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Hi TL!
I recently started sleeping 8.5 to 9hours per night and feel better than ever. I tried to work with 7 hours for quite some time but I was really tired in the morning and had problems concentrating over longer periods of time.
So this sounds great, right? I now am energetic and well rested the entire day.
The big downside however is this:
I work 8 hours a day, it takes roughly one hour to get to my work place and another hour back. With eating, shopping, hygiene and the usual household crap I probably spend another 2.5 hours a day.
So 10 hours work+travel 2.5hours household. Well, that makes 12.5h. Sleeping 9 hours my day has only 15 left, if I want to exercise for an hour I only have 1.5hours left as my personal free time.
I can't live like this for the next 50 years.
I know there are vacations and weekends but living only 2 days a week is just a really depressing thought to me.
I know that you can reduce sleep dramatically by splitting the time over the day, that is not an option for me though.
About myself (maybe that is important to know):
I am male age 24 somewhat in shape and my immune system works nice as far as I can tell.
My Question is:
Does anyone of you have a solid way to reduce sleeping time?
Maybe I have to reduce steadily, maybe there is a certain supplement, maybe a certain diet. I did some research but I really am unsure of what to do. Caffeine is not an option, it really messes with my sleeping rythm and makes matters worse over time.
Ideally someone with personal experience could tell what he/she did.
But of course any interesting and legit article is welcome.
Please don't post only to tell me that you think 6hours is enough.
Thanks for your help!
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France12789 Posts
Tea + Royal Jelly and you should be able to feel energic with 7 to 8 hours of sleep.
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You need to sleep until you are rested. Getting less will make you feel and perform worse in the long term. It's unfortunate that you need 8.5-9 hours to feel rested when some people can get away with 6 or 7 but it's not something you can change. Supplements do not work.
I suggest moving closer to your job or finding some way to reduce that maintenance time, for example by making stews that last 3-4 days with one preparation time.
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Northern Ireland25022 Posts
Em, can't actually find any articles on the subject, I've read a lot about this in newspapers and the like.
Myself, if I don't have my girlfriend/mum around to wake me up I can sleep 14/15 hours a day easily and it absolutely destroys your energy levels over time. Basically I've tried all sorts of things, been on SSRIs to supposedly fix my fatigue issues but they made them worse, taken vitamins etc, and none of them enable me to be a competent human being if I sleep that much so yeah, it's a critical thing.
Essentially, people's requisite amount of sleep required varies a surprising amount. It sounds like you've found your ideal amount to keep energy levels pretty high. The real issue is regarding your scheduling outside of that by the sounds of it.
Sleeping patterns really make a massive difference in terms of energy levels and mood, so if you've found your optimal level I really wouldn't advise fucking around with it too much. I don't know your personal circumstances, but if you're unhappy with your work/leisure balance it's worth looking into alternatives on that front as well. Over time if you're unhappy with that balance it can be really debilitating on a mental level, which then feeds into bad habits which affect your physical health as well. From personal experience.
My only advice is to see a Doctor about this. These guys actually know what they're talking about. I'm not saying that internet forums etc don't have good advice, but on health issues generally there is so much information, often conflicting, that it is close to impossible to sift through it and choose the correct course of action (again from personal experience)
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51481 Posts
Well, i beleive this is what the scale is for sleep.
Newborn - up to 18 hours
1–12 months - 14–18 hours
1–3 years - 12–15 hours
3–5 years - 11–13 hours
5–12 years - 9–11 hours
Adolescents - 9–10 hours
Adults - 7/8 hours
So if you struggled with 7 try 8? 11pm sleep - 7am wake up?
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Well according to stuff i read on wikipedia, the last 2-3 hours of sleep during a night are very ineffective compared to the first hours. So sleeping for an hour or so for example after work should let you reduce your total sleeping time without sacrificing your health due to lack of sleep. I personally can't do this because i don't fall asleep unless I'm absolutely exhausted but a lot of people do this and they get along just fine 
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I dunno about any supplements or diets really, but I used to have to shift my sleeping pattern a lot for my assignments at uni. Some of the more extreme assignment periods I'd get as little as 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night on average.
In any case, whenever I had to reduce my sleeping patterns, I'd usually slow play it. Sleeping and waking at consistent times is pretty important for controlling the amount you sleep. From then on usually I would just work on a pattern of reducing my sleep at set amounts every few days maybe, depending on how soon I need to cut my sleeping down. It would also depend on how long you take to adjust to lesser sleep.
For now we'll keep it at every 4 days maybe. I would reduce my sleep by half an hour and sit at that number for a few days until I've adapted to it. Then reduce it by another half hour, maybe 15 minutes if half an hour is too hard to adapt to at first, whatever you find yourself adapting to easier). Then it's just simply keeping up the pattern until you adjust to less and less sleep over time. Lots of coffee helps too.
However, since I would do this a lot at uni during the semesters, and then sleep like a rock during holidays, one thing I DID notice is that sometimes if I'm feeling sleepy a lot of the time, it would be because I'm getting significantly more sleep than I need rather than not enough (especially after major projects are due and I would just be sleeping all day) and just end up feeling incredibly drained most of the time. Give it a thought. You might not need as much sleep as you think, rather just being stuck in a pattern. Most of my teachers tell me similar things about sleep. I do design so a lot of my uni tutors/lecturers would have to shift their sleeping patterns constantly to adjust to major projects as well so it's very doable.
You should also maybe look into power naps as well. I don't know how much truth there is to it but it's a big strategy in Japan for maintaining productivity during work days and AFAIK they work significantly longer hours than your average western full time job as well. This article is pretty old but it was the first thing that came up on google. I'm sure you could find better things if you spend the time.
http://biznik.com/articles/afternoon-nap-is-the-new-trend-in-productivity
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I would recommend just sticking with what works for you. Sleep has so many health benefits that reducing it for the sake of free time doesn't strike me as that much of a good deal. Your moods, ability to deal with stress and all kinds of other things will take a hit if you start suffering from sleep deprivation, and that in turn will impair your experience of that newly found free time as well as your overall satisfaction with the rest of your day (nevermind the health). Look for other ways to create more free time, i.e. use your commute creatively (if you can, read or play games while commuting), use a schedule to cut down on household related stuff by shopping/cleaning the house once a week (or once every two weeks if you're good) and try to be as efficient as possible with everything you do. But if you must, cutting it down for half an hour seems ok, so from 9 to 8.5 or 8.5 to 8; you could also try to consciously accumulate a bit of sleep debt (those 8 hours instead of 8.5) and sleep for longer on the weekends, but I still think you should look for alternatives.
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I have to sleep 8 hours + to feel rested and have a balanced energy level all day (sure I can sleep 5 hours and drink alot of coffee but my day will more be like a rollercoaster and I can't find any harm at all). What keeps me going is: I can wake up 45 mins before my work starts, I usually enjoy my work when I'm rested, I got goals (saving money for travels and etc on my vacation), and I live with two mates who help me with all chores.
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sleeping is alot of digestion. thats why when you eat big meals or meals in general at certain times of the day you get tired.
eat healthy easy to digest foods. you will have alot more energy.
might help, gl
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Maybe you should find a job you like, so you don't feel like you are wasting your time there? I mean, saving 8 hours a sleep a week is not going to rock your world.
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One of my tutors once told me, it would be enough to sleep 5 to 6 hours during a workweek, and catch up the missing hours on weekends. I don't know if it's true, or right or healthy, but i can say, if you do so, you will have to take a nap on saturday/sunday (or whatever the days of your weekend are) afternoon.
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On August 09 2012 19:55 Demizzle wrote:I dunno about any supplements or diets really, but I used to have to shift my sleeping pattern a lot for my assignments at uni. Some of the more extreme assignment periods I'd get as little as 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night on average. In any case, whenever I had to reduce my sleeping patterns, I'd usually slow play it. Sleeping and waking at consistent times is pretty important for controlling the amount you sleep. From then on usually I would just work on a pattern of reducing my sleep at set amounts every few days maybe, depending on how soon I need to cut my sleeping down. It would also depend on how long you take to adjust to lesser sleep. For now we'll keep it at every 4 days maybe. I would reduce my sleep by half an hour and sit at that number for a few days until I've adapted to it. Then reduce it by another half hour, maybe 15 minutes if half an hour is too hard to adapt to at first, whatever you find yourself adapting to easier). Then it's just simply keeping up the pattern until you adjust to less and less sleep over time. Lots of coffee helps too. However, since I would do this a lot at uni during the semesters, and then sleep like a rock during holidays, one thing I DID notice is that sometimes if I'm feeling sleepy a lot of the time, it would be because I'm getting significantly more sleep than I need rather than not enough (especially after major projects are due and I would just be sleeping all day) and just end up feeling incredibly drained most of the time. Give it a thought. You might not need as much sleep as you think, rather just being stuck in a pattern. Most of my teachers tell me similar things about sleep. I do design so a lot of my uni tutors/lecturers would have to shift their sleeping patterns constantly to adjust to major projects as well so it's very doable. You should also maybe look into power naps as well. I don't know how much truth there is to it but it's a big strategy in Japan for maintaining productivity during work days and AFAIK they work significantly longer hours than your average western full time job as well. This article is pretty old but it was the first thing that came up on google. I'm sure you could find better things if you spend the time. http://biznik.com/articles/afternoon-nap-is-the-new-trend-in-productivity
Thanks for your answer, this is pretty much exactly what I'm looking for, you reduced your sleep time step-by-step. I thought of doing the exact thing myself, but I was unsure of how to do it.
Can you give me some numbers maybe, just to get a feel for it?
How long do you sleep when there is no pressure?
How long did you sleep when you were on your reduced schedule? And did you still feel rested and as clear of mind?
On August 09 2012 20:00 Epoch wrote:
sleeping is alot of digestion. thats why when you eat big meals or meals in general at certain times of the day you get tired.
eat healthy easy to digest foods. you will have alot more energy.
might help, gl
Thanks, I always try to eat healthy and my last meal is around 18:00, at least 5 hours before I go to sleep, that should be sufficient I hope. Come to think of it... I really did not put that much care into that lately..
This seems to be a real interesting topic, lots of replys so quickly, <3 you TL!!
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Sleep periods per 24 hours
sleeping 9+ hours a day = bad
sleeping 8-8.5 hours a day = best
sleeping less then 7.5 hours a day= horrible
This was though to be by my psihology teacher somewhere where I was 12.
Spliting sleep.
Only acceptable if you sleep at or around noon, no more than 1 hour.
In this case it is acceptable to sleep 7.5 hours/ night but no less.
Power napping, coffee, energy drinks and other whatever bullshit you may hear about a wonder plant, miraculous zen-fu exercise
It has a beneffic imediate effect now, but it has a stacking detrimental effect over time. Sooner or later your body will suffer.
It is acceptable if you do this rarely. No actualy figure but I would say around 5 day/month.
This is your bio-rithm, you can work around it, fool yourself you cheated the sistem, but in the end, when you are around retirement age and your body is nowhere near in top shape you will eventualy fall to this either you like it or not.
Edit*
Afterthough, on second look. I am sorry I got dragged into this. I am a bit silly for biting this question, and so are you my friend for not asking the right question, and so are the rest of the condescendent people in this thread.
Problem
Not enough free time.
24h - 9 hours sleep - 8 hours work - 2.5 daily quests - 2 comute - 1 hours exercise - the remaining time is not enough.
Solution in front of everyone noses:
1)Quit your job, find another job closer to home.
2)Find a home closer to your job.
3) If you cannot do or afford any of the above, cut your free time to zero, your house chores to half, get fat, out of shape whatever and get an education, it will suck ballz the next 4 years but you`ll have 50 years to catch up.
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On August 09 2012 20:10 tertos wrote:
Sleep periods per 24 hours
sleeping 9+ hours a day = bad
sleeping 8-8.5 hours a day = best
sleeping less then 7.5 hours a day= horrible
This was though to be by my psihology teacher somewhere where I was 12.
Spliting sleep.
Only acceptable if you sleep at or around noon, no more than 1 hour.
In this case it is acceptable to sleep 7.5 hours/ night but no less.
Power napping, coffee, energy drinks and other whatever bullshit you may hear about a wonder plant, miraculous zen-fu exercise
It has a beneffic imediate effect now, but it has a stacking detrimental effect over time. Sooner or later your body will suffer.
It is acceptable if you do this rarely. No actualy figure but I would say around 5 day/month.
This is your bio-rithm, you can work around it, fool yourself you cheated the sistem, but in the end, when you are around retirement age and your body is nowhere near in top shape you will eventualy fall to this either you like it or not.
Wow, I think your view is incredibly one-dimensional. And your psychology teacher probably has no idea what he is talking about. It is proven that people require different amounts of sleep. There are millions out there who don't need more than 6 hours. My dad is one of those.
People are not machines, they do not function strictly under certain exact requirements, they differ from one another and are able to adapt.
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The first thing that caught my attention was your way to work. While not unusual that people drive 1+ hours to work and back, I never understood why. Instead of reducing your sleep time, why not look to reduce the time you need to drive to work? Though this depends on your current life situation. I know for some people it's not that easy because either they have family or a house and don't want to move closer to work or look for a job closer to home.
I only need about 6-10 minutes to work depending on traffic. So that's about 12-20 minutes a day.
If you're bent on cutting sleep time, you should just try to stick to 7 hours. Your body eventually will get used to it. When I was younger I slept a lot as well (8-9 hours), but for a while now I'm doing fine with about 7 hours. Weekends I usually sleep longer though. Diet-wise it helps if you don't eat too much or drink any alcohol before sleeping.
I never really took note where my time goes every day, so I'll just write it down now.
7 hours sleep
40 minutes for morning/evening hygene
20 minutes to work
8 1/2 hours work
1/2 hour of excercise
17 hours gone with sleeping, working and staying in shape, so I'm left with 7 hours free time each day. Maybe minus 1-2 hours for other tasks, but that varies greatly.
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No pressure I usually sleep 7.5 hours a day, sometimes 8 depending on whether I go to the gym that day or not. However, when I have project work I usually have to reduce down to 6 hours of sleep on average to match up to the extra work I have to manage. So normally I would take around 2 weeks to cut down my sleep, using the strategy I mentioned earlier, cutting down by 20-30 minute blocks until I'm used to it. I'll be honest. At first, I never feel rested after reducing my sleep, not as much as I used to. However, eventually I find my body adapts to having less sleep and I don't notice the difference that much anymore.
Only when I cut down to like 4 hours of sleep a night do I find myself struggling during the day but that usually only happens right towards the end of my projects and it's just a case of having to soldier on through.
Sometimes I do find that I'll have days where I'm just so unproductive that I feel like I would have just been better off sleeping with my extra time that day than trying to force myself to work. But this is usually only when I'm forcing myself down to as few hours as possible. Since you're doing yours more for extra leisure time, I don't think it would be that bad to take a day to get some extra sleep instead.
