
Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done - pkarbe
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703712504576242701752957910.html
======
bound008
I emailed the researcher, whose address was at the end of the article with the
appropriate gene data (BHLHE41 on Chromosome 12) to see if my DNA is a match.
The article said its a mutation, but maybe those with the mutation exhibit a
certain codon pair. Its an amazing time when you can read an article about
such a thing, and then cross check your DNA in a matter of seconds. Articles
will have to start posting the raw DNA for results.

~~~
AgentConundrum
Just out of curiosity, why do you have your genetic makeup readily available
for cross checking?

~~~
pathik
23AndMe, I guess.

~~~
AgentConundrum
I had never heard of that before. Interesting site/service, but I really don't
see me ever using it.

------
jasongullickson
I'm glad that I finally have something (albeit thin) to point people to when
they feel the need to lecture me about my sleeping habits.

As long as I can remember I've been happy with a mix of 4 and 6 hour sleeping
sessions, two or three days of 4 followed by one night of more sleep
(typically 6 hours) and then back to 4 hours again.

Under the recommendation of my peers and physicians I have attempted to do 8
hour nights but the results are that I feel worse in the morning, and each
night I attempt to sleep 8 hours waking up gets harder and harder.

Over the years I've developed a few theories as to why I need less sleep than
is recommended and someday when I get around to finishing my EEG project I'll
gather some data to back them up, but for now I'm just making the most out of
the extra time I have the same way someone with a different biological
advantage might.

I will also mention that (as mentioned elsewhere here) there are definitely
people at the other end of this curve who's performance is shockingly better
if they get more than the "required" 8 hours of sleep per night, and I believe
that we could all benefit by recognizing this fact and adjusting our cultural
expectations to accommodate these patterns as well. I think with a little
flexibility on both ends we'd see a significant increase in overall
productivity and quality of life.

In other words "When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep." -
<http://users.rider.edu/~suler/zenstory/whentired.html>

~~~
cynicalkane
For me, If I get all the sleep I want, I'm lethargic and unenergetic, but if I
get less sleep I'm tired all day (but strangely more energetic). It's like
there's no happy medium. I wonder if anyone else has this problem, and if
there's a solution.

~~~
de90
Do you exercise most days? Do you at least a similar wake up\sleep time for a
month? And another obvious about drink enough water\food?

All have a huge impact for me. I can go on much less sleep when I do hard
exercise that day.

~~~
ghshephard
Re: Hard Exercise - Bizarre. I work a mostly sedentary silicon valley
lifestyle, with the addition of 2-3 miles walking a day, and typically get 5-6
hours of sleep a night, going to bed around 2:00 - 3:00 AM and getting up
around 9:00 AM.

Recently, though, I started a linear progress novice strength training program
(Squats, Dead Lift, Bench Press, Overhead Press) - three times a week for 40
minutes. My sleep patterns immediately shifted, and I am incapable of waking
up without at least 8 hours of sleep on off days, and 10 hours of sleep on the
days that I lift heavy.

For the first time in my life, ever, I'm finding myself going to bed at 10:00
PM at night so that I can get up by 8:00 AM the next morning.

~~~
cynicalkane
I've done Starting Strength.

Starting Strength is raw lifts involving the entire muscle toolchain until you
can't do anymore. It works your body in a total, basic way that most Americans
haven't ever done.

So you'll be sleeping alot as your body gets used to it. You'll notice
incredible increases in everyday strength--as if the entire world, including
you, lost a significant fraction of its mass over the course of a few months--
and the desire for sleep will subside.

Of course, I still have my original sleep problem...

------
michaelcampbell
This reminds me of the studies not too long about how some very _small_
percentage of the population actually CAN multitask well. Then a very _large_
percentage of the population used that as "evidence" to justify their existing
habits. I see it here already.

~~~
jergason
Do you have a link to these studies? I looked around a bit and only found the
ones claiming multitasking doesn't work.

~~~
michaelcampbell
That's what I was referring to. Did I misunderstand you?

[http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-
resear...](http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-research-
study-082409.html)

------
silverbax88
I think it's obvious what we must do next. According to every science fiction
film or book I've ever read, we must capture them, confine them and study them
in an attempt to learn their secrets and duplicate it in everyone else.

