Got a good question from a reader about sleep. One of my goals is to sleep less than 8 hours/night
Hello, and thanks for inviting your blog visitors to email you directly. I just came across your site today, and got some good reading out of your “top stories” list. What compelled me to write, though, was a trend I noticed on some of your “goals” posts: sleeping less than 8 hours per night.
It caught my attention, because at first glance it looks counter-intuitive. Yet I understand exactly what you mean.
Cut. Return to monologue later. Get to the askin’:
How is it working out for you?
Okay, lessee. Here’s my results since late June when I started calculating this. First week listed is “Week of 23 June to 28 June” – Last one is “Weekly review: 21 August to 27 August” – the rest fall in between in order.
What was my hours per sleep on average this week? 8.14 hours of sleep per night on average. Could be a little lower, but pretty good.
What was my hours per sleep on average this week? 8.5 hours average – 7 11 hours, 6, 14 (wow…), 7, 8, 7
What was my hours per sleep on average this week? 8 and a half – 8, 8, 10, 8. Interesting that last week I did a similar average with more days below eight, but then one 14 hour day… wonder if that’s related.
What was my hours per sleep on average this week? 7.15 (6 hours, 7 hours (plus nap), 6, 8, 8, 8 and a half, 6, 8 – average 7.15)
What was my hours per sleep on average this week? 7, 5 and half, 9, 9, 10, 9, 5, 5, 4 and half…. 64 hours total over 8 days, 8 hours total
What was my hours per sleep on average this week? 9 hours/night on average. 12, 7, 10, 10, 8, 7, 10, 5, 10, 10 = 89.
What was my hours per sleep on average this week? 53.5 hours over 8 days = 6.7 hours per night (10, 4, 7, 7.5, 8, 5, 5, 7)
What was my hours per sleep on average this week? 8.5 hours night (7, 10, 7, 9, 9, 10, 8 = 60)
What was my hours per sleep on average this week? 7.9 hours per night: 6, 6, 5, 12, 4, 12.5, 9.5 = 55/7 = 7.9 hours
I see myself gradually trending mostly downwards… after a few very short nights, I crash for 12-14 though. Actually, I seem to get more done by alternating low sleep and larger amounts, I think – take that with a grain of salt, I haven’t run analysis yet, just my intuition. I could check in more detail, though since my work changes all the time I don’t really have any objective criteria for “good work” – I could cross-reference it with some other stuff if there’s anything in particular you’re curious about though. Diet, exercise, writing, or something.
Two observations:
1. Honestly, I do feel like hell when I get up after particularly low sleep, but then after about 30 minutes awake and a cup of coffee I’m good to go. I do feel really awful when I’m starting, but then it doesn’t really affect me during the day, except…
2. I really zone out hard for between 20 minutes and an hour when on low sleep. I just roll with it and meditate, half-nap, stare at nature, go for a walk, sit in a cafe, or get a massage during that time. Also, I go through hyper-sharp moments when I’m sleeping less, where my concentration seems much sharper than normal – but that might not be real, it might be just the contrast with the low sleep state.
I can cross-reference this with other things I track if anyone is curious. Let me know.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Sleep is an issue I’m rather sensitive about — a side effect of living in college, and occasionally working with people across timezones. Ideally, for me a fairly sustainable sleeping pattern is 5 1/2 – 6 hours a day; though I can survive fairly well throughout a normal day on 4 1/2 hours (after which I crash).
These days I’ve been managing on 4-5 hours of sleep a day for two-three week stretch (till I meet the more urgent deadlines) followed by a crash of 14-16 hours (ie a completely wasted day).
Of course, this is only viable when I don’t play/exercise at all/only very lightly. Otherwise every body part starts protesting about the lack of rest.
> Sleep is an issue I’m rather sensitive about — a side effect of living in college, and occasionally working with people across timezones. Ideally, for me a fairly sustainable sleeping pattern is 5 1/2 – 6 hours a day; though I can survive fairly well throughout a normal day on 4 1/2 hours (after which I crash).
That’s good. I averaged 7 hours over the last 12 days, I’d be pretty happy averaging 5.5 to 6. I can do 3.5 to 5 hours for a few days, but then I crash 12-14 too.
> These days I’ve been managing on 4-5 hours of sleep a day for two-three week stretch (till I meet the more urgent deadlines) followed by a crash of 14-16 hours (ie a completely wasted day).
Likewise, but I actually seem to be more productive alternating on that cycle. The 14-16 hours of sleep days not much gets done, but I get a lot done on the 4 hours of sleep days. It’s like, if you sleep 4 hours, you’ve got 20 hours awake – that’s almost like two different days, in fact I break them out and reschedule my routine halfway through the day when I’m going to be awake 20. It’s so much time. I find sleeping 4 hours gives me 20 hours awake, which is almost like 2 different days. Then 10 hours awake while sleeping 14 is another day… it’s enough to get stuff done. I almost feel like 4 hours sleep/20 hours awake, then 4 hours sleep/20 hours awake, then 14 hours sleep/10 awake is the equivalent of having 5 days of awake time, whereas sleeping 8 and being awake 16 still only feels like one day. Strange, huh?
> Of course, this is only viable when I don’t play/exercise at all/only very lightly. Otherwise every body part starts protesting about the lack of rest.