The concept of sleep debt is something I will go out and say just doesn't work for me. I don' t know if you've tried it, but what I've noticed is when I get my body used to sleeping specific hours, I tend to automatically wake up in the morning so attempting to get extra sleep on the weekends is something I physically can't do since I'm not big on naps. You might have better luck with this than I do though
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Move closer to your work place, or get a job closer to your home.
Do that 1 hour exercise only few times a week like weekends and 1 or 2 weekends.
Or better yet go to your work with a bike, so you get your exercise on your work travel. You would save thousands of euros doing this as well, if you go to work by car or public transportation atm.
Also as you get older you should be able to deal with less sleep. And your energy level also depends on your diet, so maybe eat more food that gives long lasting energy like high fiber products.
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Welcome to the real world, everyone told you not to grow up didnt they!?
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No you really can't reduce sleep time despite various claims to the contrary (binaural beats, biphasic sleep, etc). While sleeping your entire body is repairing itself, most noticeably your skin. It also processes your memories in various ways. All these take time, you just can't skip them without side effects.
However you can greatly improve your quality of sleep, which is at least as important as the amount of sleep. For quite a while my sleep was utter crap since I slept randomly and made many mistakes but over time I discovered a few cheap tricks that helped me tremendously:
- Don't drink coffee after 16:00. Caffeine has a biological half-life of 5 hours, you'll have trouble falling asleep if you drink coffee too late.
- Drink at most 2 or 3 cups of coffee a day or equivalent. Caffeine is not a substitute for sleep.
- Go to sleep early, for me that's before 23:00. Don't sleep at day. Sleeping in sunlight guarantees low-quality sleep.
- Go to sleep and wake up at consistent times every day, don't sleep randomly. Your body will get used to the routine and will be much more efficient. I know this is hard when you are a university student, but try it. At least you will have less trouble adjusting when you start going to work.
- Get a softer, more comfortable bed. Don't "get used to" uncomfortable, hard beds or awkward sleeping positions.
- Get a progressive alarm clock (or an appropriate app for your phone), it improves your awakenings and mornings greatly.
- Don't play video games (especially not something competitive), use the computer, or study anything before going to bed. Your body will stuck in some kind of hyperactive/overworked state and you will have trouble falling asleep. Instead I recommend some light reading in the bed to relax (get an e-book reader, books are heavy and a bit awkward to read in the bed).
- Don't leave on your computer or any music when you are going to bed. It's much better to sleep to silence than various noises.
- Try to do some daily exercise. Apart from being healthy, you will have zero trouble falling asleep if you exhaust yourself physically. Biking and jogging on alternate days worked for me.
- Try to shower before going to sleep, much more comfortable to sleep clean.
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The last time I looked into this, the only real alternative to sleeping your fill overnight in one go is to split the sleep into two sections; ~half overnight, and ~half in the afternoon (a siesta, effectively). You may be able to shorten the overall amount you're sleeping by following this method, but only marginally (and is not possible for most people due to work etc). I've not seen any other sleep options that actually have any scientific support.
I did the same maths as you, and the best solution I can give (instead of trying to do some wacky sleep schedule) is to simply shorten your commute. 2 hours a day commuting is a colossal amount of time that can be reduced! I currently have the same commute, but plan to be moving house in ~1-2 years to fix that problem
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I sleep roughly 5-6hrs a night, a great man once said "Sleep is for the ones who prefer to dream, than live out their dreams" -Weedamins 2012
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On August 09 2012 20:27 Frigo wrote:
No you really can't reduce sleep time despite various claims to the contrary (binaural beats, biphasic sleep, etc). While sleeping your entire body is repairing itself, most noticeably your skin. It also processes your memories in various ways. All these take time, you just can't skip them without side effects.
However you can greatly improve your quality of sleep, which is at least as important as the amount of sleep. For quite a while my sleep was utter crap since I slept randomly and made many mistakes but over time I discovered a few cheap tricks that helped me tremendously:
- Don't drink coffee after 16:00. Caffeine has a biological half-life of 5 hours, you'll have trouble falling asleep if you drink coffee too late.
- Drink at most 2 or 3 cups of coffee a day or equivalent. Caffeine is not a substitute for sleep.
- Go to sleep early, for me that's before 23:00. Don't sleep at day. Sleeping in sunlight guarantees low-quality sleep.
- Go to sleep and wake up at consistent times every day, don't sleep randomly. Your body will get used to the routine and will be much more efficient. I know this is hard when you are a university student, but try it. At least you will have less trouble adjusting when you start going to work.
- Get a softer, more comfortable bed. Don't "get used to" uncomfortable, hard beds or awkward sleeping positions.
- Get a progressive alarm clock (or an appropriate app for your phone), it improves your awakenings and mornings greatly.
- Don't play video games (especially not something competitive), use the computer, or study anything before going to bed. Your body will stuck in some kind of hyperactive/overworked state and you will have trouble falling asleep. Instead I recommend some light reading in the bed to relax (get an e-book reader, books are heavy and a bit awkward to read in the bed).
- Don't leave on your computer or any music when you are going to bed. It's much better to sleep to silence than various noises.
- Try to do some daily exercise. Apart from being healthy, you will have zero trouble falling asleep if you exhaust yourself physically. Biking and jogging on alternate days worked for me.
- Try to shower before going to sleep, much more comfortable to sleep clean.
Thanks, all of your points seem to make sense and some of them I already incorporated into my daily life. I will try to get the rest in there as well.
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http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=95375
Waking up right after a sleep cycle makes such a huge difference. I tend to feel better after just 4,5-5 hours of sleep than 6-7 hours.
Back when I was shorter on time I would alternate 4,5-5 hours of sleep one night then 8-9. Worked great for me. I have literally sometimes slept 90 minutes and been perfectly capable of getting up and doing my thing (exam for instance) without any problems. I could obviously still feel that my body and mind wasn't performing as much as it usually does but I didn't suffer from fatigue.
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My sleep quality has improved dramatically after I started eating vegetables daily. I'm guessing the increased amount of magnesium from broccoli has had a lot to say. Never before have I been able to function so well on under 7 hours of sleep and I would wake up before my alarm even went off.
Be sure if you try this you don't overcook them and destroy the minerals/vitamins. I usually lightly fry them.
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how come all my friends are so chirpy/rested on 6-7 hours sleep and yet i NEVER feel rested no matter how much i sleep. even on 8-9 hours i feel like crap, not just in the morning but all the time.
i heard getting more exercise helps. i only exercise once to twice a week when i play sport.
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Maybe you should try this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep
Basically it's sleeping a lot less (3-5 hours usually in total). You sleep like 20-30 minutes every few hours per day, it's really hard to get used to but it can work.
Unfortunately there's not much research done around this sleep schedule, which is quite sad actually considering how interesting/beneficial it could be. I personally have tried it but failed, as I said it's really hard to get used to it.
Read some personal thoughts from people on the webs and most say it's the best thing ever. Side effects include: sleeping at awkward times & drinking lots of water it seems.
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While you can't "reduce sleep time" you can reduce the non-REM sleep time. This part is crucial. Most people I know who sleep 7-8hours or more never once in their life made an attempt to find out how that works for them personally.
What I did about 7 years ago or so was devote an month on cleaning up my sleep schedule. Go to bed, set an alarmclock to ring in 3 hours, get up. Repeat this every 12 hours. The first 3-4 days were plain and flat out brutal. I didn't fall asleep quick enough, I was incredibly dizzy after waking up and I couldn't perform anything "real" during the time I was awake. After those first days what happened is that whenever I layed down in bed I started to fall asleep asap and I started to slowly feel less dizzy and it felt somewhat okay.
Next step (while you're still sleep deprived) is to find out how long your sleep phase really is (average times from 2:15h to 3:45h are completely normal) by adjusting the sleep time you give yourself in 15-30 minute increments. For me personally 2:45h of sleep in one setting just feels incredible. I wake up on the first tone of my alarm, I am immediately at full capacity and my brain just feels sharp as hell.
After spending 3-4 weeks in that schedule I started to skip one of the two phases per day and returned to sleeping 1x, now at 5:30-5:45hours per day. That has been my standard sleep time ever since when I actually want to get work in, even over longer periods of time (~4months) I had never had a problem with that timing.
What I noticed what stayed with me after a couple of years (especially comparing myself to other people when it comes to sleep) is that I fall asleep quicker, sleep deeper and am more relaxed than anyone I know. The only big "drawback" is that if I try sleeping e.g. 1-2hours at a time I'm completely wrecked. My guess would be that the body adjusted to the schedule and that time is right in the middle of a REM phase.
tl;dr: "Cleaning up" your sleep schedule might easily net you 2-3hours more, the only way I tried this personally is by living with an incredibly strict alarmclock for a couple of weeks. I don't regret it at all and would do it over and over again. Getting to know how your body and brain works and how to make them work at their best is incredibly rewarding, most people just don't bother even thinking about it.
PS: Switching from mono- to biphasic sleep and back within a couple of days feels rather normal to me, no problems there at all. Note that babies/elderly people sleep polyphasic and that monophasic sleep is more a product of our culture, not of our internal clocks. There's a reason most of us get sleepy around midday.
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I will begin by saying that I am no expert with regards to sleeping too long. I know a lot about insomnia etc but not really this.. Which is probably more than most people who present their advice as fact in this thread know. Anyway the way I see it..
Humans are very adaptable to the environment.. if you get used to sleeping for a shorter amount of time your body should also get used to this and start to adapt to the new circumbstances. Which means over time getting less tired when sleeping less, assuming you don't sleep during the day or something instead.
Not saying that different people don't have different need for sleep, just opposing the idea of an absolute value that cannot be changed.
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I have some kind of magic number of minutes that I need to sleep at night. When I sleep like that, I will feel really tired when waking up (not badly tired, just this "Oh god this feels so good I need to keep sleeping") but will have 100% of my energy available during the day, not being tired even a little bit.
Unfortunately I haven't yet figured out the exact number, but this thread needs to remind me to do some testing. It's somewhere between 7 and 8 hours.
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- Don't drink coffee after 16:00. Caffeine has a biological half-life of 5 hours, you'll have trouble falling asleep if you drink coffee too late.
- Get a softer, more comfortable bed. Don't "get used to" uncomfortable, hard beds or awkward sleeping positions.
These two aren't correct. While Caffeine has a half-life of 5 hours, the way it interacts with the body usually results in a high point at around 30 minutes till an hour, after that you end up being more tired than before the caffein arrived in your body. Try drinking an energy drink at 3am. Find out how long it lasts for you personally till you start getting tired without big exercise or anything similar. That time usually varies between 1-2 hours for most people. Keep in mind that there are various conditions (e.g. low blood pressure) where caffeine will make you immediately more tired. That's the reason why e.g. some elderly people can drink a cup of coffee and fall asleep after half an hour. =P
A "soft bed" doesn't make you sleep better. To effectively relax your body needs a bed that helps maintain natural positions without either letting your weight decide how that ends up looking but also without offering a flat, hard surface. Most people err on the wrong side and get too soft beds which can result in all kinds of back problems in the long run.
- Don't leave on your computer or any music when you are going to bed. It's much better to sleep to silence than various noises.
Not exactly true. As long as the "noise" is below a certain threshold (I think 70dB, but basically equivalent to soft music, some birds around etc.) it's actually better than complete silence. Having some sound around is comforting and relaxing.
- Go to sleep early, for me that's before 23:00. Don't sleep at day. Sleeping in sunlight guarantees low-quality sleep.
Also a tricky one that you can't exactly quantify. In literally the entirety of southern europe sleeping 4-5 hours per night and 2-3 hours per day is completely normal. It depends on what you're used to and your body personally.
If you're like me and love browsing before going to bed there are various programs which adjust the light temperature your computer screen emits. I can't remember the one I used to use but maybe someone else can link one or google will be your buddy. Solid light (colder in the morning, warmer in the evening) is half the deal when it comes to making your body work properly despite artificial lighting.
Edit: @above, check my long post some above yours, I'm pretty much describing how you can find out that "magic number" that everyone knows they have but almost no one cares about exploiting further.
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I'm a doctor, I work 9-10 hour shifts per day as a norm, occasionally 14 hours. I live 45 minutes from work. I average 6.5 hours sleep per day. That leaves me approx 5 hours to do whatever I want each day at home after work.
You just have to train yourself to function both mentally and physically with less sleep.
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I think you should consider moving your career in a direction that gives you a job which you find more interesting. That way, you won't feel like your work is dragging down your personal life.
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I've pondered this issue a lot. For me personally, if I sleep 9+ hours, I feel great. If I sleep 8 hours, I feel tired. If I sleep 6-7 hours, I feel great. So I gravitate to sleeping the 6-7 hours every night. I don't understand why this happens, but I do know that this works.
Maybe you have a similar pattern? Many of my friends have similar patterns, with different time thresholds. Maybe find the zone where you feel the best.
Also, I'm 33 now. I do remember when I was 24, new to the real world, that I felt tired all the time and I did feel like I needed the 9+ hours a night. I think as you get older, you need less sleep - heard by everyone and verified from my own personal experience.
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On August 09 2012 21:16 chenchen wrote:
I think you should consider moving your career in a direction that gives you a job which you find more interesting. That way, you won't feel like your work is dragging down your personal life.
I'm also working on that, but it is incredibly hard to find out what I want.. Right now I am considering becoming a chef since I can live out that drive to create something perfect in detail and am not bored to do the same thing a billion times as long as it requires me to concentrate.
Right now I work and study engineering which was more like a "Well why not" kind of choice..
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I have same issues, but I don't consider "sleeping" is a problem. Its more of I'm not satisfied with my life (daily routine). Thats why I'm thinking of changing my job. Suppose this, if you have a satisfying job you will find yourself having fun and living your life at your job, otherwise it will be dragging yourself through it.
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On August 09 2012 21:30 bokeevboke wrote:
I have same issues, but I don't consider "sleeping" is a problem. Its more of I'm not satisfied with my life (daily routine). Thats why I'm thinking of changing my job. Suppose this, if you have a satisfying job you will find yourself having fun and living your life at your job, otherwise it will be dragging yourself through it.
It's off topic but still a valid point.
Yet, I am not sure if there actually is a job I can find joy in.
Professional Game tester and TV-Series watcher would probably work for me
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what makes people depressed is getting into routines, i was horribly depressed of a routine that i got in and that included quite a lot of free time, try to mix things up, dont plan every day of you life for the next 50 years. My tip is do a different thing every day, some days sleep 6-7 hours some days sleep 9+ just mix things up.
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Spending 2 hours each day to get to and from work sounds really ridiculous to me..
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Reducing sleep time is not the way because sleep is paramount to your health.
I'm at my best with usually 10 hours or a little more a night. I chose to sacrifice TV and a bunch of crap. I think sleep should be on top of your list and the rest is less important.
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On August 09 2012 20:03 Striker.superfreunde wrote:
One of my tutors once told me, it would be enough to sleep 5 to 6 hours during a workweek, and catch up the missing hours on weekends. I don't know if it's true, or right or healthy, but i can say, if you do so, you will have to take a nap on saturday/sunday (or whatever the days of your weekend are) afternoon.