~~~
achompas
As a bit of a lesson from someone with HN experience to the new HNers
downvoted below: your jokes are (a) bad, and (b) off-topic. Parent was off-
topic as well, but he was funny.

Just providing feedback for the newer posters beyond a downvote.

~~~
nollidge
I think you're partly right, but I also suspect they may have been downvoted
to quell any "piling on". Repeated jokes on the same theme have diminishing
returns.

~~~
achompas
Well said. Not just diminishing returns either, but scrolling past a comment
branch full of "It's just a flesh wound!" or some other oblique reference is
irritating.

------
lkozma
It's a false dichotomy, on a lot of hard problems progress is a step function,
and you often "get much done" _while_ sleeping. I.e. when you wake up well
rested you see things from a different angle. If it's something like chopping
wood, sure, the less you sleep the more wood you chop, within reasonable
limits, but I don't think that is what these articles aim for. I think it's
wrong to look at sleep as a waste of time the same way time spent thinking
about something is not wasted either.

Here's some information I mostly agree with:
<http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm>

~~~
mzl
I think that you are missing the fact that short-sleepers wake up well-rested,
even though their sleep-time is much shorter and would not suffice to give us
normals enough rest.

I'm not sure if there has been any actual studies that show that longer sleep-
times given ad-libitum sleeping is more effective in helping the brain process
more information during the sleep phase.

~~~
lkozma
You are right, I'm not aware of any such study either. What I meant is just
that there is no need to feel guilty for whatever amount of sleep feels right,
regardless of what society says in the name of efficiency and productivity.
It's ok to enjoy sleeping.

~~~
mzl
I fully agree with that. I love to sleep, and like my 8 hours of sleep per
night.

------
kls
There has been a link to depression and too much sleep so much so that sleep
deprivation is used as a treatment for depression where other treatments fail.
It actually puts the patient into a manic episode.

It was peculiar to note that people who are short-sleepers also share a slight
manic trait in their personality. While the article makes short-sleep cycles
out to look like all sunshine and roses it is not all it is cracked up to be.
I get between 2 and 4 hours sleep a night and on a good night I get 6. I have
to monitor the sleep I am getting because if I allow myself to fall into a
cycle of 2 hours for an extended time I start to have problems with my heart
and abnormal rhythms. If the > 4 hours cycle goes on for more than a week I
have to start taking medicine to sleep to ensure that my body is receiving an
adequate amount of sleep. I see no negative effects if I get 4-6 a night, but
it is probably safe to assume that short-sleep cycles rides the line between
good and bad health. I never considered myself a short sleeper I just figured
I have insomnia but never worried too much about it because I feel no
different if I get 4 or 8 hours of sleep a night (if I can get 8) and the fact
that my father and grandfather shares the trait and are healthy (grandfather
is almost 90) . On the plus side, I experience more life and get more done
which are really the only benefits to sleeping less.

~~~
GrangalanJr
I have used total sleep deprivation to kick myself out of persistent low mood.
So far it has worked every time.

Not a method to use too often, of course.

~~~
David
Please tell us more!

I'm very curious about this, because I know that if I don't have something
regularly scheduled for morning or early afternoon I tend to sink into
depression, and now I'm wondering if I could perhaps be getting too much
sleep. I had thought it was either a) getting sleep at the wrong times (I'll
tend to stay awake later each night) and thus missing out on sunlight, or b)
that regularity itself prevented my depression. This would also explain it,
though.

~~~
GrangalanJr
I don't ordinarily sleep a lot, so I doubt that I could be getting too much
sleep on a regular basis. And my mood doesn't ordinarily seem to be affected
by how much I sleep or when I go to sleep.

The best way I can describe the effect is that for me it's like hitting a
"reset" button in my brain. At first there's the tiredness and irritability
that always go with not sleeping, but eventually I get a "second wind" and I
feel normal, calm, and content. This generally lasts the whole rest of the
day, until I fall asleep again.

