I did not read the article (what did you expect, we are on HN ;)
Anyway, my experience has been a little bit different. I would summarize it as "good life, good sleep, good learning". And yes, order matters.
The fact is that recently I was completely in my midlife crisis and was at probably 50% of my mental stamina (memory loss, lack of interest, poor focus, and insomnia). I was ok with the fact that I was getting old and accepted all that as normal. Then things changed (my mortgage ended, my children went out of the primal-youth zone, I lost a really demanding job). Now things are really different. I sleep well, things seem to really get into my mind much like it used to be during my youth.
I am not so sure I understand what is happening. But I definitely consider my previous state as impossible to learn anything whatever method I use.
I am slowly getting out of that.
And I now force me into a mental diet to avoid any unnecessary stimulus that would bring me back to my previous state.
So my learning experience is that external conditions are supremely important. The method comes second.
[And yes, supermemo is pretty cool]
That resonates with my own experience. I walked away from a bad relationship and my mental stamina, as you call it, improved dramatically. Memory is better, I am much more active and confident. I still have a very demanding job, so maybe I should change that as well.
I'd say it's more useful to think of these as a 3 point cycle. Each leads to the other, and if any one gets perturbed out of control it will cause the other two to go south. The cause and effect is not linear but interactive. Then again, perhaps sleep is more basic than a "good life", so there is a little bit of hierarchy embedded...not sure what the article argues as it's currently down for me.
I really think it's a life superpower to realise that a mind's capabilities aren't just due to age, nutrition, genetics etc., and it doesn't just decline with age.
The state of a person's life circumstances, which can change, has a huge effect on mental capability.
Agreed. You need to first have a good strategy, and then tackle the tactical points. Having a positive life is way more important than anything else. You can try to give yourself good sleep or good food, but if your life is miserable (not necessary poor, but of poor quality), you won't even have the mood to have good sleep/food.
I strongly believe it's a positive feedback loop:
"good life, good sleep, good learning, good career, good friends, good family, good home, good legacy, good politics"
It comes off the inspiration from my First Big Personal Project:
https://adequate.life
This has been one of my favourite articles for years, on the reading list, but never had the time to fully read such a behemoth.
Some stuff I got out of this:
1. The ideal sleep pattern is sleeping when tired and walking up without an alarm.
2. Biphasic is recommended. Homeostatic is how easy it is to initiate sleep, circadian is how easy it is to maintain it. Circadian cycle is usually nightly, homeostatic peaks with fatigue. It's easy to have a 20 min midday nap but hard to do a midnight one.
3. Brainwork is great as soon as you wake up, and if you need caffiene, this is the time for it. Bundle stress and exercise and keep it away from the night.
Take note this is all theory and not practical, and the author hints that society should follow these and not the other way around. It took me half a decade to find a way to fit it, and what I did was:
A. Force myself to wake real early, about 4 AM. You will feel horrible for a week, but it moves your circadian rhythm forward to wake and sleep naturally without an alarm.
B. Naps in the car at lunch. Waking early gave more time to cook, which means packed meals are done in half an hour, followed by a quick nap. I set an alarm but never need it. Exercise is easy; a quick run and a lot of strong deodorant.
I committed to living without an alarm clock in college, 20+ years ago. I fought long battles with my snooze button, and realized I was spending hours each morning hitting the snooze button. I realized if I just didn't set an alarm I'd probably get up later than I usually set my alarm for, but earlier than I typically got out of bed. It worked; I started waking up refreshed, and happy to get out of bed in the morning.
When I had an important exam or something else I really didn't want to miss, I'd set an alarm for a while. But then I just went all in, and never set an alarm. That made me pay more attention to when I was going to bed at night, and the quality of my sleep. When I started working I would set an alarm for about half an hour after I typically woke up, just in case, so I wouldn't be late for work. But after six months of that, I stopped setting my backup alarm as well. I was late for work maybe twice in five years, and it was never significantly late, and it was at times where my body really needed sleep and it probably helped me avoid getting sick. These days I only set an alarm if I have to catch a 6am flight, or if I'm getting up super early to climb a mountain or something.
If you're battling your alarm every day, I highly encourage you to experiment with not setting an alarm.
This is good advice but doesn't work for people with sleep apnea.
When I had sleep apnea I could fall asleep at any time of day, no matter how much sleep I got (or thought I was getting) each night. The alarm was necessary because I never felt well rested and couldn't get up without it.
