
Ask HN: How many hours of sleep are you getting? - yitchelle
Reading blogs and stories around the internet, I get the feeling that sleep is not as important as shipping a product. So how much sleep are you getting, and how has that effected your health?<p>Personally, I am getting about 5 to 6 hours of sleep per night for about 2 weeks, and then I have a big sleep of about 10hours after that.<p>Edit: More info.
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UnoriginalGuy
8-10 hours.

Anything less than 7 and I get "brain fog." And my day is essentially ruined.
Hard to be productive when your mind is mush.

Cannot tell if I am the strange exception or if only the exceptional cases
(e.g. 5 hrs etc) are posting here. Kind of like asking people their height,
only the people who are the extreme end of the spectrum give an answer and the
whole thing looks warped.

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guylhem
Average 10. When I'm really tired 12 to 14. I can do with as little as 8, but
if I go south of 8 for more than 2 days in a row I will not be productive. The
day is kind of foggy.

OTOH I have noticed that in these foggy days, especially in the afternoon, I
get very creative insights. I just write them down because I can't use them on
that day, but after a good night of sleep these insights come very handy in
the next days.

EDIT: that's before I stopped coffee. My sleep pattern has been irregular
these last few days. I don't enough data yet, but I seem to need less sleep. I
guess my average will go below 10, maybe down to 9h. I'll see in a year.

EDIT2: I'm obviously not counting "crash coding" sessions. I may stay awake
for 36h, with serious pain in old injuries past the 24h mark, and
hallucinations past that 36h limit. My productivity seems low after 24h, so I
don't bother and just go to bed.

~~~
danoprey
What are you secrets to quitting coffee? Would love to give that a try myself
but I fear I'd be nonfunctional for a few weeks during the adjustment.

~~~
guylhem
Step 1: no longer have some at home - that's passive, just don't buy it no
more. Finish what you have

Step 2: refuse to use it outside your home. That's more active, and may
require a commitment. You can start by allowing yourself to drink one every
other day, to mitigate withdrawal symptoms.

Decaf etc - I can't say how useful it is, I wanted to cut coffee and not
replace an habit by another one. No more coke or redbull either, since the
problem here is caffeine: the active ingredient in coffee is also present in
coke and redbull and the likes (pepsi, monster, ...)

Google plus support group :
<https://plus.google.com/communities/113447576520287991560>

So far, I have been very dysfunctional during the first 2 days, and at my 4th
day I feel normal. I was expecting to feel bad for up to 9 days.

It has had an interesting effect: it seems like I need less sleep, something I
noticed when I tried to reduce the dosage these last weeks (not quitting
altogether), and completely counterintuitive!

It may be just a normal variation due to a very small sample size. I would be
curious to see how much sleep I will need in a year from now. Of course, your
results may vary.

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daGrevis
I tried to live w/o any caffeine a whole week. Expect a hardcore headache!

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xSwag
I've always had a mentality that if I say I'm going to finish x, I finish x
before going to bed. This, as you can imagine, means that I have a very
unreliable sleeping schedule. I probably average 5 hours a night every week.

A really good comment I read on HN a few days ago recommended that I set an
alarm for _going_ to bed not for waking up, It's been working really well for
me.

~~~
yitchelle
Doesn't the hacker in you just forces you to ignore the alarm to go to sleep?

~~~
xSwag
I forced myself to go to bed for a week at midnight and now I start to feel
sleepy/tired around that time. I also stopped drinking coffee or energy drinks
after 6pm.

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Kaivo
I often end up almost entirely stopping coffee as soon as a term ends. Last
time I did, I also forced myself to go to bed earlier and do some work at home
before leaving for work. It worked for quite a while but as the term
progressed and work from both job and university piled up, I started to not
have time to follow this strict schedule and to drink more and more coffee.
It's very difficult when your schedule is tight, but I believe it's better to
stick to way nevertheless. Tomorrow, I'm starting this schedule again. Keep
going on yours!

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eddieroger
Average of six and a half hours. It was higher for a brief period when I
returned from international travel and my body had no idea where it was
anymore. Other than that, I wake up tired, which I mostly attribute to
breaking a REM cycle, since once I get going, I'm pretty much great until the
afternoon. I think a siesta would do me well, though, but I don't work in a
siesta-friendly world. So, coffee. But never after 5, or I don't sleep until
later.