I've heard this as well. I did it for a while and I think it works. But I feel like crap on weekends after sleeping 12-14 hours each day.
I wouldn't say this is a healthy strategy.
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This is sadly a common issue in our era with longer working hours and travel distances meaning less time to do shit so you are trying to reduce somthing that is actually really important to you. my advice would be manage your time better.
I don't know what job you do or what form of travel you take but you can do the following;
1) do personal things at work - Bring an ipod in with an audio book, listen to inside the game via podcast. you can do a lot of personal things at work without hurting your work too much (depends on the job)
2) do personal things whilst traveling, if you use the train great, thats 2 hours you can you do personal stuff rather than just thinking god this journy sucks.
3) Bike to work? (exercise + travelling bundled into one meaning for time for free time)
4) exercise at work (i don't know what job you do but depending on the job you can most likely fit some sort of excercise within your work )
Hope this helps. don't ruin your sleep you need it, espc if you plan on excercising daily.
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From someone in the same age group with same schedule pretty switching work to school and extra stuff to studying. I sleep for 6 hours a day and have never had a problem with it, 8 hours for me is personally to long and if I sleep for anything more then 6 I wake up tired. So I spend 6 hours sleeping 8-10 depending on the day in class, roughly 3-5 studying. Within 3 things i am already sitting on 17-21 hours a day used. Takes me about 2 hours to travel to and from school so I am up to 19-23 hours used. Factor in walking my dog + shower and general morning routine my entire 24hour day is booked on a bad day. If I'm on an easier class schedule day or low study requirement day I can squeeze in some free time maybe 90minutes most 2 hours.
Sadly this is the life of an adult. It is a shitty cliche, but it is merely fact when you get to 22+ I wouldn't expect you to find 3-4 hours of personal time a day without sacrificing something more important then sleep.
Basically forgot to answer OP's question whilst I realized I have no free time to do anything writing this ( summer does not count because I am not in school ) But if you can set yourself to 6 hours of sleep and be consistent with it your body with attune itself properly to what you are trying to get it to do. It takes sometime to get use to but give it a couple weeks and you should be fine.
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On August 09 2012 20:41 rEalGuapo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2012 20:27 Frigo wrote:
No you really can't reduce sleep time despite various claims to the contrary (binaural beats, biphasic sleep, etc). While sleeping your entire body is repairing itself, most noticeably your skin. It also processes your memories in various ways. All these take time, you just can't skip them without side effects.
However you can greatly improve your quality of sleep, which is at least as important as the amount of sleep. For quite a while my sleep was utter crap since I slept randomly and made many mistakes but over time I discovered a few cheap tricks that helped me tremendously:
- Don't drink coffee after 16:00. Caffeine has a biological half-life of 5 hours, you'll have trouble falling asleep if you drink coffee too late.
- Drink at most 2 or 3 cups of coffee a day or equivalent. Caffeine is not a substitute for sleep.
- Go to sleep early, for me that's before 23:00. Don't sleep at day. Sleeping in sunlight guarantees low-quality sleep.
- Go to sleep and wake up at consistent times every day, don't sleep randomly. Your body will get used to the routine and will be much more efficient. I know this is hard when you are a university student, but try it. At least you will have less trouble adjusting when you start going to work.
- Get a softer, more comfortable bed. Don't "get used to" uncomfortable, hard beds or awkward sleeping positions.
- Get a progressive alarm clock (or an appropriate app for your phone), it improves your awakenings and mornings greatly.
- Don't play video games (especially not something competitive), use the computer, or study anything before going to bed. Your body will stuck in some kind of hyperactive/overworked state and you will have trouble falling asleep. Instead I recommend some light reading in the bed to relax (get an e-book reader, books are heavy and a bit awkward to read in the bed).
- Don't leave on your computer or any music when you are going to bed. It's much better to sleep to silence than various noises.
- Try to do some daily exercise. Apart from being healthy, you will have zero trouble falling asleep if you exhaust yourself physically. Biking and jogging on alternate days worked for me.
- Try to shower before going to sleep, much more comfortable to sleep clean.
Thanks, all of your points seem to make sense and some of them I already incorporated into my daily life. I will try to get the rest in there as well.
Few more I can think of regarding quality of sleep and life in general:
Sleep and in general:
- Do not eat anything 2..3 hours before going to sleep. Eat healthy otherwise.
- I don't recommend to do power naps or biphasic sleep. You risk more interruptions and you will have more problems falling asleep in the evenings. It is also more difficult to plan properly. At least this was my experience, other people reported it beneficial. I'm not sure if it worth a try to mess up your sleep schedule.
- Don't try to cut down your optimal sleep time or quality by making false concessions. It will affect your waking hours very badly. Your memory, your attention, your reasoning, your mood, your looks will all be negatively affected if you don't sleep properly on a consistent schedule. I'm speaking from experience, all this will lead to a more miserable life, and that ~1 hour of extra free time will worth exactly nothing.
- Set up your alarm clock or phone to when you are going to sleep. You can observe your schedule more easily that way.
- Sleep with open windows if you live in a green area.
- Lose weight if you are overweight, it is also a source of low quality sleep (and life). See daily exercise.
If you really want the extra time, try to optimize other activities:
- If commute takes too much time, try to move closer to your school/workplace (beware, inner city noises affect sleep quality negatively) or find alternative transportation. Or squeeze in some extra activities while riding the bus like reading or doing your homework.
- Stop watching TV.
- Stop browsing the net aimlessly.
- Cut your gaming time.
- Try to find quality activities in your spare time that are also relaxing.
- Try to shop less, it shouldn't be a daily activity.
- Try to bundle your household chores. Try to do those on the weekends that do not require daily attention like washing or cleaning.
- Shower instead of bathing
- Try to eat out or eat prepackaged food instead of time consuming cooking. Still eat healthy.
- Realize when you are wasting time
At school and work:
- Don't do overtime or study too much. Your only reward will be headaches, suffering and difficulties in relaxing and falling asleep.
- You can take small breaks in your study or work (where applicable). I work as a programmer and we have a nice big couch where we can sit down and relax. It is very refreshing and improves both quality of waking hours and work performance. Don't try to study, do homework or work in breaks, just relax.
- Even if you have a variable workload, do not sacrifice your sleep time. Start studying to exams earlier. Do your homeworks earlier. Try to ensure a more even workload. At work, speak to your supervisor/manager/boss in such situations. Corporate mentality and project management has quite a few pitfalls like this, but this topic alone worth several books so I will not describe it in great detail.
- Do not pull all-nighters.
Really, it's more of a issue of getting your entire life together, not only your sleep. Ask yourself what prevents you from having a quality life and sleep and try to resolve those issues.
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Again, I think sleep is to specific to one person so a lot of the advice is really not helpful for getting better sleep. You'll have to find a good schedule for yourself. There are however ideas you should follow, and some have posted good ones. I have some as well.
Go to bed early. You need to make sure you don't stay up for Champions League or w/e, I have trouble with that, in Romania the games end at about 23:30 and it is bad for me since I might need help waking up early, or I don't, but in exchange I get up too early, since I know I need to. My internal clock is pretty good, I rarely need an alarm, but when my clock fails me it is bad.
Give yourself time for "modulation". It is a term I am borrowing from Renato Canova in the context of endurance training. One day you go hard, two days you go soft, as an active recovery. With sleep, I have a bit of modulation in my schedule, so I would sometimes wake up extremely early, like after 6-6.5 hours of sleep feeling fine, some other days I need 8.5 hours. The way you handle this is by getting up and doing stuff you don't HAVE to do no matter what. Like exercise, for instance, you can exercise if you are up early, or skip it if you get up late.
The way you feel after waking up is generally dependent on the phase of the sleep you were in when you woke up, so again, find a way to not have to use alarms, and you do this by going to bed early.
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Show nested quote +- Don't drink coffee after 16:00. Caffeine has a biological half-life of 5 hours, you'll have trouble falling asleep if you drink coffee too late.
- Get a softer, more comfortable bed. Don't "get used to" uncomfortable, hard beds or awkward sleeping positions. These two aren't correct. While Caffeine has a half-life of 5 hours, the way it interacts with the body usually results in a high point at around 30 minutes till an hour, after that you end up being more tired than before the caffein arrived in your body.
That is correct, coffee makes you tired, but it is significantly different from the exhaustion you feel from physical activities. The latter makes falling asleep easier, the former just makes you twitchy and unable to sleep. It's kind of similar when you are in front of the computer at 2 am, tired as hell, but you still can't get yourself to sleep.
Try drinking an energy drink at 3am. Find out how long it lasts for you personally till you start getting tired without big exercise or anything similar. That time usually varies between 1-2 hours for most people. Keep in mind that there are various conditions (e.g. low blood pressure) where caffeine will make you immediately more tired. That's the reason why e.g. some elderly people can drink a cup of coffee and fall asleep after half an hour. =P
Yes I did experience it several times. However it was invariably lower quality sleep, in the wrong time, and I usually woke up 3 hours into it, unable to go back to sleep. Coffee is still unreliable in this situation and should not be used to manage sleep patterns. The hard limit of 16:00 makes it sure that it will not affect your sleep in either way.
A "soft bed" doesn't make you sleep better. To effectively relax your body needs a bed that helps maintain natural positions without either letting your weight decide how that ends up looking but also without offering a flat, hard surface. Most people err on the wrong side and get too soft beds which can result in all kinds of back problems in the long run.
Back problems are caused by lack of exercise, bad posture and poor working conditions (position, duration, etc) rather than sleeping position. Sleeping is not some kind of physical therapy to fix your back, it is as you said, a period of rest. I also discovered this by experience when I tried to maintain "proper posture" while sleeping, with a hard bed and a low pillow, looking at sleep as some kind of physiotherapy. All I got was further neck problems, trouble falling asleep and low quality sleep. You should really just let your muscles rest rather than maintain an awkward position.
Show nested quote +- Don't leave on your computer or any music when you are going to bed. It's much better to sleep to silence than various noises. Not exactly true. As long as the "noise" is below a certain threshold (I think 70dB, but basically equivalent to soft music, some birds around etc.) it's actually better than complete silence. Having some sound around is comforting and relaxing.
I found it the complete opposite. For quite a while I was sleeping with my computer on. I tried to switch it off once and was flabbergasted how much well rested I was in the morning. Since then it is always off at the night. Try it out for yourself.
Show nested quote +- Go to sleep early, for me that's before 23:00. Don't sleep at day. Sleeping in sunlight guarantees low-quality sleep. Also a tricky one that you can't exactly quantify. In literally the entirety of southern europe sleeping 4-5 hours per night and 2-3 hours per day is completely normal. It depends on what you're used to and your body personally.
I'm not familiar with their sleeping patterns or quality, but I suspect they have to choose the lesser evil. There are a variety of research into how light affects sleep, they mostly agree it's not positively.
If you're like me and love browsing before going to bed there are various programs which adjust the light temperature your computer screen emits. I can't remember the one I used to use but maybe someone else can link one or google will be your buddy. Solid light (colder in the morning, warmer in the evening) is half the deal when it comes to making your body work properly despite artificial lighting.
It's not (just) the light, it's the position, the focus required for anything on it, the way I dismiss any warnings of my body to go to sleep. Also try this out for yourself, do not watch TV, use computers or anything similar before going to bed, just read something in bed to relax.
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On August 09 2012 21:05 heishe wrote:
I have some kind of magic number of minutes that I need to sleep at night. When I sleep like that, I will feel really tired when waking up (not badly tired, just this "Oh god this feels so good I need to keep sleeping") but will have 100% of my energy available during the day, not being tired even a little bit.
Unfortunately I haven't yet figured out the exact number, but this thread needs to remind me to do some testing. It's somewhere between 7 and 8 hours.
It's more of a range, it's between 7.5 and 8 hours for me. But it's pointless to try to determine it precisely, if you set up a tradition alarm clock you will almost invariably wake up like crap, just use a progressive alarm clock.
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Although most of my pointers have been covered above,I can expand a bit on how I manage on 4-6 hours of sleep a night while NOT sleeping in during my weekends/off days. I definitely don't mean to be pretentious or anything and I'm not superman. I just want to give you my thoughts because I do discuss my sleep habits a lot with friends/peers.
Here's some background info. I'm currently a nurse and work 12-15 hour shifts 2-3 days in a row. I worked this Monday-Wednesday with 4-6 hours of sleep each night. It's a very physically demanding job (I'm 24). I once used a pedometer and measured 5 miles of walking done during a shift (besides the lifting and bending I do). To those that think nurses sit around all day, definitely not at a high acuity cardiac floor. Logic says I should be drained on my off days right? Nope, slept 6 hours last night after being at work for 16 hours and woke up without an alarm clock. I'm about to go run/lift after this post! On to my thoughts on this....
1. Physically/Mentally active: I lift/run 2-3 times a week, work, volunteer once a week at a clinic, have a gf who I see x1-2 a week, and go to school part-time. I believe having a strong cardiovascular system, a strong body, etc, logically gives me a stronger body to endure a long day. I also believe an active lifestyle keeps your mind off of sleep. Ever noticed how playing video games keep your mind off of eating? I think it's a similar situation.
2. Goal: This semi-relates to sleep... but I think if you have a goal or a dream you want to work towards every day helps your mind WANTING to start the day and ACCOMPLISH things. This helps your willpower to wake up after a hard day. Imagine being jobless during the summer as a student and the only thing to look forward to each morning is gaming. What's the incentive on waking up at all? I'm pursuing med school and most of the activities in my life one way or another will help me advance towards my dream. I can't wait to accomplish things every day.
3. Napping: I believe in napping, but not for 3-4 hours! Maybe once a week (if even), I nap when I feel like I need it. I think getting 1-2 hours in (a complete sleep cycle) the afternoon is optimum. Seriously, nap if you have to. It's your body telling you it's tired (although you can reduce this by having a fitter body). Napping after a big meal doesn't count lol.
4. Caffeine: During my undergrad years, I remember popping 500mg of caffeine at a time and still required naps, but now I survive on 1-200 mg right when I wake up with no need for that mid-afternoon coffee. I'm not saying caffeine is required, but titrating the right amount to keep you peppy in the morning is definitely a plus.
5. Progressive alarm clock: Someone mentioned sleep cycles previously and I believe it's a key factor to find what works for you. Sleep disturbances is bad! I used to have that buzzing alarm clock and blare it every morning. I wake up startled and agitated. However, now I have a galaxy s3 and there is a feature in the clock that allows the alarm to progressively get louder and louder up to 3 minutes to the desired max volume. I use a very pleasant bird chirping alarm tone and it really makes a difference!
6. Bed: I sleep on a tempur-pedic bed (have a bit of lordosis), and it's one of best purchases of my life. It's hard to get used to at first, but it helps me fall into deep sleep tremendously.
7. Lighting: My day starts at 4-5 a.m. since I'm in the office by 6 a.m. It's pitch black outside, so I go to sleep with my desk lamp behind my monitor, giving my room a soft, white glow. I think this tip might be just speculating, but I think having the same sleep environment every night helps a bit.