The sleep deprivation treatment for depression used by some doctors in the
'70s involved either total deprivation or waking the patients up around
midnight, so that they slept only a few hours. I think I read that both worked
equally well, but I have only tried the former. And as far as I know, nobody
has figured out why it works for so many people.

------
tokenadult
"A few studies have suggested that some short sleepers may have hypomania, a
mild form of mania with racing thoughts and few inhibitions. 'These people
talk fast. They never stop. They're always on the up side of life,' says Dr.
Buysse."

Reduction in sleep is a known symptom of abnormally elevated mood, whether
hypomania (elevated mood without psychotic symptoms) or mania (elevated mood
with psychotic symptoms). For most normal subjects, as has been demonstrated
by studies of unusual sleep patterns in armed forces personnel, reduced hours
of sleep or disrupted daily sleep cycles seriously degrade performance of many
tasks involving judgment or multitasking--without the subject of the
experiment being aware of the degraded performance.

<http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+mania>

Note that controlled reduction of sleep has been shown experimentally to
elevate the mood of depressed persons. In other words, if a person has had a
prolonged period of depressed mood, and begins reducing hours of sleep
(especially if a light box turns on to help the person wake up on time in the
morning), that can bring the person closer to normal mood.

<http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+depression>

Following up on the interesting comment posted first by mechanical_fish, there
surely is a range of variation of "natural" human need for sleep, with most
people concentrated in a band of needing approximately seven to eight hours of
sleep a night, and some few needing significantly less, and some few needing
significantly more. But social pressure and environmental conditions for sleep
induction (electric lights in the evening) in current society probably result
in most people getting less sleep than what they need to perform at their best
when awake and to maintain good health.

------
Roritharr
As someone whose blanket feels like its made out of lead every morning after 7
hours sleep i have to say: unfair. :(

~~~
danparsonson
Indeed - envy, thy name is a longer day without suffering sleep deprivation

------
mbateman
I've always wondered if this was mostly a psychological issue.

There are two circumstances in which I get less than 7 hours of sleep a night:
if I'm really stressed about getting something done, or if I'm really excited
about getting something done.

In the first place the lack of sleep exacerbates the stress and really starts
to weigh on me. But in the second case it doesn't seem to have much negative
effect.

Now if only I could continuously keep my motivation up...

------
olliesaunders
Damn you, science! I’ve read so many studies saying there’s absolutely no way
you can get by without at least 7 hours sleep and now you tell me that that
completely doesn’t apply to 1-3% of the population?! That’s actually not that
small of a percentage. How big were the sample sizes of all the other studies?
Did nobody encounter at least one of these low-sleep requiring people? Maybe
they were just eliminated as being an anomaly.

I’ve met some of these people who insisted they didn’t need much sleep before
and now I seem like an idiot for telling them that it they would probably feel
better if they got more.

This is fantastic research, I just wish it had been around 10 years ago.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_I’ve met some of these people who insisted they didn’t need much sleep before
and now I seem like an idiot for telling them that it they would probably feel
better if they got more._

Don't. If you insist on only giving advice that applies to 100% of the world
you'll never say anything useful at all.

I'm sure the studies do encounter these people. But studies use statistics.
These people are on the far edge of the bell curve. The mean [1] is probably
around 7-9 hours. But just because the far edge of the bell curve has very few
samples in it doesn't mean that those samples don't exist, nor that someone is
"hiding" them.

Which reminds me: What this article does _not_ talk about is the _other_ side
of the bell curve: The folks who need considerably more than 7-9 hours of
sleep to attain peak performance and happiness. Or maybe those people don't
exist, because the "bell curve" is actually a bimodal distribution, or cliff-
shaped, or something. We could tell if there was any actual data here, or a
link to the actual data and published science -- we could look at the shape of
the distribution. But this is an article by a science journalist, so naturally
it is nigh-useless.

I wonder why the article doesn't talk about the "long sleepers"? Probably
because the sleep researcher quoted herein is correct: There are more people
who like to _believe_ that they only need four hours' sleep than there are
actual people who thrive on less sleep. And I'm sure that no _Wall Street
Journal_ wants to learn that they might really need _twelve_ hours sleep.

\---

[1] I actually have no idea if the "7-9 hour" rule of thumb is based on a
mean, a median, or a mode. Pity that nobody ever links to the original
research.

