
The problem of sleeping without sleeping - zick
https://books.google.com/books?id=8xAAWySuWckC&pg=PA36&lpg=PA36&dq=salvador+dali+slumber+with+a+key&source=bl&ots=ZA99dL59SS&sig=FbjpX8QoQVobfd5dn22c5hRuyvo&hl=en&ei=jMDITe37Deby0gHP3uzmBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false
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stcredzero
I am a borderline narcoleptic. I can basically will myself to pass the
narcolepsy test, and so I've had the diagnosis overturned. As a result of
this, I have some experience with sleep studies and I received some
information from doctors about sleep. This information should cause one to be
a bit skeptical about the sort of "sleep hacks" that come up often on HN.

The test for narcolepsy I took consists for lying in bed the morning-after of
the overnight part of the sleep test, and falling asleep 4 times. If you can
fall asleep 4 times, and if you go too quickly into REM sleep every single
time, then you are a narcoleptic. Narcoleptics can fall asleep very easily and
tend to go very quickly into REM, but they do not go very easily into the
deepest stage of sleep, which is the stage _the brain uses to rid itself of
certain materials._ So narcoleptics have a bit of a problem. Often, we can get
what many would call a "decent" span of sleep. However, we may only spend a
couple of minutes in the deepest stage of sleep, where we might really want
more.

I own a Zeo sleep monitor, and the data that I got out of it corroborated what
the sleep studies indicated: I get only a fraction as much of the deepest
stage of sleep, compared to the average for my age.

So here's the problem: These "sleep hacks" that allow you to enter into REM
sleep very quickly for "power naps" may be harmful to you in the long term.
You may well never enter the deepest levels of sleep that serves important
physiological functions for your brain.

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e0
Barbara Oakley talks about this in her talk at Google, "Learning How to
Learn".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd2dtkMINIw&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd2dtkMINIw&feature=youtu.be&t=13m32s)

She says Edison did the same thing too, but had a handful of ball bearings
instead of a key.

~~~
tertius
She also has a coursera course (that I'm going through right now) -
[https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-
learn](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn)

~~~
mkaziz
How do you like that course? I was thinking about taking it.

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peoplee
This course is great, everyone how wants to improve his learnings techniques
should do this course.

~~~
sawwit
Indeed, this course was great. It's pretty much a summary of the state of the
art of learning science.

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cba9
As so often with Dali - /not sure if serious or trolling

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ashark
Same. If I'd read this with no context whatsoever, I'd have guessed it was
written by Italo Calvino and was entirely tongue in cheek.

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msvan
I've always been jealous of people who are able to take power naps. I can't do
it, unless I've done something exceptionally exhausting or I barely slept the
night before. I end up closing my eyes waiting to fall asleep, and then
nothing happens.

~~~
bobowzki
Try meditation. I guess you are not supposed to fall asleep while meditating,
but the breathing exercises I learnt from meditating always helped me fall
asleep.

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munchbunny
If the breathing exercises help you fall asleep and you want to fall asleep,
then as far as anyone is concerned, it's working as intended. ;)

Now if you were falling asleep while trying to meditate then you might not be
sleeping enough in general.

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klodolph
I'm not usually one to complain about this… but wow, this site is incredibly
hard to read on mobile, at least on an iPhone. Zooming out is disabled, too.

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degenerate
You probably didn't notice this on mobile, but this is google books. The
poorly rendered text is due to it being an actual scan of some book. What
exactly is being linked to here is unclear though. The passage isn't too
concrete on getting a point across...

~~~
lost_name
The short and sweet version (and heavily paraphrased) version is:

If you're tired in the afternoon, you only need a literal moment of sleep to
feel revived. You can do this by sitting in a chair, holding something in your
hand (a key, in this book), palm down, with something beneath it on the floor
(a plate, in this book) that will create some sound when hit. The instant you
fall asleep, you drop the item onto the the thing on the floor, it wakes you
up, you feel energized.

~~~
c23gooey
thank you for that concise explanation. i love Dali's flowery language but its
awful for actually getting a point across.

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jey
Wow, Google Books is awful on iPad. Completely unusable.

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mikejmoffitt
No worries, it's also awful in a browser.

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bobowzki
I imagine you could also construct an electric buzzer with a spring loaded
switch you hold in your hand.

~~~
throwaway_ghj
I imagine there are all manner of over-engineered solutions to this problem.

