
Tired? The importance of letting ideas marinate and percolate through sleep - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/technology/28proto.html?ref=business
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SapphireSun
After spending 8 years not getting any sleep, I finally realized that I'm more
efficient with real sleep. I finally wised up. In retrospect, my dumbest
mistakes have mostly been due to being chronically sleep deprived. Amongst
engineers and scientists, a lack of sleep is a point of pride. We feel like
those stupid liberal arts majors are getting no real work done and that we're
tired because we are. Whether the conjecture about liberal arts majors is
correct, the sleep part is wrong. I'm so much more efficient now that I'm
getting more sleep. I've been trying to get my friends to sleep more, but
we'll see how that goes....

~~~
menloparkbum
artists, musicians, writers and soldiers also get macho about sleep
deprivation. I'm not sure if they really fall into what people mean when they
talk disparagingly about the "liberal arts." It would seem strange to stay up
for days reading sociology textbooks.

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beaudeal
I just started reading 'Founders at Work' and find it kind of funny that they
cite Steve Jobs in this article, when during his interview, Woz said that some
of their best ideas (when building Apple) came after several days of not
sleeping.

~~~
bootload
_"... Woz said that some of their best ideas (when building Apple) came after
several days of not sleeping ..."_

Don't confuse working on a problem for a long time, understanding it very
clearly with having the idea in your head and regurgitating a solution in one
long stint. Woz emphasized this in his 2005 Startup School talk. Understanding
an idea so completely in your head you can simplify it no more.

~~~
beaudeal
I'm not confusing anything, just restating what he said in his interview with
Jessica. The actual quote is "When you get very, very tired -- and I had been
up for four nights all night long; Steve and I got mononucleosis -- your head
gets in this real creative state and it thinks of ideas that you'd normally
just throw out."

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vlad
Bodybuilders and weightlifters know that muscle grows in one's sleep. I think
the key to working on anything into the night is following up with lots of
sleep. That way, one gets the benefit of both sleep and sleep deprivation.

Every once in a while in the past, when I was working on my own project, I've
done it to the point where I would sleep from 2am to 1pm, and the next time
living in the dark for a day due to going to bed around sunrise (5am) and
waking up at sundown (6pm), and so on. Eventually, I would have a normal
schedule again. :) This was when my only focus was on writing code for my
software and working out, period. Since my software became better every week,
and I grew stronger, bigger, and faster as well, my goals were pretty much met
and I was happy.

I like my current life as a student, due to the social aspect of learning
from, and working with, others. But I am nowhere near as productive at
developing my own software on a daily basis nor working out as I was when
those were my only two goals. However, I understand that it has only been a
few weeks, and I will be able to figure out how to introduce software and
personal development into my schedule as I get more used to the demands of my
classes. And even though I won't be able to dedicate as much time as I could
before, I have the experience and confidence to get in shape and create
software more efficiently, as well as the benefit of a being around lots of
potential users.

~~~
randallsquared
I've done this, and find that it works really poorly for me. If I'm not going
to bed at roughly the same time and getting up at roughly the same time, I
just stay muddled all day, even when I'm technically getting ~8 hours. If I
stay on a schedule, I wake up without an alarm after 6-7 hours and I'm fully
awake all day.

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wheels
While I agree with the message of the article -- sleep can be really
productive, the assumption with the connection to entrepreneurship seems to be
that creativity is the key to success. At least at the point we're at, while
creativity is not to be underrated, mostly it's just a mountain of stuff to
get done and most of it less than brainiac work.

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rkowalick
As an undergraduate math major with plenty of difficult classes, I have
discovered the power of sleep in solving problems. I have spent hours and
hours on a problem to no avail. I then fall asleep and the next morning I
solve it very quickly. Amazing stuff.

~~~
eru
Von Neumann used to prove theorems in his sleep.

So sleeping did not impede him working 24 hours a day. It actually helped.

~~~
albertcardona
I agree. For me the trick is to balance: you can sleep 4 hours a day for
several days, _but only after having slept very well for several days_. A.k.a.
resting periods alternated with high tension, full-speed periods [in the order
of days, not weeks].

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rtf
Some problems become easier when I'm sleepy because I can't think as clearly
but I start to focus very well.

Other problems demand several passes of experimentation. For those it's easier
to try a quick test during the day, think about it while doing other things,
and then wake up with the (possible) solution the next day.