8. Food: Carb-heavy meals make you sleepy. This is dangerous mid-afternoon and can ruin your sleeping schedule. Increasing protein helps your body recover from physical stress faster.
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I actually had the same schedule as you not to long ago with the commute and everything. with only 1 day off cause I worked 6 8 hour days a week. So I would stay up tell 12-1 am and wake up at 7 to be ready to leave for work at 8 get home around 7 and run on my treadmill while catching up on TV shows.
So I wouldn't get tons of sleep but after your body acclimates to it you can get use to that amount of sleep. It will kill you for the first couple months but after working that job for 5 years I had a decent home life with my fiance. I suggest you just do what you need to make you happy and satisfied. your going to have to move something around cause you obviously can't live like this if your unhappy with your situation so cutting a little bit of sleep or napping on lunch or something to give you that little energy boost tell your use to 6-7 hours of sleep.
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Every night i go to bed at midnight and finally sleep around 2:30am, just to get up at 8:30am for work. I wish i could get some solid 7-8 hours. Well, weekends i usually get my 10 hours to compensate.
I wouldn't recommend anyone to go for so little sleep when you have to work 8 hours, it has a serious impact on the concentration.
From what i know, the best way to get a good sleep schedule would be just going for it. Go to bed at a certain time and set your alarm to wake you up at a certain time. No exceptions. After a few weeks your body will have adjusted and you wake up at the normal time without the need for an alarm.
Didn't work for me since my brain doesn't have an "off" switch but should work for most other people.
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On August 09 2012 22:53 Morfildur wrote:
Every night i go to bed at midnight and finally sleep around 2:30am, just to get up at 8:30am for work. I wish i could get some solid 7-8 hours. Well, weekends i usually get my 10 hours to compensate.
I wouldn't recommend anyone to go for so little sleep when you have to work 8 hours, it has a serious impact on the concentration.
From what i know, the best way to get a good sleep schedule would be just going for it. Go to bed at a certain time and set your alarm to wake you up at a certain time. No exceptions. After a few weeks your body will have adjusted and you wake up at the normal time without the need for an alarm.
Didn't work for me since my brain doesn't have an "off" switch but should work for most other people.
I have the same "problem" you have. Both my parents can basically sleep whenever they want to. To them bed equals sleep (or couch / chair as well in my dads case). It always takes me a couple of hours to actually fall asleep.
The not being able to sleep made me watch a lot of TV in bed, to the point that I associate "going to bed" with "watching a few shows and then try to sleep" which made it even worse. I know I can fix this by not watching any TV when going to bed but it's almost an addiction now lol.
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I for one always sleep around 6 to 8 hours max and while i can't exactly tell why its likely because i almost always wake up around the same time in the morning.
So no matter if I go to sleep at 12 PM or at 2 AM i will still wake up around 7:30 AM, well most of the time anyways... if i am shit tired or haven't slept in a long time i might wake up later.
Thus if i have to give an advice it would be for you to try to wake up at the same hour every day and than constantly increase the time at which you go to sleep.
But i don't know if this has any backing to it, does it ? If anyone knows i would be happy to find out :p
Also sleeping is pretty much the best tool for your body to "regenerate" and more importantly it helps the brain "set" your metabolism ( and this things can be damaged by the lack of sleep even if you don't "fell tired" at all), so if you can keep it at 8 hours just keep it at 8 hours unless decreasing it to 7 or 6 really helps you.
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On August 09 2012 20:53 r.Evo wrote:
While you can't "reduce sleep time" you can reduce the non-REM sleep time. This part is crucial. Most people I know who sleep 7-8hours or more never once in their life made an attempt to find out how that works for them personally.
What I did about 7 years ago or so was devote an month on cleaning up my sleep schedule. Go to bed, set an alarmclock to ring in 3 hours, get up. Repeat this every 12 hours. The first 3-4 days were plain and flat out brutal. I didn't fall asleep quick enough, I was incredibly dizzy after waking up and I couldn't perform anything "real" during the time I was awake. After those first days what happened is that whenever I layed down in bed I started to fall asleep asap and I started to slowly feel less dizzy and it felt somewhat okay.
Next step (while you're still sleep deprived) is to find out how long your sleep phase really is (average times from 2:15h to 3:45h are completely normal) by adjusting the sleep time you give yourself in 15-30 minute increments. For me personally 2:45h of sleep in one setting just feels incredible. I wake up on the first tone of my alarm, I am immediately at full capacity and my brain just feels sharp as hell.
After spending 3-4 weeks in that schedule I started to skip one of the two phases per day and returned to sleeping 1x, now at 5:30-5:45hours per day. That has been my standard sleep time ever since when I actually want to get work in, even over longer periods of time (~4months) I had never had a problem with that timing.
What I noticed what stayed with me after a couple of years (especially comparing myself to other people when it comes to sleep) is that I fall asleep quicker, sleep deeper and am more relaxed than anyone I know. The only big "drawback" is that if I try sleeping e.g. 1-2hours at a time I'm completely wrecked. My guess would be that the body adjusted to the schedule and that time is right in the middle of a REM phase.
tl;dr: "Cleaning up" your sleep schedule might easily net you 2-3hours more, the only way I tried this personally is by living with an incredibly strict alarmclock for a couple of weeks. I don't regret it at all and would do it over and over again. Getting to know how your body and brain works and how to make them work at their best is incredibly rewarding, most people just don't bother even thinking about it.
PS: Switching from mono- to biphasic sleep and back within a couple of days feels rather normal to me, no problems there at all. Note that babies/elderly people sleep polyphasic and that monophasic sleep is more a product of our culture, not of our internal clocks. There's a reason most of us get sleepy around midday.
This guy has the right idea, although the method for accomplishing it was a bit extreme. What you need to do is figure out how long one phase of sleep is. Although I would recommend a Zeo for this instead of torturing yourself. The Zeo will also be able to show you how much time in each phase of sleep you are in during each cycle, so you can see how many cycles are optimal for you.
http://www.myzeo.com/sleep/
Not only can this show you your sleep cycle and it can give you an idea if you are missing phases of sleep, waking up due to apnea or basically any problems you have with your sleep. Additionally it can be set to wake you up when you are coming out of a sleep cycle so that you feel more rested when you wake up. I used this device after coming back from afghanistan to figure out some of my sleep problems and it showed I wasn't going into deep sleep at all. Who knows maybe you have a deeper problem than just sleep time as well.
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I think the simplest solution has nothing to do with sleep habits at all: find a better place to live. Unless you work in a really nice neighborhood, an industrial park, or the middle of nowhere, I'm sure there is housing within 10 minutes of your workplace that you can probably afford. You may not think that it's worth it to move in all cases, but realize that by doing so you will be getting almost 2 extra hours a day to do what you like, perhaps more if you conveniently locate yourself near shopping centers as well. If it becomes necessary, you could always work an extra job to pay off a down payment.
Also, you won't be living like this for the next 50 years. You can always get a new or maybe part time job, and hopefully your career has some room for promotions on your part that will allow you to secure better hours. Since I assume you have already graduated uni, you won't have a ton of options of jobs that you can do with your degree, but I'm sure there are multiple. Look into them.
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On August 09 2012 23:29 StreetWise wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2012 20:53 r.Evo wrote:
While you can't "reduce sleep time" you can reduce the non-REM sleep time. This part is crucial. Most people I know who sleep 7-8hours or more never once in their life made an attempt to find out how that works for them personally.
What I did about 7 years ago or so was devote an month on cleaning up my sleep schedule. Go to bed, set an alarmclock to ring in 3 hours, get up. Repeat this every 12 hours. The first 3-4 days were plain and flat out brutal. I didn't fall asleep quick enough, I was incredibly dizzy after waking up and I couldn't perform anything "real" during the time I was awake. After those first days what happened is that whenever I layed down in bed I started to fall asleep asap and I started to slowly feel less dizzy and it felt somewhat okay.
Next step (while you're still sleep deprived) is to find out how long your sleep phase really is (average times from 2:15h to 3:45h are completely normal) by adjusting the sleep time you give yourself in 15-30 minute increments. For me personally 2:45h of sleep in one setting just feels incredible. I wake up on the first tone of my alarm, I am immediately at full capacity and my brain just feels sharp as hell.
After spending 3-4 weeks in that schedule I started to skip one of the two phases per day and returned to sleeping 1x, now at 5:30-5:45hours per day. That has been my standard sleep time ever since when I actually want to get work in, even over longer periods of time (~4months) I had never had a problem with that timing.
What I noticed what stayed with me after a couple of years (especially comparing myself to other people when it comes to sleep) is that I fall asleep quicker, sleep deeper and am more relaxed than anyone I know. The only big "drawback" is that if I try sleeping e.g. 1-2hours at a time I'm completely wrecked. My guess would be that the body adjusted to the schedule and that time is right in the middle of a REM phase.
tl;dr: "Cleaning up" your sleep schedule might easily net you 2-3hours more, the only way I tried this personally is by living with an incredibly strict alarmclock for a couple of weeks. I don't regret it at all and would do it over and over again. Getting to know how your body and brain works and how to make them work at their best is incredibly rewarding, most people just don't bother even thinking about it.
PS: Switching from mono- to biphasic sleep and back within a couple of days feels rather normal to me, no problems there at all. Note that babies/elderly people sleep polyphasic and that monophasic sleep is more a product of our culture, not of our internal clocks. There's a reason most of us get sleepy around midday. This guy has the right idea, although the method for accomplishing it was a bit extreme. What you need to do is figure out how long one phase of sleep is. Although I would recommend a Zeo for this instead of torturing yourself. The Zeo will also be able to show you how much time in each phase of sleep you are in during each cycle, so you can see how many cycles are optimal for you. http://www.myzeo.com/sleep/Not only can this show you your sleep cycle and it can give you an idea if you are missing phases of sleep, waking up due to apnea or basically any problems you have with your sleep. Additionally it can be set to wake you up when you are coming out of a sleep cycle so that you feel more rested when you wake up. I used this device after coming back from afghanistan to figure out some of my sleep problems and it showed I wasn't going into deep sleep at all. Who knows maybe you have a deeper problem than just sleep time as well.
Ohgawd. Yeah, this looks way easier than what I did. I'll start recommending this one instead. Thanks. <3
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On August 09 2012 21:41 Badgesc wrote:
Reducing sleep time is not the way because sleep is paramount to your health.
I'm at my best with usually 10 hours or a little more a night. I chose to sacrifice TV and a bunch of crap. I think sleep should be on top of your list and the rest is less important.
After 10 hours I feel like I just stepped out of a grave. I'm tired and unproductive.
Personally I function best somewhere around 7.5 hours of sleep, but I guess it's different for every person.
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On August 09 2012 20:03 Striker.superfreunde wrote:
One of my tutors once told me, it would be enough to sleep 5 to 6 hours during a workweek, and catch up the missing hours on weekends. I don't know if it's true, or right or healthy, but i can say, if you do so, you will have to take a nap on saturday/sunday (or whatever the days of your weekend are) afternoon.
This is very true. I get completely destroyed if I don't get my regular 8 hours sleep. But during my time in the military, I could easily sleep down to 5 hours a night, and then catch back up with 12-14 hours a night in the weekends. I have no idea if its healthy for you in the long term (I only did it for half a year), but it works.
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I hear that getting better sleep can help reduce the amount of time one needs to sleep. If you're getting really shitty sleep now it could be increasing the amount of time to need to sleep.
Apparently diet and exercise increase energy as well. I'll try to confirm these ideas later.
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On August 09 2012 23:56 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2012 20:03 Striker.superfreunde wrote:
One of my tutors once told me, it would be enough to sleep 5 to 6 hours during a workweek, and catch up the missing hours on weekends. I don't know if it's true, or right or healthy, but i can say, if you do so, you will have to take a nap on saturday/sunday (or whatever the days of your weekend are) afternoon.
This is very true. I get completely destroyed if I don't get my regular 8 hours sleep. But during my time in the military, I could easily sleep down to 5 hours a night, and then catch back up with 12-14 hours a night in the weekends. I have no idea if its healthy for you in the long term (I only did it for half a year), but it works. This doesn't work at all for me. No matter how long I sleep during weekends I can't 'make up' for any sleep I lost in the previous days. I have to sleep 8+ hours each day or I'm a wreck.
Also, one thing I've noticed is that it's not only the amount of time I sleep that determines whether I feel tired when I wake up, but also when I go to sleep. Sleeping from 2300 to 0700 gives a much better effect than 0100 to 0900. Hell, even 0100 to 1100 will make me a wreck!
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On August 10 2012 00:00 Thorakh wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2012 23:56 Excludos wrote:On August 09 2012 20:03 Striker.superfreunde wrote:
One of my tutors once told me, it would be enough to sleep 5 to 6 hours during a workweek, and catch up the missing hours on weekends. I don't know if it's true, or right or healthy, but i can say, if you do so, you will have to take a nap on saturday/sunday (or whatever the days of your weekend are) afternoon.
This is very true. I get completely destroyed if I don't get my regular 8 hours sleep. But during my time in the military, I could easily sleep down to 5 hours a night, and then catch back up with 12-14 hours a night in the weekends. I have no idea if its healthy for you in the long term (I only did it for half a year), but it works. This doesn't work at all for me. No matter how long I sleep during weekends I can't 'make up' for any sleep I lost in the previous days. I have to sleep 8+ hours each day or I'm a wreck. Also, one thing I've noticed is that it's not only the amount of time I sleep that determines whether I feel tired when I wake up, but also when I go to sleep. Sleeping from 2300 to 0700 gives a much better effect than 0100 to 0900. Hell, even 0100 to 1100 will make me a wreck!
This is whats called a dayrythm. Some are more bound to it than others (personally I don't feel much different when I go to sleep, as long as I get my 8 hours). The internal clock in your body gets more and more bound to it the more you follow it. If you've had the same sleeping patterns for years, and then try to break out of it, its going to be hell.
Sleeping patterns also follows whoever you might be sleeping with. If you have a girlfriend or wife you sleep with every night, the chances are the internal clock is going to adjust to her/him.
The problem with giving sleep advice is that there are so many variable, everything from your internal clock, to who you sleep with, down to personal DNA. There is also the possibility of a sleeping disorder if you wake up tired even after 8 hours asleep. And they are really hard to find out about on your own. I think there was a case of some old woman being able to get enough sleep with only 1 hour a night. I'm so jealous 
to the OP: I suggest bending your daily life around your sleep, instead of the other way around. Some people just aren't made to sleep less or at variable times.
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Pay someone to do your chores Time is money!
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On August 10 2012 00:24 Catch]22 wrote:Pay someone to do your chores Time is money!
Yeah, I work part time while I study.
So of course I will go for that, thank you for the tip!
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Could be worse you could be me
I feel shit unless I get anything but 11-12
but when I do get my full 11-12 I feel like a god
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On August 09 2012 20:41 rEalGuapo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2012 20:27 Frigo wrote:
No you really can't reduce sleep time despite various claims to the contrary (binaural beats, biphasic sleep, etc). While sleeping your entire body is repairing itself, most noticeably your skin. It also processes your memories in various ways. All these take time, you just can't skip them without side effects.
