for Monday that we
over-promised a client...

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EdisonW
I have to say, this is one of the goals were wanted to achieve when I made
SleepBot (Android). Sleep is such a big issue especially for us programmers.
We often not aware of how much sleep we actually lose everyday and how much
performance it kills.

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itmag
Seth Roberts' sleep experiments:
<http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2xc2h866#page-1>

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mkramlich
summary: get enough good sleep

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portentint
In corporations this is a classic prisoner's dilemma: If EVERYONE agreed that
they'd be sane and work optimal 40-50 hour weeks, it'd be great. But someone
always 'defects', going to 80+ hours in an effort to show off. The result is
actually lower efficiency, but since most corporations do very little track
efficiency and results (they track effort, instead), it doesn't get caught.

~~~
CPlatypus
I wish I could upvote that at least twice - once for the game-theory bit, and
once for the tracking-effort bit. Those are both excellent insights.

~~~
portentint
Thanks. I actually run a company - I have to constantly watch people and make
the effort/results separation. Folks never understand when they get a negative
review "for putting in 12-hour days." See, it's because you spend 4 hours/day
running in circles.