My take on it is that I sleep when I'm tired, with the asterisk that I have
work in the morning most days, and that means I should try to be tired before
11:30p. But I also look at it like I look at treatment of my laptop battery -
if I spend more effort worrying about and attempting to optimize the thing
than it's worth, then that is effort wasted. The best I can hope for is good
sleep when I am sleeping.

All of that said, sleep is obviously important since we all do it. I wouldn't
make a habit of not sleeping so I could ship, but I also wouldn't let shipping
get in the way of many things, like time with my family. Maybe my priorities
are messed up, but they're mine.

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alatkins
This may have been far more useful to you as a poll.

~~~
yitchelle
Maybe. I feel that the context surrounding the number of hours slept is also
interesting. That may be missing if this was a poll.

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weej
Given that I work full time, have two kids (one being a newborn), and play in
a band I sleep very little 4-6 hours a night.

That said, I've been doing this for almost a decade when I was in graduate
school and working full time.

Over the last 13 years I've probably put on 10-15 lbs. I try to exercise at
LEAST 3 times a week while eating as healthy as I can within reason.

Sleep is critical for memory retention, keeping up your immune system,
maintaining serotonin level, general stress relief, etc. With that said if you
have to you can adapt running on limited amounts. You'll have to be careful w/
weight gain or depression.

~~~
yitchelle
Totally agree about the kids. However, it is the one thing that I would gladly
give up sleep for.

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jtheory
Average probably 5-6 hours, on balance.

I admit I'm a bit amazed to see the number of folks who report sleeping 10 or
more hours a night; I've been assuming normal sleeping habits were around 8
hours a night.

Personally, I do best on 8 a night (i.e., waking without an alarm), but I
sacrifice quite a bit of sleep trying to work more or less full time but also
be a more or less full-time parent to a 4-year-old and a 7-month-old.

The trickiest part is finding long unbroken stretches of time to concentrate
on harder problems; I can manage emails while distracted, or in short bursts,
and simpler coding tasks, but solving trickier problems usually happens in the
middle of the night.

I tend to alternate sleeping 2-3 hours one night (e.g., 6-8am), then 7-8 the
next. I feel mostly normal even on the days when I'm running a more serious
deficit and don't generally feel sleepy during the day, though I can tell when
the side-effects (reduced patience, mental errors, etc.) are creeping up more,
and I'll try to spend a few nights in a row sleeping more.

I don't generally drink anything caffeinated, particularly when I'm running on
little sleep, or if I'm planning on staying up to work -- it seems to affect
me much more when I'm seriously sleep-deprived, giving me an unpleasant
jittery feeling; the worst part is that I can't sleep when I want to, but my
concentration is ruined, so there's no longer any point to staying awake.

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cpncrunch
I average 7-8 hours per night, which is basically as much as my body seems to
need. I work for myself from home, so I don't have to get up at any particular
time - I just sleep as much as I need.

This seems to work well for me, as I have had pretty much perfect physical and
mental health for the last 10 years (nothing but the occasional cold about
once a year or so), and I have high motivation, productivity, etc.

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rayiner
About 5-6 between baby and work. Feel okay but not amazing. I envy the people
who can do 4 hours consistently and function.

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staunch
I spent years sleep deprived. Sleeping around 6 hours per night. Sometimes
working 36 hours non-stop. Deciding to get a solid 8 hours every single night
was probably the smartest thing I've ever done for my productivity and sanity.

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Bockit
In the week I do 7.5 hours a night. 9:30 to 5am. I find I wake up feeling best
if I get sleep in blocks of 1.5 hours (with a bare minimum of 4.5) so
depending on circumstance I do 6 hours some nights (go to bed later) or 9 if I
need to catch up some sleep (wake up later).

I find that consistently getting 6 hours is survivable, but if I do it for too
long I feel quite sluggish mentally.

On the weekends the strict schedule goes out the window. I go to bed when I
get home or if its a night in when I'm tired, and wake up whenever it feels
right.

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luisivan
5 hours a night on weekdays and like 11 hours a night on weekends. I have
figured out that I'm way more productive, happy and healthy on weekends
because of the more sleep I get.

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MisterBastahrd
Probably about 5-6 hours a night. People tell me that you can't have make up
sleep... but during the weekends I'll hit the bed at 2am and wake up somewhere
in the middle of the next afternoon and feel perfectly refreshed.