However you can greatly improve your quality of sleep, which is at least as important as the amount of sleep. For quite a while my sleep was utter crap since I slept randomly and made many mistakes but over time I discovered a few cheap tricks that helped me tremendously:
- Don't drink coffee after 16:00. Caffeine has a biological half-life of 5 hours, you'll have trouble falling asleep if you drink coffee too late.
- Drink at most 2 or 3 cups of coffee a day or equivalent. Caffeine is not a substitute for sleep.
- Go to sleep early, for me that's before 23:00. Don't sleep at day. Sleeping in sunlight guarantees low-quality sleep.
- Go to sleep and wake up at consistent times every day, don't sleep randomly. Your body will get used to the routine and will be much more efficient. I know this is hard when you are a university student, but try it. At least you will have less trouble adjusting when you start going to work.
- Get a softer, more comfortable bed. Don't "get used to" uncomfortable, hard beds or awkward sleeping positions.
- Get a progressive alarm clock (or an appropriate app for your phone), it improves your awakenings and mornings greatly.
- Don't play video games (especially not something competitive), use the computer, or study anything before going to bed. Your body will stuck in some kind of hyperactive/overworked state and you will have trouble falling asleep. Instead I recommend some light reading in the bed to relax (get an e-book reader, books are heavy and a bit awkward to read in the bed).
- Don't leave on your computer or any music when you are going to bed. It's much better to sleep to silence than various noises.
- Try to do some daily exercise. Apart from being healthy, you will have zero trouble falling asleep if you exhaust yourself physically. Biking and jogging on alternate days worked for me.
- Try to shower before going to sleep, much more comfortable to sleep clean.
Thanks, all of your points seem to make sense and some of them I already incorporated into my daily life. I will try to get the rest in there as well.
Same here, I'm going to do as much of this as possible.
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On August 09 2012 19:36 rEalGuapo wrote:
Hi TL!
I recently started sleeping 8.5 to 9hours per night and feel better than ever. I tried to work with 7 hours for quite some time but I was really tired in the morning and had problems concentrating over longer periods of time.
So this sounds great, right? I now am energetic and well rested the entire day.
The big downside however is this:
I work 8 hours a day, it takes roughly one hour to get to my work place and another hour back. With eating, shopping, hygiene and the usual household crap I probably spend another 2.5 hours a day.
So 10 hours work+travel 2.5hours household. Well, that makes 12.5h. Sleeping 9 hours my day has only 15 left, if I want to exercise for an hour I only have 1.5hours left as my personal free time.
I can't live like this for the next 50 years.
I know there are vacations and weekends but living only 2 days a week is just a really depressing thought to me.
I know that you can reduce sleep dramatically by splitting the time over the day, that is not an option for me though.
About myself (maybe that is important to know):
I am male age 24 somewhat in shape and my immune system works nice as far as I can tell.
My Question is:
Does anyone of you have a solid way to reduce sleeping time?
Maybe I have to reduce steadily, maybe there is a certain supplement, maybe a certain diet. I did some research but I really am unsure of what to do. Caffeine is not an option, it really messes with my sleeping rythm and makes matters worse over time.
Ideally someone with personal experience could tell what he/she did.
But of course any interesting and legit article is welcome.
Please don't post only to tell me that you think 6hours is enough.
Thanks for your help!
How is your condition? How much do you run in cooper's test? I think a part of the puzzle could really be that you're simply in bad condition. The difference between your energy levels if you're running 3000m or 2400m are huge, your resting heart beat level is around 40% lower if you run 3000m. You're a male in best age, you should run atleast 2800m, or you're in bad condition.
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Well from personal experience (not the best indicator) I know how to reduce sleeping hours, I sleep normally only 7 hours, a lot of the times only 6 but then I cannot perform as good when studying russian or reading books or something, because I cannot concentrate as good, but sometimes I decide to only sleep about 6 hours because I stay late watching something or play videogames with friends. What I'm going to say I've discussed with friends and readed articles, etc.
HOW TO REDUCE SLEEPING HOURS
-It really helps to sleep 5-6 at night and about 1 hour in the afternoon, I heard it is natural to get sleepy at about noon, so take a nap, even if it's only 30 minutes it is better than nothing.
-Cardio. I run when I have the time, which is most of the time about 5-6 miles 3-4 days a week, this is important, having good cardio helps to sleep better and you get a better rest. Swimming is better, any type of good cardio will do.
-Don't eat too much at dinner, because the digestive system needs to put an extra effort so it becomes harder to have a good sleep, I usually don't eat much at dinner, only a little bit. Half of what could be a normal dinner.
Now obviously the hours you "win" with sleeping 1/2 hours less you have to spend on cardio, so you won't likely have more free time, but I obviously think it is better to use those hours in cardio than in just sleeping. It is good to plan how to sleep and when to sleep, the important thing is, if you're sleepy take a nap!
Edit: I don't think sleeping less through monday-friday then "catching up" on weekends is any good, because you will not perform as good in the first 5 days and then in the weekend you will be dead tired and sleep more than you need, which is a recipe for lazyness. I used to do that out of necessity, I had to sleep about 6 and a half hours because of a job that I had to go at 7 am but then couldn't sleep early at night, it was terrible, I tried everything, but the catching up on weekends it's just bad I usually wasted my time just sleeping on sunday, not good.
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I sleep about 5 hours a night. I go to the gym at least 6 hours a week, and some jogging on top of that. I do all sorts of physical things on the weekends as well. I'll admit I am a bit fatigued, but I'm alright. I had terrible insomnia when I was 17 that caused me to sleep literally 4 hours a night. It basically wrecked me, but once I got over the insomnia, I became a lot more tolerant of reduced sleep.
Right now I'm 21, ~165 lbs. I drink lots of water and whiskey. The water especially is very important for keeping you energized throughout the day. Drink lots of it.
I listen to thrash metal to chill me out while trying to fall asleep. It just sweeps away the pains of the day and takes it off my mind, which allows me to relax.
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I have found that eating healthy also contributes strongly to how you feel throughout the day. 7 hours a day while eating healthy and excercising should be enough
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An hour each way commute? That's brutal. You could save an hour and a half every day just by moving closer to work. I don't know how plausible that is for you, though.
How much do you spend on gas every week driving that much? Or do you use public transportation?
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Welcome to adulthood, where the week needs 8 days and the day needs 36 hours.
You should try lavender on your pillow, YES IT SOUNDS STUPID. I was a total sceptic until I tried it, but now I couldn't do without my manly purple/pink bottle of pillow spray. Really, it helped me get more restful sleep.
UK based retailer
Spend the $10 or whatever it costs and give it a try.... worst that can happen is that your pillow smells a little nicer 
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It's not exactly what you asked for, but don't forget to use your travel time to listen to something. If you're not the biggest music fan in the world, I suggest mixing at least some audiobooks/podcasts in.
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Isnt 7 / 8 hours asleep unhealthy ? i thought there was evidence that if you sleep +/- 6 hours a night (as an adult) you will live longer than people who sleep +/- 8 hours a night...
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On August 10 2012 01:36 Denzil wrote:
Could be worse you could be me
I feel shit unless I get anything but 11-12
but when I do get my full 11-12 I feel like a god
I suffer from this as well. If I don't use my alarm I can just sleep all day, with alarm I only really feel awake when I get at least 10-11 hours of sleep.
I am thinking about trying out that 1,5 hours of sleep, wake up, sleep 1,5 hours etc. Or something like that, because sleeping a lot eats up so many hours of your day. ;( I am jealous of those people who only need 5 hours of sleep, you have so much more time!
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Stop spending work on your household so much, if you have a women let her do the things ! If you dont, you dont have to spend time on household, you are single man !
I go to bed at 2am and I am asleep probably half an hour later. I wake up at 6 and then half sleep until 7:20 thats when I get up shower, dress and go to work. I get back from work at ~ 17:45 I eat during work at the break so I do not require time cooking and stuff. Then I can play starcraft from 18:00 - till 2Am with cigaret breaks, drinking breaks and toilet breaks !
On weekends I sllep longer to regenerate.
My trick ? Living unhealthy, not working out massive amounts of adrenaline and coffine.
The downside ? I might die sooner, but thats maybe time you spent tiding up your household or sleeping so my time beeing awake will be about the same.
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I know this won't help you, but the Uberman sleep schedule is an effective (if impractical) way of cutting down your sleep time to 2 hours per day:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep
I haven't experimented with the other forms of polyphasic sleep, but Uberman worked for me during the couple of short periods I attempted it. The problem is, it's wildly impractical to excuse yourself from whatever you're doing 6 times per day, and if you fall asleep at any other point (this was my biggest problem since I lay down a lot while watching movies or whatever) you're basically fucked and need to go through the adjustment period all over again.
For you, there are two things which may help:
1. Increase the restfulness of your sleep, by any means. Personally I've not been able to achieve this with any CDs or scents that claim to give you a better night's sleep, but you might have more success.
2. Get more motivation to wake up. One problem many people have is that, when they wake up, the first thing they have to do is get ready and go to work. This is going to make you feel awful and psychologically trick you into being tired. You may want to try going to sleep much earlier, and doing something fun before work for a couple of hours, like playing Starcraft or having a really nice breakfast every morning. The days where you have something to look forward to are much easier to face without getting tired.
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During the school year, I clocked something like 5 hours of sleep a day. I ate a ridiculous amount-- something like 4 meals a day with quite a few snacks scattered throughout. It may be completely wrong and unscientific, but eating frequently throughout the day helped me stretch the amount of time I could function. I didn't really take in any caffeine (except for some green tea and ginseng, god I'm Asian) either. I also drank a lot of water.
I didn't really work out much like most of my friends. I ran maybe 3 or 4 times a week, that was it.
I think my case might be a different from most people. I don't gain weight easily, so food gets converted to energy for me pretty efficiently I guess.
Admittedly, this seems to be a temporary thing at best. I know that getting to the end of the year I was less than 100%.
When I got back for the summer, I slept a lot. I'd hit my bed at like 12, wouldn't wake up to the next 12. At home I eat a bit less as well. It's been getting better, and now I wake up before my 9:30 alarm goes off (don't hate too much on my alarm time). I'm guessing my sleep debt from the year has finally been paid off, and its time to go back to school and do it all over again.
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On August 09 2012 19:42 Solarsail wrote:
You need to sleep until you are rested. Getting less will make you feel and perform worse in the long term. It's unfortunate that you need 8.5-9 hours to feel rested when some people can get away with 6 or 7 but it's not something you can change. Supplements do not work.
I suggest moving closer to your job or finding some way to reduce that maintenance time, for example by making stews that last 3-4 days with one preparation time.
When I first started reading the comments I thought: Yeah, this guy is right. Leave the sleep alone.
But there seem to be quite some cool things out there. I was really impressed by r.Evo (the crazy guy who split his sleeping in 4 parts for a month), that seemed to be really good. The zeo stuff might be better but I have always had a thing for being brutal when it comes to my body.
I feel a huge difference between waking up by myself and waking up with an alarm. If I wake up with alarm I am tired and have a hard time getting started with my day but if I wake up by myself I feel really good the entire day. To do this I go to bed at the same time every night and start off with an alarm clock. After 1-2 weeks I have gotten into the rhythm and I will wake up at the same time but without alarm clock and feeling way better.
This summer changed my sleeping schedule back 3 hours. I went to sleep at 20:00 (8 PM) and woke up at 04-05:00. This was to give me more of my highest performing at home instead of at school. ;P I get tired in the afternoons.
In the morning I planned to do all my homework and run. I realized that sleeping like this would greatly effect my social life (other 16 yr olds don't live like that(and listen to bad music <3 beatles)).
Well... My point was that this thread has turned out really great and that maybe you should try getting rid of your alarm.
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I am working in 3 shifts and i will tell how my sleep routine changes each time:
1. 6.00 - 14.00, I sleep from 15.30 to 18 and 00.00 - 4.30 so it makes total 7 hours.
2. 14.00 - 22.00, I sleep at 4.00 - 12.00, total 8hours
3. 22.00 - 5.00 I get my sleep at 6.30 - 11.00 and 18.00 - 20.00, total 6.5 hours
I could say that all times I feel good, maybe 1. is the hardest since at ~12.00-14.00 you start to feel a bit tired. My family always tells me that: day sleep > night sleep. The most powerful thing I saw are people that can take short nap of 15 mins during daytime, they sleep not much at night but that 15 mins makes them sooo much refreshed,. I heard namps of 30mins or more a bit hurts and you feel sleepy. Master that 15min nap and become pro at lil sleeping!
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United States5162 Posts
Maybe it's just me, but no matter how long or short my sleep is I still wake up tired. In fact, unless I get like 3 hours of sleep, I think I feel pretty much the same whether I slept for 6, 8, or 10 hours.
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On August 09 2012 19:47 Pandemona wrote:
Well, i beleive this is what the scale is for sleep.
Newborn - up to 18 hours
1–12 months - 14–18 hours
1–3 years - 12–15 hours
3–5 years - 11–13 hours
5–12 years - 9–11 hours
Adolescents - 9–10 hours
Adults - 7/8 hours
So if you struggled with 7 try 8? 11pm sleep - 7am wake up?
I'm 20 and if I don't set my alarms (set about 8 of them with snooze on & everything) I could easily sleep 12+ hours non-stop. So weird as I feel fine even after only let's say 5-6 hours of sleep.
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I sleep 5-6 hours at night, 2 hours when I get off work, and feel quite good. Though I am often tired first waking up from my 2 hour nap.
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this thread is sad: you found the PERFECT amount of sleep, not only for you, but for people in general.yet you want to cahnge it so you have more time.... 8,5 hours sleep is prefect, don't reduce it.
move closer to your job so the 2 hours get saved there.
for all means, do NOT reduce your sleep hours
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In basic training for airforce we were forced into like 4-5 hours of sleep per night. Its not ideal by any means but we grew accustomed to it. Now in techschool I get 6-7 hours every night and I can do everything at a perfectly good level. Sometimes when things get quiet or doing something excessively boring I turn to a Monster Energy drink but overall 6-7 hours works for me.
My sleeping schedule is also very erratic. Every other weekday 3:55am or 4:45am. Going to bed from 9 to 10pm sometimes later. On the weekends tho I catch up with 8-10 hours of sleep staying up late and waking up after noon. All it takes is some getting used to, itll suck for first week but it gets constantly easier over time. I don't find myself wishing I got more sleep since I go to bed at 9 or 10 on weekdays by choice.
7 hours per night is perfectly reasonable imho
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On August 10 2012 05:59 [N3O]r3d33m3r wrote:
this thread is sad: you found the PERFECT amount of sleep, not only for you, but for people in general.yet you want to cahnge it so you have more time.... 8,5 hours sleep is prefect, don't reduce it.
move closer to your job so the 2 hours get saved there.
for all means, do NOT reduce your sleep hours
I have usually been sleeping 8-9 hrs and thought it was 'perfect'. Experimented a bit and nowadays I sleep 5-6 hrs, which I also find to be 'perfect'. Some people have to reduce their sleep to achieve their goals...