~~~
jerf
I suspect the problem with studying "long sleepers" is that the number of
people who need, say, 12 hours of sleep "legitimately" is dominated by the
number of people who need 12 hours of sleep due to a health issue, making them
hard to identify and study. I've done the 12+ hours of sleep thing when I was
a teenager, and only much later did I learn the health issue it was trying to
tell me about.

~~~
liedra
I'd say you're probably right. I usually only need 8 hrs sleep, but when I'm
sick, for example, I often find myself easily sleeping for 12+ hours (like
this morning, oops! :).

------
shawnee_
_Christopher Jones, a University of Utah neurologist and sleep scientist who
oversees the recruiting, says there is one question that is more revealing
than anything else: When people do have a chance to sleep longer, on weekends
or vacation, do they still sleep only five or six hours a night? People who
sleep more when they can are not true short sleepers, he says._

The article didn't mention this, but the ability to wake up regularly without
an alarm clock is probably another commonality short sleepers have. Although <
7 hours isn't something I can do regularly, I can't stay in bed, even if I'm a
little tired, much past 6 AM on any day of the week.

"People need less sleep as they get older" is something I've heard a lot, but
don't know. Sleep patterns seem pretty ingrained, and people with weird
sleeping patterns tend to be either hardcore early birds (me) or unapologetic
night owls.

------
mironathetin
I am 46 now and I still need more than 8 hours a night. I tried less, but that
does not work: thinking is a torture then, sports too.

If I get enough sleep, I feel great, I get 3 times as much done and I run and
swim like a champ (still).

I love to get enough sleep!!!! It simply feels great.

------
Vivtek
Candidate number two for gene surgery (my current #1 being that color vision
y'all talk about so much).

~~~
eru
There's no colour vision. They just make it up as they go along. It's just a
huge conspiracy / April fools' joke.

~~~
Vivtek
My family seems not only convinc{ed|ing} but consistent in their delusion.

------
Tycho
Is this few-hours sleep business feasible when you need to think deeply about
abstract things during the day, eg. programming? I can see it working if your
success is tied to being energetic, on the ball, constantly negotiating,
acting on information or leading lots of people. But what if you need to do
the analysis yourself?

~~~
brandall10
In my case I've had this issue (advantage?) since childhood, where I vacillate
between both states in 2 week blocks - 2 weeks at a time where I'll get 7-8
hours, and 2 weeks where I get approx half as much. In the latter case I
simply don't get naturally tired. But it does eventually catch up to me, and
then all of a sudden - bam!, I'm tired one night and naturally fall asleep say
at 10pm every night.

What I've found is with the poor sleep cycles I tend to be more energetic and
get to solutions quicker. If the problem requires deep thinking, I can focus
on the problem at hand much better, but at the same time I can make many
superficial mistakes. The best I can say is it's a bit like being in a minor
psychedelic state all the time, where the creative pathways of my mind are
more open with a manic desire to latch onto something interesting. It also
exacerbates my Asperger's-like condition. OTOH, if I am in the design process
and building a piece a software that requires high conceptual integrity
getting more sleep is certainly beneficial.

------
codedivine
The article is mostly content-free.

~~~
waterhouse
To me, it gives the following data: that there are a significant number of
people who can sleep short hours, that there's at least one identifiable
genetic factor that might possibly cause it in a couple of cases, and that
there are researchers working on this (and soliciting information from "short
sleepers"). It fails to deliver on its subtitle: "Why".

------
mzl
I used to know one of these short sleepers. He had never felt the need to
sleep more than about two hours per night, and did so for his whole life
(which was respectably long, no noticeable side-effects from the exceptionally
short sleep). He used a lot of the extra time to run a small local business,
interact with customers during the day and do the administration during the
night.

------
pstack
No sleep is a feat I could pull off regularly when I was younger. It was no
problem to go 48-72 hours without more than just a catnap or two. That was a
decade ago. In my early thirties, I struggle beyond the sixteenth hour, except
for rare occasions.

Fortunately, I think it's a sort of bell curve. From what I understand, I'm
only about fifteen or twenty years away only getting a couple hours of sleep
per night. How productive sleepless nights full of trips to the bathroom will
be, I have no idea. I guess I'll finally catch up on all that damn reading.

------
keyle
Lucky buggers. Technically since time is money, that could make them 16%
richer than most of us (assuming they sleep 2 hours less).

