* Lack of sleep lowers my energy and creative function. I no longer have energy to try new things, or to think out-of-the-box. The brain enters "survival mode" of just following the routine to make it to the end of day. If I let this accumulate over multiple days, the overall motivation and happiness starts dropping exponentially. This makes sense, since a lot of my happiness comes from envisioning goals and achieving them, which I cannot do if I don't sleep enough.

* If I get more than 1 night of bad sleep, I usually try to squeeze in a strenuous hike or just go cycling around the neighborhood. At least 1-2 hours, ideally 4-5. It increases the physical tiredness and makes it easier to fall asleep. It also fills in the short-term memory buffer with random stuff, that seems to have a positive correlation with subsequent sleep quality.

* Screen time generally depends on what you are doing. Routine work or clickbait browsing is bad because it doesn't make you tired and doesn't give enough short-term impressions. Playing games can give impressions, but they also raise excitement, that makes it harder to fall asleep. What works for me is to read for 30-60 minutes just before bedtime. Classic books, sci-fi, anything that is not exciting, but involves imagining what I just read about. After I'm done reading, I make a conscious effort to NOT think about work/plans/stressful topics. Thinking about what I just read usually works pretty well.

* You need to be very careful with alcohol. Moderate amount (say, 1-2 beers) makes it easier to fall asleep, but there's a high chance of waking up after 2-3 hours once it wears off. It also seems to recalibrate the nervous system, making it harder to fall asleep without drinking. So if you are having sleep problems, completely cutting of any booze for about a week shows wonderful results, despite the initial setback.

I’ve noticed that if I’m sleep deprived, especially if there’s a sleep debt of a few bad nights in a row, I feel really unmotivated and it’s difficult to concentrate.

Of course everyone is far happier and performs much better when well rested. But I feel like it potentially affects me more than other people.

The difference is astounding, I’d estimate a 80% reduction in motivation and cognitive ability if I’ve had a few 4 hour nights in a row.

Sitting in front of a computer concentrating on something complex feels almost physically painful, when I’m well rested I’m usually quite upbeat and pretty excited about the projects I’m working on.

Does anyone else feel this way?

Any suggestions For things that have helped you perform at your best when you’re exhausted?

Poor sleep is a major offender when it comes to spotty cognition, whether it's learning, planning, or working memory. Caffeine after 3pm, alcohol after 6-7pm, getting to bed too late, waking too early, inconsistent bed/wake times, exposure to bright, blue- and white-light led screens after the sun sets; all these will ruin your sleep quality in isolation and can really mess things up in aggregate over extended periods of time.

Being extremely disciplined about your sleep is the best way to crush low energy/motivation, mental fog, and even some mood trouble. It's tough to do in this 24 hour era, especially as a young adult in the tech industry, but it's well worth the effort. Don't mind if the first week or so don't feel very different; it takes a month of good sleep to "make up" one hour of lost sleep.

Getting serious about sleep isn't a fast payoff, but the eventual mental sharpness and emotional fortitude is unparalleled.

Proper sleep is a very high priority for me these days.

https://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefit...

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...

I used to use memrise [flash card style memorisation] to learn new words/concepts for years [25minutes, the first thing after waking up, every single day] and I know from experience how sleep, food, hangover, etc. impact my performance.

Sleep has a gigantic impact on my memory, focus and creativity — I believe it is responsible for really high variation in IQ points [10 - 20, but that's my rough guesstimate]. This is a more qualitative assessment but whey I sleep 4 hours it resembles a high level of depression — I lose motivation and all of my natural curiosity is gone [eg. usually, reading/learning brings me happiness, but it's all gone when I'm sleep deprived].

That's why I haven't used an alarm clock for years now.

Our brains compensate for sleep deprivation by releasing increased dopamine in the striatum, which is involved in motivation and reward, and the thalamus, which is involved in alertness. On top of that, one of the effects of sleep deprivation is a reduction in your ability to tell how sleep deprived you are.

If you're sleep deprived, you're running on a natural high. If you get just enough sleep to get close to rested, that extra striatum and thalamus dopamine stops, and you also regain your ability to perceive yourself.

That feels really bad. Not only do you forego the high, but you can feel every bit of the lack of rest. It's like the end of a bender. The only good thing is knowing you're making progress back to relatedness.

Thinking less, working more is a shitty way to live and make a living.

I found that rather fascinating.

- On the positive side of the scale, sleep deprivation can boost my creativity and ability to focus enormously, every now and then (context: as a programmer).

- On the negative side of the scale, I would be fooling myself if I pretended that this doesn't make me more irritable in the days after.

Over the years I'm slowly but surely learning how to balance these things against each other and pick suitable moments for these creative outbursts without overdoing it :-).