What kind of exercise? I feel the same way if it’s intense stuff that needs healing from, but I actually find light walking and cardio to make me need less sleep… because of better health, or sleeping deeper? I don’t know. My best work mix seems to come from alternating low and high sleep, regular moderate/light exercise that isn’t stressful, being organized and having already cleared off admin in advance, and then being clearly focused on important things. That said, I’m not sure how good it is for long term health, or how sustainable. Need to do more looking into it…
Thanks for sharing your observations, that’s very valuable. Cheers.
Exercise like weight training, or trying to push my limits while running — stuff I need to heal from.
Thanks to the simple fact that my institute is roughly 1 km from my hostel, I end up walking 4-6 km at a fairly brisk pace (who wants to be _too_ late for class) a day. That doesn’t impact sleep requirements in any way.
However I find the 4.5 hours/day not sustainable; once I crash, after the 14 hour sabbatical I still remain groggy and unproductive for the remaining day. And I’m trying to wean myself off coffee — got into the habit of drinking 2-3 cups a day at my intern; now down to a single cup a day and slowly returning to normal.
Good comments Kunal, thanks. I think a lot of people are interested in sleep amounts, but not many people actually pay real attention to it – cheers for sharing. As for coffee, yeah, that’s one of the few things I’m addicted to. I don’t mind, complete detox time is only like six weeks or so (but that means you need to not ingest any caffeine in that time). I’ve got mixed feelings about caffeine – it does help mental performance, depending on how you use it and your tolerance level to it. Also, it probably stimulates the metabolism, which is good. There’s downsides, but they’re not too bad… I think I’d be comfortable having caffeine, but then completely detoxing from it once every 3-5 years maybe? Two months completely off it should do it, though that’d be a pretty unhappy two months.
Hi Sebastian. I just discovered your blog by following a link from Patri Friedman on twitter:
http://twitter.com/#!/patrissimo/status/24922860813
Thanks for the advice!
I’ve been trying a sleep schedule in which I sleep for 4h30m each night and then have several 25-minute naps during the day. I’m into my third week of this. In the last ten days I’ve usually taken three naps per day in addition to the 4h30m core sleep for a total of 5 hours and 45 minutes of sleep.
Perhaps you should take a nap during those periods when you “zone out hard”. 20 or 25 minutes of nap. Not longer! If you nap for longer than 25 minutes you will suffer grogginess (which is called “sleep inertia”).
> Hi Sebastian. I just discovered your blog by following a link from Patri Friedman on twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/patrissimo/status/24922860813
Hey, awesome, Patri’s a very smart guy, an honor to have him spreading the word about my writing.
> Thanks for the advice!
My pleasure.
> I’ve been trying a sleep schedule in which I sleep for 4h30m each night and then have several 25-minute naps during the day. I’m into my third week of this. In the last ten days I’ve usually taken three naps per day in addition to the 4h30m core sleep for a total of 5 hours and 45 minutes of sleep.
This is interesting…. I might try this, yeah. Do you schedule the nap or just go down whenever you get tired?
> Perhaps you should take a nap during those periods when you “zone out hard”. 20 or 25 minutes of nap. Not longer! If you nap for longer than 25 minutes you will suffer grogginess (which is called “sleep inertia”).
Sleep inertia… hmm, I’ll have to look this up too. 20 to 25 minutes… okay, great comment, thanks for the feedback Zooko. Cheers.
Currently I have a nap whenever I feel tired. I’m carefully noting down all of the times and trying to get into a more regular routine. So far the only consistent pattern is that I have a nap in the morning, starting sometime between 6:00 and 9:30 and another in the afternoon, starting between 2:30 PM and 4:00 PM. I’ve also usually had another nap most days in addition to those two, and that third one often comes in the evening (around 9:00 PM) but sometimes other times of day.
So in short, I haven’t gotten into a very consistent pattern yet, but I’m doing fine, getting extra hours out of every day, and not feeling tired or groggy (because if I do then I go have a 25 minute nap and feel refreshed). Actually there’s an exception: I have often felt tired and groggy between about 6:00 AM and about 9:00 AM. I’m experimenting with waking up earlier, say 5:00, and then having a nap at 6:00 to cure that 6-to-9-AM tiredness.
Regards,
Zooko
P.S. I may not notice replies to me here on your blog so feel free to write zooko@zooko.com or contact me as @zooko on twitter.
Hey Zooko, great stuff. btw, since you commented, I’ve been trying the 25 minute nap more – you’re right, it’s very good. Like you said, going over that significantly and there’s some grogginess on waking, but 20-25 is pretty good. I’ve been taking a few of them.
Thanks for the good insights. I’ll shoot you an email now as well, cheers.
Unless you have already, you should probably check out some stuff on sleep stages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep#Sleep_stages) and the ‘biological clock’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm).
I believe that with some studying you’ll quickly learn that this is a fairly well researched area, and that it is both unhealthy and inefficient to try to cheat yourself out of the approximately 8 hours most people need. Setting a regular sleeping schedule of 7-8 hours might be better.
Thanks for the feedback Pot – I just got some advice/recommendations along similar lines. I’m going to be looking into this more going forwards. Thanks for commenting, and for the links especially. Best wishes.