~~~
gmac
In fact, probably more, since they also accumulate and compound valuable
experience that much more quickly!

~~~
eru
Probably less. Since most people have a day job, and work something like 8
hours a day, no matter what.

Staying up longer just increases the time you spent spending money and
consuming stuff. Sleep is a cheap entertainment.

~~~
khkwang
You're assuming that everyone spends all of their waking life either working a
day job or spending money/consuming stuff?

~~~
eru
No. But it's a factor to take into account.

------
semerda
I sleep 2am to 7am most days and keep myself busy so much that I sometimes go
to 3:30am before forcing myself to sleep. Sleep time happens within 3-5 mins
after going to bed - according to my WakeMate.

I think alot of this is due to a busy lifestyle. I find myself doing multiple
things at the same time in the evening and being very productive in getting
stuff done. While on holidays where I actually disconnect from work I find I
sleep long hours each day.

An afternoon 20 min powernap is an amazing recharge! Everyone should do it.
Using Paul McKenna's audio helps with the powernap. There's something weird
about the hypnotic audio. Instantly puts me to sleep.

Finally, supposedly the need to nap in the afternoon is normal and every
animal in the kingdom does it. Humans has largely forgotten about this clock
due to the "working culture". In the book Brain Rules, this is described in
more detail: <http://www.brainrules.net/sleep>

My 2c's worth.

------
Swizec
Not saying that I'm one of the sleepless elite, but I seem to function best on
6 hours of sleep a day. Whenever I try to sleep more I just feel tired all day
and when I sleep less ... well that depends on how much less.

For optimum energivity I find an hour of sleep is best, just enough to reset
your cycle. But you can't do this more than once at a time, the next day the
whole 6 hours are needed.

Don't have any idea why I'm like this, but I'm told that even as a baby I
would often lie in bed for hours before finally falling asleep and as a
toddler I would wake up at 5am because I was put to bed so early. Nowadays a
healthy 4am to 10am schedule seems best.

Oh and anyone who doesn't want to sleep as much as they should, meditation is
a great way of doing it. I managed to shave 2 hours off of my daily sleep need
with 10 minutes of meditation ... so essentially I averaged 4 hours a day, for
something like 5 years before I got out of the meditating habit for varying
reasons.

~~~
michael_dorfman
_Oh and anyone who doesn't want to sleep as much as they should, meditation is
a great way of doing it. I managed to shave 2 hours off of my daily sleep need
with 10 minutes of meditation ... so essentially I averaged 4 hours a day, for
something like 5 years before I got out of the meditating habit for varying
reasons._

OK, I'll match your anecdote with one of my own. I meditate 40 minutes per
day, and it hasn't shaved a minute off of my sleep time. I average 8 hours of
sleep per night, substantially more on the weekends when I can get it.

~~~
Swizec
This is likely due to different meditation techniques, mine is particular in
that it is essentially lucid dreaming. When I actively practiced it took me 30
seconds to go into REM stage and stay in there for as much time as I felt like
it.

The end effect is that I smashed a sleep cycle into a meditating session and
essentially got polyphasic sleep.

~~~
rsaarelm
Is there a particular technique you can describe that brings about that
effect?