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You just need to give your body some time to adjust to the new schedule, the body rejects anything it isnt used to.
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my experience with shifting sleep around has led me to believe that it comes down to the quality of sleep.
i get to bed with a fairly loud computer in the room. at first, this was unbearable;the amount of light that came from peripherals or the computer case.. along with the sound of the fans made it pretty unpleasant for a short while.
it is summer now, and i used to sleep on a large futon in perfectly cool conditions elsewhere.
though the frustration that comes from a lack of very good sleeping conditions for me is still kinda' unwarranted.
for someone like me who is unable to control most of everything about my sleep at times(aside from hours total), i think it comes down to supplementing it all with healthier eating, and habits that grow to help your day get better.
i remember waking up feeling dehydrated most of the time. my eyes and throat were sore each time i'd wake up, and i'd compare these experiences to when i'd wake up bright and early on my own--feeling extremely rested and glad.
in both cases, i've gone through the spectrum of sleeping very little, to being asleep for extreme amounts of time.
it's still very difficult to describe what good sleep is for me, but i definately understand how sleep (or lack of) can contribute to extremely bad health.
i understand the thoughts behind having little time to yourself, but i think it's first-and-foremost important for you to feel yourself, and to be at your best for each day. this is coming from someone who's experimented with sleep on their own for many years.
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The tips:
1) Get good sleep
2) Try to time your alarm (or when you go to sleep) in some 90 minute interval (so 6 hours/7.5 hours/9 hours after you fall asleep), so that you wake up around the end of a sleep cycle instead of trying to wake up when you are in the deep sleep phase. This makes it easier to wake up
Also, try to trim time off from other activities. Can you trim 45 minutes from the daily routine of eating/hygiene/etc?
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I dont know if your schedule is good for this but there are many different sleep cycles that you can try which will reduce your sleeping quite a lot but require you to take frquent 4 hour naps or something like that, I tried one during finals week it worked pretty well.
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8 to 9 Hours is perfect for me. What sucks is that life won't let you. If only society as a whole were more relaxed.
___________
Life:
Sleep
Fun
Money
Choose 2.
___________
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sleep in 90 minute intervules
Sleep cycles are 90 minutes long. Sleeping in 90 minute increments will help you sleep efficiently and allow you to wake up feeling refreshed
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work less or closer, and enjoy all the time in your day
saying you only "live" in your free time is exactly the wrong attitude man
plus it wont be the same for 50 years anyways, commuting will eventually go out of style, its too energy inefficient, plus work hours might decrease after we get rid of our crappy economic system
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On August 10 2012 06:49 vanskater wrote:
sleep in 90 minute intervules
Sleep cycles are 90 minutes long. Sleeping in 90 minute increments will help you sleep efficiently and allow you to wake up feeling refreshed
I can vouch for this. Some study showing that people's cycles are remarkably close to 90 minutes with a variation of only a single minute or so. Also works fine for me 
flux (google it) is one of those apps that changes the hue of your monitor depending on sunrise/sunset. For some it just makes it easier on the eyes, but since I started using it, it has helped me fall asleep too ^^
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I'm really interested in doing what r.Evo did (with the help of this Zeo device maybe) and discovering my own sleeping patterns to optimize my sleep. However, once you get down to like 6 hours of sleep, how do you make it work with your gf/bf/whatever if she/he still needs to sleep 8+ hours?
- Setting the alarm clock after 6 hours => Quite awful for him/her since it will wake both of you up
- Letting him/her go to sleep first, and staying awake doing whatever until it's precisely time for you to go to sleep too, then waking up together at the same time in the morning => Much better already, however I'm going to miss not going to sleep together
- Using some kind of alarm clock that only wakes you up (like some sort of vibrating wristwatch?) => That would be the best, but does that even exist?
- Any other solution I'm not thinking about?
Edit: Just installed F.lux, hopefully it should help a little since I'm on my comp most of the day.
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not trolling here, try sleeping on a much harder surface than you normally do, and you may find you can get away with 2 or 3 hours less and still feel refreshed.
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Try doing some form of exercise as soon as you feel 'tired'. It helps to increase the rate of Melatonin transmission in your brain and thus make you more excited.
So do those pushups. It worked well on many.
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Welcome to adult life. Why do you think everyone's always gulpin down coffee, lol.
Seriously though, I can only suggest trying to improve your efficiency. Eat, poop, shower, read, etc at work. Finish your work early and leave early if possible. Ask your boss for less hours or a less lengthy shift if applicable. Get a domestic or non sexual life partner and split the chores. Rearrange your house and buy appliances so chores are faster. If its feasible to move closer to work, do so. Find ways to reduce distractions so you waste no time lying awake when you ought to be sleeping.
Don't have kids or make any new friends until you are acclimated to not having free time.
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You guys realize that waking up on a certain cycle of your sleep is extremely dependent on whether you feel like crap or energetic...
With that said if the hours you sleep on make you energetic for the whole day and yet feel tired when your sleep routine nears then you found your bio sleep time.
everyone is different. Some people can go less and some need more.
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On August 09 2012 19:36 rEalGuapo wrote:
Hi TL!
I recently started sleeping 8.5 to 9hours per night and feel better than ever. I tried to work with 7 hours for quite some time but I was really tired in the morning and had problems concentrating over longer periods of time.
So this sounds great, right? I now am energetic and well rested the entire day.
The big downside however is this:
I work 8 hours a day, it takes roughly one hour to get to my work place and another hour back. With eating, shopping, hygiene and the usual household crap I probably spend another 2.5 hours a day.
So 10 hours work+travel 2.5hours household. Well, that makes 12.5h. Sleeping 9 hours my day has only 15 left, if I want to exercise for an hour I only have 1.5hours left as my personal free time.
I can't live like this for the next 50 years.
I know there are vacations and weekends but living only 2 days a week is just a really depressing thought to me.
I know that you can reduce sleep dramatically by splitting the time over the day, that is not an option for me though.
About myself (maybe that is important to know):
I am male age 24 somewhat in shape and my immune system works nice as far as I can tell.
My Question is:
Does anyone of you have a solid way to reduce sleeping time?
Maybe I have to reduce steadily, maybe there is a certain supplement, maybe a certain diet. I did some research but I really am unsure of what to do. Caffeine is not an option, it really messes with my sleeping rythm and makes matters worse over time.
Ideally someone with personal experience could tell what he/she did.
But of course any interesting and legit article is welcome.
Please don't post only to tell me that you think 6hours is enough.
Thanks for your help!
So lets say you have 7 hours to sleep total. I would suggest taking a 3 hour nap when you are the most fatigued then sleep at around 10 PM for another 4 hours. Someone has said that the last few hours of sleep is very ineffective compared to the first few. Not exactly correct, but the concept is correct more or less. So this usually works.
If not, there is another method. It could be that your body is just so adjusted to the 9 hrs that suddenly going back to 7 makes your body unable to adjust. So I would suggest reducing your sleep by 10-15 mins for 1 week, then go another 10-15 until you are at the 7 hour mark. Have you noticed that if you are at a place where it stinks and you dont smell it anymore after a while? This is because our body is an expert at noticing CHANGES and adjusts accordingly. So if you don't reduce sleep hours all of a sudden, your body might adjust and you might be fine. There should be no reason that you shouldn't be able to function properly even with like 6 hrs a day. My father lived with 4 hrs a day for about 10 years now and he does manual labor (hes nearing 60 now).
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8.5+ hours honestly seems like to much. I always aim for no less than 6.5 and no more than 7.5 and never have problems under normal circumstances. I drink 2 cups worth of coffee in the morning and 2 more at lunch - black, no sugar, cream or anything added. Always drink plenty of water, not getting enough water is a huge factor in people feeling sleepy/lethargic/etc. Eating healthy and exercise always help too (I don't do enough of the latter ^^).
EDIT: What is your type of work? If you have a desk job where you are literally sitting there doing paper work, etc. for 8 hours you might consider finding ways to work in some short "exercises." Not like jogging or pushups but maybe going outside and walking the perimeter of the building while downing a whole bottle of water. Honestly, for me, downing a ton of water at once normally helps curb any mid day drowsiness (of course it is always followed by a lot restroom breaks but that's more activity! ^^).
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On August 10 2012 02:47 Detri wrote:Welcome to adulthood, where the week needs 8 days and the day needs 36 hours. You should try lavender on your pillow, YES IT SOUNDS STUPID. I was a total sceptic until I tried it, but now I couldn't do without my manly purple/pink bottle of pillow spray. Really, it helped me get more restful sleep. UK based retailerSpend the $10 or whatever it costs and give it a try.... worst that can happen is that your pillow smells a little nicer
I love lavender.
Where can I find a retailer in Sweden for that Lavender pillowspray?
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I honestly beleive 6hours sleep + an 1 hour nap midday is the way to go.
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I sleep about 4-5 hours a night. I'm always exhausted. But I get a lot done.
I find that my body has adjusted to the point that if I sleep 6 hours I wake up feeling extremely well rested. However, there are days when I oversleep that cock up whatever rhythm I have going.
So no advice on how to feel 'more rested' other than if you want to get more done, stop being such a wimp, sleeping beauty. More than 8 hours of sleep uninterrupted may very well mean you're just lazy.
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I suffer from severe obstructive sleep apnea. It's hell. I keep an eye on sleep-related studies, articles, etc. Related to the comments, this is what I've learned:
- Most of us adults don't get enough sleep. Those who think they can get away with only X hours of sleep are almost always mistaken. Somewhat like those people who think they are excellent multi-taskers. (Excepting Hero of course, because he is in fact an excellent multi-tasker).
- Ideally, we shouldn't need an alarm clock, ever. That's the healthiest sleep rule. Obviously, it's impractical, but knowing that ideal is very important.
- Those who are complaining about sleeping, yet still feeling cruddy, besides the excellent nutrition/blood test/exercise advice already provided, you might look into things like sleep apnea. It's way under-diagnosed. Essentially, if you snore, go get checked.
- That physiology teacher who suggested getting 5 hours of sleep, then making it up over the weekend, was incompetent. You really can't bank it. It's not black and white, but yeah, no, don't do that.
- If you're one of those who sleeps like 15 hours a day, and you're a teenager, that's normal and you should bask in the wonderfulness that is 15 hours of crazy good sleep.
To the OP, I would heavily recommend you sleep as much as possible, consider yourself blessed instead of cursed, and find efficiencies elsewhere. Lack of sleep hurts your health and quality of life in insidious, sucker punch-y sort of ways.
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Not sure if somebody has mentioned this but you could try changing your sleep patterns. For example, I personally will feel much better if I go to sleep at 11pm and sleep for say 8 hours, than if I go to sleep at 1am and sleep for 10 hours. Try shifting the times that you actually sleep from/till and see if it helps.
An obvious factor also is your diet. I don't mean any fad diets, I mean if you eat healthy and eat frequently it should help you stay more alert. Make sure you are always packing a decent lunch to work and try eat something healthy every few hours; I can't stress that enough.
Edit: You will probably find you will need less sleep as you get older too. So it wont be like this 'for the rest of your life' :p
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Whatever anyone says, a *solid* night sleep is irreducible. If you're waking up in the middle of the night, then sure, you can probably find ways of reducing by simply sleeping better. But if you're sleeping from head down to alarm...sorry buddy, your sleep is staying fixed, and you'll have to adjust everything else.
One caveat, sleep is a weekly thing, so you can cut during the week and catch up during the weekend marginally well, though I personally would not recommend it
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Instead of a lunch I take a 30 minute to one hour nap. Thats enough for one entire REM cycle and REM cycles are very important.
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I cant honestly remember the last time I had more than 4hrs of sleep a night. This might be due to being in the military and constantly being woke up for some reason. Your Body will get use to it and for me its harder to get longer sleep now. I have to be on the verge of passing out before ill sleep 4 straight hours.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger's #5 life rule fits this perfectly!!!
5. Work your butt off!
Leaving no stone unturned. Muhammed Ali, one of my greatest hero’s had a great line when he was asked: ‘how many sit ups do you do?’. He said: ‘I don’t count my sit-ups, I only start counting when it starts hurting, that is when I start counting, because then it really counts, that’s what makes you a champion’. That’s the way it is with everyting, no pain, no gain!
Someone out there at the same time is working hard, someone is getting smarter, remember that! I’ve always figured out that there is 24 hours a day, you sleep 6 hours. That means you have 18 hours left. I know that some of you out there answers: ‘wait a minute I sleep 8 or 9 hours’. Well, than sleep faster I recommend.
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Hey dude. I was having the same problem.
I started eating eggs for breakfast everyday and I felt awesome. So, I figured out that I need a lot of protein to stay awake, it doesn't even really matter how much I sleep. Trail mix or granola bars or chicken or something. With coffee I always ended up addicted and then the caffeine stopped having any effect so it is not a long term solution.
Anyways, that's what worked for me, everyone is different, you just have to find your own weak point through trying stuff.
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stress in life/job will give you very poor sleep , waking up a lot at random times , having nightmares , not being able to get to sleep
i used to have 2-3 hour travel to work and back. its not worth it. now i have 20 mins max and life is very different..
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On August 09 2012 20:53 r.Evo wrote:
While you can't "reduce sleep time" you can reduce the non-REM sleep time. This part is crucial. Most people I know who sleep 7-8hours or more never once in their life made an attempt to find out how that works for them personally.
What I did about 7 years ago or so was devote an month on cleaning up my sleep schedule. Go to bed, set an alarmclock to ring in 3 hours, get up. Repeat this every 12 hours. The first 3-4 days were plain and flat out brutal. I didn't fall asleep quick enough, I was incredibly dizzy after waking up and I couldn't perform anything "real" during the time I was awake. After those first days what happened is that whenever I layed down in bed I started to fall asleep asap and I started to slowly feel less dizzy and it felt somewhat okay.
Next step (while you're still sleep deprived) is to find out how long your sleep phase really is (average times from 2:15h to 3:45h are completely normal) by adjusting the sleep time you give yourself in 15-30 minute increments. For me personally 2:45h of sleep in one setting just feels incredible. I wake up on the first tone of my alarm, I am immediately at full capacity and my brain just feels sharp as hell.
After spending 3-4 weeks in that schedule I started to skip one of the two phases per day and returned to sleeping 1x, now at 5:30-5:45hours per day. That has been my standard sleep time ever since when I actually want to get work in, even over longer periods of time (~4months) I had never had a problem with that timing.
What I noticed what stayed with me after a couple of years (especially comparing myself to other people when it comes to sleep) is that I fall asleep quicker, sleep deeper and am more relaxed than anyone I know. The only big "drawback" is that if I try sleeping e.g. 1-2hours at a time I'm completely wrecked. My guess would be that the body adjusted to the schedule and that time is right in the middle of a REM phase.
tl;dr: "Cleaning up" your sleep schedule might easily net you 2-3hours more, the only way I tried this personally is by living with an incredibly strict alarmclock for a couple of weeks. I don't regret it at all and would do it over and over again. Getting to know how your body and brain works and how to make them work at their best is incredibly rewarding, most people just don't bother even thinking about it.
