> An internal survey among 13 employees showed they averaged 95 hours of work a week and slept five hours a night.
I'm always curious about this, about people who say they routinely sleep < 6 hours a night. Now, I know there are some very small percentage of people who, genetically, need very little sleep, but for the vast majority of humans, I don't think this is really physically possible.
I can certainly pull an all nighter once in a blue moon, or go two nights on a couple hours of sleep. But honestly, I feel like total shit after a single night with less than 6 hours of sleep, and if I do this more than a night or two in a row I always get sick and I can barely think straight. I honestly think I would die or at the very least end up in the hospital if I was continually on 5 hours of sleep a night.
I know I need more sleep than most people (I'm fine on 8 hours but my "natural" preference, e.g. with no alarm clock, is 9), but I always wonder about people who say they go months on 5 hours of sleep a night. I always think they're either superhuman or exaggerating their sleep loss.
> Honestly, the 4.5 hours of sleep each day really makes me question the veracity of the story, or at least if it's somehow exaggerated.
It's true.
I've met people who slept 3 hours a night regularly to make ends meet. They seem and act normal until you try to have a conversation with them or ask them to do something outside their routine or that requires thought.
You'd be surprised how much of human social and work behavior comes automatically. You can sleepwalk through modern life and never have to wake up.
They were even capable of getting passing grades in university. Even some kinds of learning come mechanically.
> anything more then 5.5 hours and I feel like I've thrown the day away.
Statistically you are unlikely to be one of those people for whom 5-6 hours sleep daily is sufficient, so all you are doing to yourself is contributing to increased aggression, dulling of empathy and reduced impulse control that comes with insufficient sleep.
> “Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr.”
How can people even take this kind of pseudo-science seriously?
If I sleep for 5 hrs, I'm a complete zombie during the day, unproductive and depressed.
If I sleep for 8.5 hrs (which is how long I sleep naturally), I feel great, productive, and happy. I get way more done.
There are all sorts of studies showing all the negative effects of not getting enough sleep -- that sleep-deprived doctors, for instance, are basically acting under an impairment equal to a few drinks of alcohol.
The idea that people in general are getting too much sleep is really quite preposterous.
This is very true for me, much to my surprise. I used to get by on 3 to 4 hours every night but that seems to have really caught up with me. If I don't get 8 hours minimum now I'm woozy the rest of the day.
>and somehow also got more (or at least better) sleep than me
It must be better sleep, because these people also seem to only need 4 hours and yet are able to function at 100% the rest of the time, meanwhile I've been tired for 20 years no matter how much sleep I seem to get.
>Every 24 hours we top up in caffeine, affection, calories, and get a few more chores out of the way. So it makes no logical sense to cram as many hours of work in a single day if you can leverage the restful effects of sleep and having a circadian cycle.
>Taking this idea to its extreme, why do we even have weekends? Why do we cram all our creative efforts in 5 days and hope that we recover over two of them? This is not how our body works.
Because that is how our body (and brain) works. We need a break from the drudgery of daily work.
> I respect your personal experience, but you are coming on a little strong in terms of assuming everyone is just like yourself.
This was actually a significant point of contention between myself and my advisor, who interpreted my working late at the lab as though I was trying to cram extra time to make up for not being there otherwise, or something. Those are just my most productive hours ¯\_(?)_/¯ but to him I was lazy and irresponsible.
My natural sleep period seems to be around 9 hours. I can make myself do 7 (I currently keep a ~1:30am-9am schedule, with some effort), but anything less has noticeable effects on my cognitive state, and I still start getting tired again around 5pm. If I do sleep at 5pm, I'll wake somewhere between 11pm and 2am, which is bad but in the other direction. So I have to fight through the late-afternoon slump. It's very easy to knock me off of this schedule, and I've been keeping it for two years since I left grad school.
Sleep disorders are real, and they are not simply symptoms of a poor work ethic.
Oooh that sounds familiar.
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