

Software Engineers, Get Some Sleep - Sherwette
http://www.iricvalley.com/2010/12/software-engineers-get-some-sleep.html

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BonoboBoner
I used to drink 5-6 cups of coffee every day for a year. Around christmas I
took a 4 week vacation, and I cut down coffee usage to half of a cup a day and
got at least 8 hours of sleep every night. It has transformed me into a
different worker now that I am back at the office and it is so nice, I try to
re-arrange everything around me in my life to make that feeling stay. I get
things done a lot faster, my overall productivity has definetly risen.

I can only encourage people to try the same. Coffee is cheating. You cheat
your body and yourself that is telling you "I am too tired for this, stop
right now". Drink 1-2 cups at maximum per day and make sure you get at least
8-9 hours of sleep.

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ZoFreX
The official advice (in the UK at least) is that up to four or five cups of
coffee a day is fine. This was according to leaflets in my doctor's waiting
room produced by the coffee growers association or some group like that. I
showed my doctor one of the leaflets and he went to the waiting room and
removed them all.

He advised me to ditch coffee, which resolved what was otherwise going to be a
diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome (which is a diagnosis of exclusion of a
disease that not everybody agrees even exists). If you're feeling tired, try
giving up any drugs that affect how awake you are.

(And go to a doctor. Plenty of engineers don't eat right as well as not
sleeping right, anaemia feels absolutely terrible but is so easy to diagnose
and treat)

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Sherwette
From personal experience, if I didn't get enough sleep or haven't eaten well,
the productivity of my work just go down the drain. I get cranky and I can't
focus, but I have seen a lot of engineers who can work for days sleeping just
few hours a day on just crackers. They don't mind not eating or sleeping well
as long as they meet the deadline.

~~~
ZoFreX
I used to be like the engineers you saw. I burnt out pretty hard, now I'm like
you, I need my sleep! (Well, I obviously needed it before, I just wasn't
feeling it)

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dmaz
Software Engineers, reduce or eliminate that caffeine intake.

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tybris
After college I lost the ability to code for long nights. I usually don't
bother getting out until I got 8-9 hours of sleep, otherwise I'll be useless.

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zyb09
Telling insomniacs to "Get some sleep" is a really helpful advice. Thanks.

~~~
chowmeined
If you end up staring at a computer screen late into the night like I do, the
light may be disrupting your circadian rhythms. Theres a utility called Flux
(<http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/>) which adjusts the brightness and color of
your screen depending on the time of day to make it less disruptive. I've
found it to be helpful in getting me feeling sleepy earlier.

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cleverjake
a sample size of 91 people is insanely small.

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sruffell
It also appears from the abstract [1] that the participants were all from a
single company.

[1] <http://www.springerlink.com/content/h2287x387r248223/>

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pkamb
And with that...

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maeon3
More important than getting the sleep is whether or not you are descending
into the proper sleep stages and getting down into REM sleep.

[http://www.popsci.com/gear-amp-
gadgets/article/2009-06/rough...](http://www.popsci.com/gear-amp-
gadgets/article/2009-06/rough-night-try-bedside-brainwave-scanner)

~~~
petercooper
Yeah, the stages are more important though, rather than just REM sleep. People
who are sleep deprived (or depressed) will frequently descend almost
immediately into REM sleep, even during a nap.

I'm not exactly sleep deprived but have a messed up circadian rhythm that
messes with my hours and I frequently have intense dreams within the first 30
minutes of sleep. Fun for me but not a great sign ;-)