PS: Switching from mono- to biphasic sleep and back within a couple of days feels rather normal to me, no problems there at all. Note that babies/elderly people sleep polyphasic and that monophasic sleep is more a product of our culture, not of our internal clocks. There's a reason most of us get sleepy around midday.
Excellent post.
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My personal take on it (and i have experience because for the past 6 years i have been getting a range of 4 to 7 hours of sleep with and average or 6 hours) is you might sleep for 4 hours wake up have a head ache and feel like shit but you have to compare it to what you're getting done (example sleeping 4 hours playing sc2 more) and you have to ask yourself if being tired and feeling bad is worth what your getting to do. and then it is ez to decide to sleep more or do more. hope this was clear glgl
p.s. energy drinks are a nono its 100 percent possible to force yourself to stay on.
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Been reading this thread and found it quite interesting to see peoples different natures.
My personal experience is 6.5hrs - 8hrs sleep and im fine.. this included a morning trip to the gym 8hrs of work in-front of a computer and then home to either play games and work on my music production..
Lately Ive been drinking a lot more water and eating more fruit and Ive noticed that its improved my mechanics at work.
I wasn't always a decent sleeper i would go to bed at 3am up at 8am one night or then 1pm wake up the next.. i knew it wasn't healthy.
In changing my habits i did a sleep cycle for 2 weeks solid.. bed at 11pm up at 6:30am. even if i went to bed at 12am id make sure i was up at 6:30.. 2 weeks of this and now my internal alarm is 6:30am no matter what time i go to sleep.
also this might be helpful also:
The Scientific Power Of Naps
for people that feel like crap after waking up after a long nap its cause your in a deep sleep, and if tahts the case try having an apple rather than coffee.. i guarantee you wake up faster.
That's just my 2 cents
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I sleep 5-6 hours a night and on my two days off a week I sleep about 8.5.
I think it is all different for different people and there is little you can do about it except get on a healthy diet and exercise.
Some of my friends sleep 9-10 hours a night, always. Some sleep 5.
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On August 10 2012 09:13 ZenCaser wrote:
To the OP, I would heavily recommend you sleep as much as possible, consider yourself blessed instead of cursed, and find efficiencies elsewhere. Lack of sleep hurts your health and quality of life in insidious, sucker punch-y sort of ways.
I completely agree. Due to chronic cluster headache I lived off an average of less than a half hour of sleep per day for years. The kind of ways that leads into a degradation of your well being is hard to describe.
I agree with Zen, being able to choose when and how you sleep is a blessing. Sleep until you feel well rested, make a routine out of it if possible, and as Zen said find the time efficiencies elsewhere.
The beauty of living on 9 hours sleep is you have room to cut back when there is real motivation to do so, without much risk of wearing yourself down. If you start living on 5-6 hours each day you won't be able to cut into that amount of time for long.
(I am not saying everyone should sleep 9 hours etc, just whatever leaves them well rested each day, obviously varies for many reasons)
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I wish there was a way to upvote/thumbs up/like/sticky what Frigo just said, that dude has it NAILED!
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Wow OP. Lack of intelligence on your part imo.
Get good sleep, have good day/feel good all day......
Get less sleep, feel tired in morning and shitty in the afternoon, but have more free time!......
Perhaps you should do what I plan on doing, and cutting your commute time down by moving closer to work. I am a 25 year old male with an 1.5 - 2 hr commute each way, so we have some similarities. But I also have a wife and 7 month old baby. You cant bitch about your free time. Cut out NON ESSENTIALS before you cut out ESSENTIALS like sleep.
Plus, when you save your "fun" time for the weekends, it makes it a lot more enjoyable. Only other option is to work 4 days a week (perhaps take wednesday off) and have some mid week enjoyment.
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The feeling of rested is based on sleep patterns. If you can master how many cycles or how long your cycles are then getting 4.5 hours of sleep can be trained. This website is really basic but it got me started on a smart way to train sleeping patterns.
http://sleepyti.me/
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On August 10 2012 14:19 DyEnasTy wrote:
Wow OP. Lack of intelligence on your part imo.
Get good sleep, have good day/feel good all day......
Get less sleep, feel tired in morning and shitty in the afternoon, but have more free time!......
Perhaps you should do what I plan on doing, and cutting your commute time down by moving closer to work. I am a 25 year old male with an 1.5 - 2 hr commute each way, so we have some similarities. But I also have a wife and 7 month old baby. You cant bitch about your free time. Cut out NON ESSENTIALS before you cut out ESSENTIALS like sleep.
Plus, when you save your "fun" time for the weekends, it makes it a lot more enjoyable. Only other option is to work 4 days a week (perhaps take wednesday off) and have some mid week enjoyment.
Wow Dude. Lack of intelligence on your part imo.
Nice way to call me stupid just because you cannot imagine that I already thought of that.
I live in a big city and I do not have a lot of money, the place I have is the best I can do in regards to rent and location. The fact that it is an awesome apartment was almost no factor in my decision.
"you cant bitch about your free time." Who the hell is bitching and who the fuck are you to tell me what I can and can't do?!
Just because you thought it smart to knock up your chick with 23 means I cannot try to improve my life?
What sort of logic is that?
Also, maybe 3 hours of my sleep time ARE non essential, that's what I'm trying to find out smartpants.. And not having any spare time makes the weekend more enjoyable, no doubt. But having double the free time and only 70% as much joy during it is still more in total.
Up until this post I was really surprised at how cool this thread turned out to be...
____________________________________
However, I ordered a progressive alarm clock yesterday and am now striving to reduce my sleep time by a quarter of an hour every week until I feel it is too little.
I will carefully consider other options and try to explore what works best for me.
I cannot take naps due to working hours and changing the rest of the day is hardly possible, I will try to do stuff more time efficient but that is hard. A dishwasher would probably be golden, have to look into my options of getting one.
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Again, you should also look at your resting heart rate, it might give you a clue. 30mins of excresize a day seems very little... It makes a hige difference to me atleast. When I got off from the army (I'm 20) I was able to run 3000m in cooper's test and then I went to work and well, I stopped excersizing and my condition went down to around 2500m. Now I started commuting 25km on bike every day there and back (50km a day, around 50mins one direction) and I am again in decent shape. It really has helped me to retain high energy levels during the day with less sleep (around 7 hours). So how is your physical fitness?
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Look at it this way:
Precise statistics aside, the difference between 9 vs. 7 hours is something in the range of 20-30% increased productivity. Plus the fact that you'll feel better and be more energized, it's worth it.
I've been sleeping for 8.5 hours eveyrday and I've been studying/working more than ever, sometimes it's about feeling good and getting that motivation to do things, and doing them well.
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On August 10 2012 17:11 Soyemia wrote:
Again, you should also look at your resting heart rate, it might give you a clue. 30mins of excresize a day seems very little... It makes a hige difference to me atleast. When I got off from the army (I'm 20) I was able to run 3000m in cooper's test and then I went to work and well, I stopped excersizing and my condition went down to around 2500m. Now I started commuting 25km on bike every day there and back (50km a day, around 50mins one direction) and I am again in decent shape. It really has helped me to retain high energy levels during the day with less sleep (around 7 hours). So how is your physical fitness?
This thread is the first time I ever heard of the cooper's test actually, so I have no idea.
I used to go jogging every second day and had thai boxing on the rest, so I was pretty fit I guess. However I stopped doing both more or less, I still do random amounts of cardio every now and again but I probably only fool myself into believing I would do any form of efficient exercise.
I always prioritised lifting over Cardio, probably a big mistake.
I will start running 3-4 a week again and I will start Krav Maga in about a month, so I should be getting back in form sooner or later. Also I smoked for like 4 years and recently stoped, will take loooong to undo that kind of damage >.<
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Yes you are but I also stated in the OP that I cannot do that, however naps etc were discussed a lot.
Thanks for not taking the time to read before posting.
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On August 10 2012 17:29 rEalGuapo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 17:11 Soyemia wrote:
Again, you should also look at your resting heart rate, it might give you a clue. 30mins of excresize a day seems very little... It makes a hige difference to me atleast. When I got off from the army (I'm 20) I was able to run 3000m in cooper's test and then I went to work and well, I stopped excersizing and my condition went down to around 2500m. Now I started commuting 25km on bike every day there and back (50km a day, around 50mins one direction) and I am again in decent shape. It really has helped me to retain high energy levels during the day with less sleep (around 7 hours). So how is your physical fitness? This thread is the first time I ever heard of the cooper's test actually, so I have no idea. I used to go jogging every second day and had thai boxing on the rest, so I was pretty fit I guess. However I stopped doing both more or less, I still do random amounts of cardio every now and again but I probably only fool myself into believing I would do any form of efficient exercise. I always prioritised lifting over Cardio, probably a big mistake. I will start running 3-4 a week again and I will start Krav Maga in about a month, so I should be getting back in form sooner or later. Also I smoked for like 4 years and recently stoped, will take loooong to undo that kind of damage >.<
I think here's a big reason why you feel like you're out of energy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_rate here's a good table. It really affects how you feel, and has been extensively studied and have been linked on tiring etc. If you smoked for 4 years and didn't do much at all you're probably in horrible fitness. The good thing is that you're young and it can be fixed really fast (I'd say 2 months) and in longer term you can get into good condition. The funny fact here, btw, is that high muscle mass will increase your heart rate and tires you faster. Cardio is simply put way, way more important. You should take some sort of test of your fitness, it will open your eyes. Mine did cooper's test after the army, lol (we did a cooper's test in the army every 2 months) and it really opened my eyes how out of condition I was a few months back. It has reduced my sleeping time from 8 hours to around 7 hours now.
Also, you commute 1 hour to work in a city, right? You could look at time management here like I did. If it's under 30km it's not a big deal to cycle to home and back, won't take more time than currently (around 1 hour one direction) and will give you some of you excersize right there and easy. That's what I do.
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You can't just "change" your bodily habits on a whim, you need time to adjust. I've recently had problems with self-discipline (which includes getting out of bed in the morning and NOT pressing the snooze button ten times) but when I really got it into my head there was a problem I started working on it. So far I can't say I've dealt with it completely but I can definitely see changes in my habits. Figure what exactly is wrong with your daily habits and start adjusting slowly. My only two cents would be sleep might not be the entire problem if you're feeling tired. Think about motivation, exercise, hydration, blood-sugar and all that jazz.
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On August 10 2012 17:41 Soyemia wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 17:29 rEalGuapo wrote:On August 10 2012 17:11 Soyemia wrote:
Again, you should also look at your resting heart rate, it might give you a clue. 30mins of excresize a day seems very little... It makes a hige difference to me atleast. When I got off from the army (I'm 20) I was able to run 3000m in cooper's test and then I went to work and well, I stopped excersizing and my condition went down to around 2500m. Now I started commuting 25km on bike every day there and back (50km a day, around 50mins one direction) and I am again in decent shape. It really has helped me to retain high energy levels during the day with less sleep (around 7 hours). So how is your physical fitness? This thread is the first time I ever heard of the cooper's test actually, so I have no idea. I used to go jogging every second day and had thai boxing on the rest, so I was pretty fit I guess. However I stopped doing both more or less, I still do random amounts of cardio every now and again but I probably only fool myself into believing I would do any form of efficient exercise. I always prioritised lifting over Cardio, probably a big mistake. I will start running 3-4 a week again and I will start Krav Maga in about a month, so I should be getting back in form sooner or later. Also I smoked for like 4 years and recently stoped, will take loooong to undo that kind of damage >.< I think here's a big reason why you feel like you're out of energy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_rate here's a good table. It really affects how you feel, and has been extensively studied and have been linked on tiring etc. If you smoked for 4 years and didn't do much at all you're probably in horrible fitness. The good thing is that you're young and it can be fixed really fast (I'd say 2 months) and in longer term you can get into good condition. The funny fact here, btw, is that high muscle mass will increase your heart rate and tires you faster. Cardio is simply put way, way more important. You should take some sort of test of your fitness, it will open your eyes. Mine did cooper's test after the army, lol (we did a cooper's test in the army every 2 months) and it really opened my eyes how out of condition I was a few months back. It has reduced my sleeping time from 8 hours to around 7 hours now. Also, you commute 1 hour to work in a city, right? You could look at time management here like I did. If it's under 30km it's not a big deal to cycle to home and back, won't take more time than currently (around 1 hour one direction) and will give you some of you excersize right there and easy. That's what I do.
So I just measured my heartrate and had 61 beats in 60 seconds which is the bottom of excellent. Maybe fitness isn't my main problem
Edit: my average out of three is 63. So there definitely is room for improvement here.
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I haven't read the various responses here so I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but it could possibly help you shave off around half an hour of sleep. You could try using http://sleepyti.me/. It will calculate when you should go to bed so you're guaranteed to not wake up in the middle of a REM cycle.
Edit: Whoops haha, mentioned on the same page earlier already
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I think the more correct way to look at this thread is not that he needs to reduce sleep because he gets very little free time to enjoy life but instead that the thing that takes up the chunk of his day, employment, has him in need of time expensive escapism.
Are you in a career that makes you feel good about yourself. Perhaps it might be that you need to think about the direction of your career rather than the way to get more time by sacrificing sleep.
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On August 10 2012 17:49 rEalGuapo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 17:41 Soyemia wrote:On August 10 2012 17:29 rEalGuapo wrote:On August 10 2012 17:11 Soyemia wrote:
Again, you should also look at your resting heart rate, it might give you a clue. 30mins of excresize a day seems very little... It makes a hige difference to me atleast. When I got off from the army (I'm 20) I was able to run 3000m in cooper's test and then I went to work and well, I stopped excersizing and my condition went down to around 2500m. Now I started commuting 25km on bike every day there and back (50km a day, around 50mins one direction) and I am again in decent shape. It really has helped me to retain high energy levels during the day with less sleep (around 7 hours). So how is your physical fitness? This thread is the first time I ever heard of the cooper's test actually, so I have no idea. I used to go jogging every second day and had thai boxing on the rest, so I was pretty fit I guess. However I stopped doing both more or less, I still do random amounts of cardio every now and again but I probably only fool myself into believing I would do any form of efficient exercise. I always prioritised lifting over Cardio, probably a big mistake. I will start running 3-4 a week again and I will start Krav Maga in about a month, so I should be getting back in form sooner or later. Also I smoked for like 4 years and recently stoped, will take loooong to undo that kind of damage >.< I think here's a big reason why you feel like you're out of energy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_rate here's a good table. It really affects how you feel, and has been extensively studied and have been linked on tiring etc. If you smoked for 4 years and didn't do much at all you're probably in horrible fitness. The good thing is that you're young and it can be fixed really fast (I'd say 2 months) and in longer term you can get into good condition. The funny fact here, btw, is that high muscle mass will increase your heart rate and tires you faster. Cardio is simply put way, way more important. You should take some sort of test of your fitness, it will open your eyes. Mine did cooper's test after the army, lol (we did a cooper's test in the army every 2 months) and it really opened my eyes how out of condition I was a few months back. It has reduced my sleeping time from 8 hours to around 7 hours now. Also, you commute 1 hour to work in a city, right? You could look at time management here like I did. If it's under 30km it's not a big deal to cycle to home and back, won't take more time than currently (around 1 hour one direction) and will give you some of you excersize right there and easy. That's what I do. So I just measured my heartrate and had 61 beats in 60 seconds which is the bottom of excellent. Maybe fitness isn't my main problem Edit: my average out of the is 63. So there definitely is room for improvement here.