------
dvfer
If they cannot find any "actual" short sleepers, how do they it's 1-3% of
population...Oh science you are scary...

~~~
kenjackson
They do find short sleepers. They mention that the studies have them --
they're just not _easy to find_.

------
daimyoyo
I think the level of sleep I need depends on what I'm working on. When I was
working on a business with my friends, I'd only sleep for 4 hours or so a day.
Whereas when I was working a job I hated, I was exhausted unless I slept 9-10
hours a night. I think sleep requirements are a function of brain activity and
engagement. It's just a theory but it seems to be true, at least in my case.
Another theory I have relates to the sleep schedules of people. I'm nocturnal.
I have been since I was 8 years old. And when I was working with my friends,
it was at night. So I wonder if nite people need more sleep to function during
the day like morning people need more to work nights?

------
maxcho
Read the actual paper, take a look at the hypomania test: figure out things
about yourself. <http://cl.ly/313A0x2k011t400C3N3C>

------
megaframe
I question how much "work" someone that fits this really gets accomplished. I
can run on limited sleep for weeks at a time and am more energized, but throw
me at something mentally challenging like Quantum Physics or Solving some
Linear Systems model, and it's like my brain says it needs time to process
everything, so I end up sleeping absurd amounts. (I also find I make
significant headway the next day after that kind of sleep)

------
Tharkun
I have to admit that I'm a bit confused here. 7-9 hours seems to be the
"normal recommended" range, and under 6 hours puts you in the short sleepers
category. What does 6-7 make you? Irrelevant to the research?

Many people make the mistake of oversleeping on the weekend and undersleeping
on working days. I try to average 6.5hrs every night, weekend or no weekend.
Just being consistent really helps in keeping the energy levels up imo.

------
jcl
Given that the trait is genetic and extremely advantageous, why doesn't a much
larger portion of the population have it? Is there a significant downside?

~~~
aerique
Maybe no downside in these modern times but perhaps back when we still lived
in caves and only had fire and a full moon now and then to light our ways I
can imagine them short sleepers to be quite bored out of their skulls.

------
aycangulez
The primary function of sleep is to permanently store the things learned
during the day (long-term potentiation). Although different people need
different amounts of sleep, those who need less usually find that they sleep
longer if they learn challenging new material (e.g. a new language). That is
the reason why babies sleep the most. Their brains are empty sponges
constantly absorbing new information.

------
gamblndano
Check out my new app coming to the App Store. It's called MultiSnooze. It's
the ultimate alarm clock app. It allows you to press the snooze button
multiple times as soon as you determine that you are going to be pressing it
more than once anyway. Now you don't have to keep waking up. Roll over and
sleep peacefully with MultiSnooze. multisnooze.com for details. Thanks for
looking.

------
gwern
> Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of
> sleep a night, only about five people really do, Dr. Buysse says. The rest
> end up chronically sleep deprived, part of the one-third of U.S. adults who
> get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a
> report last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

------
kenjackson
I think I could sleep 20 hours if given the chance, but I routinely will sleep
until 7am regardless of when I go to bed. If its 10pm or 4am. I just wake up
at 7am, I'm super sleepy still, but more hungry. So I have to wake up, make
some cereal and then I'm up.

Not sure what that is, but I've never met anyone else who shares this trait.

------
ComputerGuru
Hmmm.. Something I would _think_ I could relate to, but we all know (a) how
easy it is to convince yourself/diagnose yourself with something, and (b) how
we would _all_ love to consider ourselves from this group. So I'll just let
this make me smile a little and leave it that :)

------
alexhektor
Arianna Huffington (and me) certainly are no natural "short sleepers" :)

[http://www.ted.com/talks/arianna_huffington_how_to_succeed_g...](http://www.ted.com/talks/arianna_huffington_how_to_succeed_get_more_sleep.html)

------
Semiapies
My boss is exactly like this - sleeps a tiny bit, has ridiculous amounts of
energy and enthusiasm, and loves to deal with the world in a flurry of stimuli
and decisions.

Me, I'm just an insomniac.

------
doki_pen
I used to need very little sleep. Unfortunately, it was because my thyroid was
overactive. As soon as I went to a doctor and got it taken care of, I became a
normal sleeper.

------
palguay
This is a talk given at google about sleep
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK1nMQq67VI>

------
nhangen
Jon Gruden, former NFL coach and Monday Night Football analyst is one of
these. He goes to bed late and gets up as early as 3-4 AM.

------
soapdog
red bull?

~~~
soapdog
it was a joke :-(

------
Herwig
A majority of us here are wanna be short sleepers. And we make do with that

------
paylesworth
Leave it to the WSJ to exemplify the behavior of people with an erratic gene
variation as something "Elite" (or L33t, lol).