My problem stems mostly from the 7 years I spent working a night shift at a
grocery store. It completely flipped my sleep cycle script and I'm about 400%
more efficient/focused between 10pm and 4am than I am at any other time during
the day/night.

~~~
Falkon1313
About the same for me except that being a night person is why I used to work
the night shift. My problem comes from the 7 years since then that I've spent
working day shift.

I'm usually ineffective until about 10am, then good until the midafternoon,
when I have trouble focusing for awhile, then good until the evening slump
(transitioning out of work) then good until 2am-4am.

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shanelja
I tend to go through phases of getting plenty and then getting none. Up until
a couple of weeks ago I was getting 8 hours a night, steady but since then
I've been back in the habit of only having 2 -5 hours per night, last night I
got 3 hours, woke up at 4AM and started working, had my first weekend project
finished by 3pm today, starting working on the next one, nearly finished that.

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jamesjguthrie
The other night I fell asleep at 6pm, woke up 4 hours later (10pm) then done
some work until about 4:30am and caught 3 hours sleep and I felt great the
next day. It was really weird, felt like I was up all night but wasn't tired
at all the next day until late evening.

Anyway, I usually get 6 hours on weekdays and feel crap for an hour before
brushing my teeth etc.

~~~
hrayr
You experienced segmented sleep [1]. Some argue that this is the natural way
of sleeping, if you remove artificial lights and modern schedules.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep>

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akcreek
It varies. I wakeup around 9am each morning without an alarm no matter what
time I go to bed. I try to be in bed by 1am, but if I stay up until 4am I
still wakeup naturally around 9. Sometimes I can go back to sleep for another
hour and a half or so though if I stayed up really late.

I feel the same with 6-9 hours of sleep. Any less and I notice it though.

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hartleybrody
I average about 8 hour a night. I'm not the best at keeping a consistent bed
time, but I won't get out of bed until I know I've had my 8 hours. Thus, my
sleep schedule tends to drift later as the week progresses, and then I can
reset on the weekend.

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drawkbox
4 or 8, depends on the crunch. But I feel refreshed at those two points. 6
hours or 10 hours feels incomplete. When working on long projects I can sleep
twice for 4 hours per day and am extremely productive as it feels like two
mini days in one.

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thifm
5-6h weekly. I live very away from work(2 hour trips) and I still want to get
home and go to gym&OSS.

But in the weekend I sleep a lot. Maybe 12h a day.

I wish I could have more time to balance it(and my plan is that I will in the
future), 8 hours a day would be ideal.

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flyinglizard
Around 7. Very rarely do I sleep more (waking up naturally). I've been getting
2h naps in the evening lately, and I really like it (in the night after such
naps I'll sleep 6h or so).

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bluepanda_
I have an average of 7 hours of deep sleep, as confirmed by my newly acquired
sleep tracker. I generally feel well-rested and able to use my brain at its
maximum.

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CmonNoReg
Which one did you get?

~~~
bluepanda_
I got the Fitbit One. You have to manually tell it you're about to sleep and
you just woke up, then it tells you how long you stayed in bed, how many times
you woke up, and how much deep sleep you had.

Based on that, I averaged that I needed 8 hours of in-bed time to get 7 hours
of deep sleep, and then I had no need for the device anymore. Until my sleep
patterns change.

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abhia
5-7 hours on weekdays, and 6-9 hours on weekends. It varies a lot, but my
Jawbone UP helps keep track - actually pretty awesome after their API came
out.

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jrokisky
I feel like I lose productivity if I get less than 7 hours of sleep a night. I
can't think as clearly and can't process as much information

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hoka
About 8 hours, sometimes more, sometimes less. I lift regularly, so there's no
point in lifting if I'm not sleeping and eating right.

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alan_cx
I sleep once between 4am and 7 am, then again between 11am and 1.30pm. I now
cant sleep for more than 3 hrs in one go.

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AliAdams
It would be interesting to try and link these numbers to some form of
productivity / successfulness metric.

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everest81
7-9 hours, consistent on weekdays and weekends(Dogs don't care about weekend.
:)

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zephyrfalcon
At least 16 hours a day lately. :-/ (No joke.)

~~~
r00fus
I knew someone who slept that much but he was on SSRIs.

~~~
zephyrfalcon
So am I...

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EugeneOZ
6-7 hours, 9-10 on weekends.

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t0
10-12

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OafTobark
4

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andyidsinga
7 - 7.5

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yoster
For the last couple of weeks, I have been getting about 4 hours of sleep a
day. It is maddening, with me resorting to ZZZQuil. It does knock me out, but
I wake up 4 hours later. I have been used to waking up in the afternoon for
years, and getting 7-8 hours of sleep. I recently had a schedule change and I
am slowly going insane...