Yeah it's not going to do miracle, but it's a part of the picture. It helped me and also commuting can be used well, those are my main tips. Don't have much else really, I can't for instance really cut my sleep time to less than 7 hours comfortably. In the army I was able to stay active for like 2 weeks in forest while sleeping about 3-4 hours a night, but I think that was because of the fresh air and physical activity. Being physically active every day for extended periods helps me, which is a big reason why I cycle to work every day, even when it takes and hour in one direction.
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Welcome to the real world.
Luckily for me I live 5 minutes from work by foot..but I used to have a job that was 30 minutes away. My advice? Shop for a week or 2, instead of everyday. That way you lose free time one day, but make it back over the few days. Exercise is the big thing to not get rid of, try cutting down? Go running with a backpack on, and run to the shops on the way back and pick up food then. The added weight will increase your excercise effectiveness.
I sleep about 8 hours (however I'm down to 7 as me and my girl live together, but we have different work schedules and I like to spend some time with her where we're not sleeping.) The main thing I would suggest is to just live life. Not enjoying it the way its going? Go to the gym 3 times a week to give yourself some man time. Just try to be as efffective as possible.
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On August 10 2012 17:53 Bananasword01 wrote:
I think the more correct way to look at this thread is not that he needs to reduce sleep because he gets very little free time to enjoy life but instead that the thing that takes up the chunk of his day, employment, has him in need of time expensive escapism.
Are you in a career that makes you feel good about yourself. Perhaps it might be that you need to think about the direction of your career rather than the way to get more time by sacrificing sleep.
Right now I study to become an engineer and work part time as trainee in a big engineering Firm. I put almost 4 years into this already and a year from now I am definitely done, so I will not change career paths within the next year, yet I don't want to have no social life 5 out of 7 days.
I used to hang with buddies in skype and play Starcraft/DotA with them or just ladder, right now I am either asleep when the other guys do that or I am too tired to play Starcraft without completely raging over myself.
- When I am tired I play like shit and I just get incredibly mad about losing games because of this. I have no idea why though. If I am fit and play OK it doesn't matter why I lose, even forgetting Warpgate upgrade would not make me rage.
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On August 10 2012 17:31 rEalGuapo wrote:Yes you are but I also stated in the OP that I cannot do that, however naps etc were discussed a lot. Thanks for not taking the time to read before posting.
Are you a dick? I read the OP like most people do: By skimming it. Some times it happens that I miss something. But when you write like that you make it seem like I have wasted a huge amount of your time by making 1 link to the best ressources online for people who want to sleep more efficient. If this is how you "reward" people for trying to help you, I do not believe you have a lot of friends.
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If you quit your job, you'll save 10 hours of work+travel AND you'll be able to sleep as long as your body needs.
You then have the option of working part time, if you're desperate. And if you're a well educated mister, then that part time job will get you enough salary to not have to work 40 hours a week, but only 20 and have plenty of spare money after paying the bills. I wish you all the best in either case. Can only say that this works at least for me. My weekend starts thursday noon and Monday's are god damn fucking awesome, because they also end at noon for me (working-wise).
Maybe you can find a way. Sleep is too precious to reduce it !
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I haven´t seen it mentioned yet, so, there is an inner clock, which is quite well researched so far and its implications are pretty large:
- you are genetically disposed towards certain rhythms and thus cannot change them
Sleeping, i.e. when your body needs sleep according to its day/night perception can vary greatly with some people preferring to sleep early, some late and in between. When you sleep along your inner clock, its fine, if not, you´re not. I don´t really know anything of value, only that chronobiology is a big thing and that you should get into it to get different perspective on the problem. I myself always found that my sleeping rhythm was from 1am-9/10am, but it can be tested and determined.
Basically these rhythms are things that are derived from a hundred thousand years of waking at dawn and resting at dusk, living in sunlight and fresh air, moving around the whole day. Since working routines mostly kill that genetically predisposed norm, you get problems, the more you get away from that the bigger the stress on your body. Sounds kind of hippy, but then again I´m not an expert, but you should look into it.
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On August 10 2012 18:33 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 17:31 rEalGuapo wrote:Yes you are but I also stated in the OP that I cannot do that, however naps etc were discussed a lot. Thanks for not taking the time to read before posting. Are you a dick? I read the OP like most people do: By skimming it. Some times it happens that I miss something. But when you write like that you make it seem like I have wasted a huge amount of your time by making 1 link to the best ressources online for people who want to sleep more efficient. If this is how you "reward" people for trying to help you, I do not believe you have a lot of friends.
If I find an OP somewhat interesting I always take the time to read through it before answering because it is just annoying to not do so.
And I have a healthy amount of friends, not too many but like 10 REALLY close ones and a ton not that close ones.
Thank you for your concern.
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from what i have heard in university (2 lessons specifically about sleep) almost every person (90%~) between the age of 20-60 (after that need for sleep has a big variance especially in females) don't have any sort of deterioration of performance if they sleep between 4.5 and 5.5 hours a day if they have an extremly consistent sleep schedule (e.g go to bed every day at the same time not varying more than 20 minutes) for over 2 weeks
however the people that only sleep that little will feel subjectively more tired sometimes and it takes the aforementioned 2 weeks to not feel like shit
i would suggest trying to sleep 5.5 or so hours every day, and don't reduce it step by step since this is (from what i have) scientifically proven to be much worse than going to the desired end goal instantly.
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On August 10 2012 18:59 ramon wrote:
from what i have heard in university (2 lessons specifically about sleep) almost every person (90%~) between the age of 20-60 (after that need for sleep has a big variance especially in females) don't have any sort of deterioration of performance if they sleep between 4.5 and 5.5 hours a day if they have an extremly consistent sleep schedule (e.g go to bed every day at the same time not varying more than 20 minutes) for over 2 weeks
this is great but does it apply to people who are stressed out and worn to pieces by their job and by going to the gym? probably not
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On August 10 2012 19:06 FFGenerations wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 18:59 ramon wrote:
from what i have heard in university (2 lessons specifically about sleep) almost every person (90%~) between the age of 20-60 (after that need for sleep has a big variance especially in females) don't have any sort of deterioration of performance if they sleep between 4.5 and 5.5 hours a day if they have an extremly consistent sleep schedule (e.g go to bed every day at the same time not varying more than 20 minutes) for over 2 weeks this is great but does it apply to people who are stressed out and worn to pieces by their job and by going to the gym? probably not
Probably yes, however you will have to expect the worst week of your life.
This is interesting, though, not adjusting step-by-step, but instead just slam into it. I will try to read up on that.
Thanks ramon, do you have a link to an article or something like that?
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Every sleep thread on TL, someone always wants to bring up polyphasic sleep when that shit doesn't work unless you have some fucked up gene expression patterns.
As for the OP, napping in the afternoon is really your best option here. Even if its just for 15 minutes. There are other things you can manage to get better quality sleep, namely lights/lighting and temperature. I have gotten noticeably better sleep when I installed black-out curtains in my bedroom despite arguably getting less sleep. Temperature refers to your body temp right before you sleep as a certain range (escapes me right now) helps you get to into sleep better (this is why a warm shower and/or warm glass of milk helps you slip into sleep).
Others have mentioned timing your sleep so you don't wake up in REM which is also useful. Keep in mind that does not mean you can shave cycles off and expect it to not catch up to you...which brings back the importance of those naps in the afternoon.
Food/digestion also plays a role in this as there are sleep genes expressed in mammalian (mouse) digestive tracts and also expressed in similar patterns. Humans who work weird schedules like midnight to morning shifts on some days and 9-5 shifts on others will often feel like utter shit when it comes to eating and this is one of the reasons why. So you will have adjust your eating patterns in accordance to your adjusted sleeping schedule, aka don't have an active digestive system when trying to go to sleep.
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Sure, there are supplements and diets that can help you reduce sleep time and still feel energetic (I'm not going to list them seeing as they've already been listed above). But, I do have to say, if you find your job so completely miserable that it is not a life for you during the 8 hours of work, why do you do it? Why not find something you enjoy, and make it a part of your life. I mean, of course, jobs don't just grow on trees, but the way you write you seem to believe that you'll spend the next 50 years doing what you're doing now. That just doesn't seem like a legitimate solution to your problem. I'm not going to say that you should quit right now and look for something else to do (although many people I've known have done that and feel great now), but try to gradually strive towards something that you enjoy doing.
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You mentioned you got a progressive alarm clock, what type might I ask?
Also, some other suggestions I have for exercise and diet are, try crossfit for your exercise. You mentioned you like to lift and yet realise that cardio is quite important, crossfit is a good mix of both and works great for me personally. Also sessions don't need to last that long for them to be effective. Also as far as diet goes, I found that juicing for dinner/supper is not only very nutritious but also leaves you feeling more energetic in the morning and is much lighter on the stomach. Also if you get a good centrifugal juicer, juicing time and clean up is actually quite fast. Additionally you can drink your juice while doing activities such as browsing the web or even playing SC if you are able to take your hand from your mouse for a second or two without messing up.
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Enjoy the sleep you have, I sure as hell wish I could sleep 6 to 9 hours a night, it'd be a godsend.
Otherwise try modafinil.
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Hi, I'm not sure if my input will be a "happy" solution but the first thing I would do is take a look at your diet. My lifestyle isn't comparable to yours in terms of free time as I am a university student but I do bodybuilding full-time alongside my studies and free time etc.
Bodybuilding makes me very tired so I have problems staying awake also and concentration is also an issue to I would certainly recommend eating complex carbohydrates and these are released into your system over longer periods of time compared to simple sugars which will give you a short burst of energy but leave you feeling drained and fatigued afterwards.
I would say small frequent meals is the best way to feed your body to give yourself the energy required to get through the day with a lesser amount of sleep along with good hydration of course.
You also mentioned about exercises for an hour a day would leave you with only 1.5hours of freetime. What kind of exercises are you doing and what are your goals? if you simply want to keep healthy and get toned up without much of the bulk, I would recommend working out for only 0.5hours doing a routine such as: 10 Press Ups, 7 Pull Ups, 10 Bodysquats followed by 10 situps. Repeat this circuit for the 0.5hours and you get the best of both worlds with some form of resistance training along with improving your cardiovascular health.
Now you have 2 Hours personal time to yourself. I wanted to ask:
Do you really consider exercise a neccessity or can it be counted as free time? Because you don't really need to exercise everyday and if you just wanted to stay trim, the diet is the most important aspect in my opinion.
I hope my input is of some use to you.
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On August 10 2012 02:23 Nevermind86 wrote:
Well from personal experience (not the best indicator) I know how to reduce sleeping hours, I sleep normally only 7 hours, a lot of the times only 6 but then I cannot perform as good when studying russian or reading books or something, because I cannot concentrate as good, but sometimes I decide to only sleep about 6 hours because I stay late watching something or play videogames with friends. What I'm going to say I've discussed with friends and readed articles, etc.
HOW TO REDUCE SLEEPING HOURS
-It really helps to sleep 5-6 at night and about 1 hour in the afternoon, I heard it is natural to get sleepy at about noon, so take a nap, even if it's only 30 minutes it is better than nothing.
-Cardio. I run when I have the time, which is most of the time about 5-6 miles 3-4 days a week, this is important, having good cardio helps to sleep better and you get a better rest. Swimming is better, any type of good cardio will do.
-Don't eat too much at dinner, because the digestive system needs to put an extra effort so it becomes harder to have a good sleep, I usually don't eat much at dinner, only a little bit. Half of what could be a normal dinner.
Now obviously the hours you "win" with sleeping 1/2 hours less you have to spend on cardio, so you won't likely have more free time, but I obviously think it is better to use those hours in cardio than in just sleeping. It is good to plan how to sleep and when to sleep, the important thing is, if you're sleepy take a nap!
Edit: I don't think sleeping less through monday-friday then "catching up" on weekends is any good, because you will not perform as good in the first 5 days and then in the weekend you will be dead tired and sleep more than you need, which is a recipe for lazyness. I used to do that out of necessity, I had to sleep about 6 and a half hours because of a job that I had to go at 7 am but then couldn't sleep early at night, it was terrible, I tried everything, but the catching up on weekends it's just bad I usually wasted my time just sleeping on sunday, not good.
I've heard this too, and I can really vouch for sleeping having your REM cycles in mind.
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lol, just wait until you have a kid. Then 7 hours will be golden.
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On August 10 2012 16:50 rEalGuapo wrote:
However, I ordered a progressive alarm clock yesterday and am now striving to reduce my sleep time by a quarter of an hour every week until I feel it is too little.
I will carefully consider other options and try to explore what works best for me.
I cannot take naps due to working hours and changing the rest of the day is hardly possible, I will try to do stuff more time efficient but that is hard. A dishwasher would probably be golden, have to look into my options of getting one.
you basically gave yourself the answer. you can try and reduce sleep little by little, then wait another week and see, if tha is okay for you (you are your best judge)
imo you shouldn't overcomplicate this and go this route
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For me, I don't know what the problem is. But for whatever reason, when I know i have something to do early the next morning and sleep early, i still am very tired(9hours sleep). But when I do not have anythin to do the next morning I can sleep late and wake up early and be less tired.
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Hey rEalGuapo,
I can totally relate to your problem. My situation is even worse cause my travel time is even bigger. I get up at 6:30 and I come home at 19:30 - 20:30 depending when I leave from work. I prepare dinner and start eating at 22:00 and then of course there are some choirs in the house and I go to bed at 1 if I am lucky. Some times I go to bed past 2 o'clock. Sleeping 4 - 5 hours during the week is a killer. I feel like zombie all the time, especially after 16:00. Even though I have been doing this for the past half an year I cannot get used to this regiment. I have no free time during the week => no going out, no gym, etc. and during the weekend I sleep 10 - 12 hours and have choirs to do at home => not much free time as well. I am so amazed how people can do this all their lives. I am currently looking for a new place to live where the transport will be less or maybe getting a driver's license. Although I am not very happy about driving.
You can read this interesting article about a German chronobiologist Till Roenneberg.He has written a whole book on biological clock and the war with social clock. + Show Spoiler +http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/11/internal-time-till-roenneber/
I personally dont think you will be able to get used to less sleep or it will take years and it goes against your biological needs. Some people may need only 4 hours and some 10 hours of sleep.
My advice is if you have the possibility maybe arrange to work from home a day or two.(This depends on your field of work) What you can do else is reduce the working hours of your contract, unless you need the extra money.
Good luck!
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EPT