Then I went for a sleep study and was told that during a night of 6-7 hours of what I thought was continuous sleep, I actually woke up 120 times. Eek! Of course everyone normally wakes up at least a few times and doesn't remember it the next day, but most people don't choke and stop breathing 120 times a night. I rarely got any real deep sleep.
I had sleep apnea surgery, which changed my life. Almost right away I got better sleep and was more alert during the day. It was like getting an extra 2-3 hours a day, every day.
Now I get up without an alarm every day and never need caffeine. It's a great way to live.
I remember reading the article a few years ago (unfortunately down right now) and being struck at both how erudite and impractical it is. These days I find it even more of the later.
My biggest pet peeve is that it ignores the role technology (in the form of artificial light and comfortable indoor space) completely subverts our natural sleep cycle. It's a lost battle.
Better to accept that we're in an artificial state our whole lives and do our best to adapt to it. What I'm trying right now is a good melatonin supplement every night to counteract the unnantural stimulus, plus a magnesium supplement, and a lot of daytime exercise. This routine has gotten me from 6 hours of anxious sleep to 8-9 hours per night plus the occasional nap. And I feel great.
naps are sometimes great, but sometimes if I don't set an alarm I end up feeling lousy. Don't know if it means sleep or something else is out of whack and I need a nap too much.
the pandemic has let me play with sleep and sometimes it's to let it gradually drift forwards an hour each day and wrap around. (schedule meetings are the only trouble spot to that experiment)
> 1. The ideal sleep pattern is sleeping when tired and walking up without an alarm.
I interpreted this in summary as "sleep when tired and don't sleep when not tired". Which seems like common sense. That's akin to my favourite feeding pattern, which can be summarized as: "eat when hungry, do not eat when not hungry".
It's been a while since there have been posts on Supermemo here (meta: I miss the times when HN was mostly about bootstrapping software businesses, nootropics and self hacking), so I'm wondering - are there people who (still) use Supermemo or similar software for actual learning, and not memorizing for its own sake, as a party trick basically (which I feel is its main use case, at least in the way it's in the news)? Are there any advances in this field, new methods, new implementations of existing methods?
Yeah, the Discord SuperMemo community has grown actually a fair bit over the last year: https://discord.gg/vUQhqCT
I myself only started using SuperMemo over the last 2 years but I think in the last 1, I've seen lots of friends get massively better and I'm looking forward to what we create over the next 5 years.
In terms of new implementations, one thing I'm excited about is dendro: https://dendro.com.au/.
It's made by a long-term supermemo user and some other friends and I think is the best shot at a modern incremental reading alternative to SuperMemo. It's missing lots of features and is aimed at bring IR to the masses rather than power users but I personally like it and find it good enough to use on my phone when I'm on the go.
The SuperMemo algorithms [1] have been re-implemented in more modern software such as Anki [2]. These systems are popular for goal oriented learning like studying for a test or learning a new language.
Yes. Check out this article that is half an essay on quantum computing and half a call to action for using spaced repetition (the main idea behind supermemo) as a new medium for learning.
Sleep is incredibly important for forming new connections in the brain. I just want to add another aspect of learning; The importance of focus.
I will start by saying: "Do not engage the mind in the intense pursuit of too many things at once; especially things that have no relation to one another"
A couple of questions that can help for solve the above issue are:
1.How many subjects am I currently learning intensely?
2.Do these subjects have any relation to each other?
3.Why am I currently learning the subjects?
4.Have I truly made progress in any of the subjects?
By following the four questions above, you get a sense of what you really need to learn at a particular time.
There are other tools that can contribute to a good life. Some of these tools are
1. Journalling.
2. Daily self reflection.
3. Some form of physical activity.
I think that's one of the things I find most appealing about his writings in general. Most people don't go to global optima solutions because there are various constraints while Woz just does not bother.
These suggestions cannot be taken to their conclusions in many cases but I think they are still good inspiration to try.
My main takeaway from reading this a year ago is different than what most people have focused on in the comments so far. In my current life situation, lack of alarm clock (in the shape of an infant) and free running sleep are simply not possible.
However, this article does highlight the importance and naturalness of a mid-day nap. When reading this I started practising mid-day naps at my desk, but I never really learned to do it until other things got in the way and I started forgetting about it. Maybe I should try again.
At the very least, I encourage anyone to stand up for the right to take a mid-day nap, even if you don't personally use that right.
If you feel like you could use a nap, napping is probably the responsible thing to do. If we defend that position with evidence, maybe we can slowly change the culture at work to not look down upon it.
naps are AWESOME. Woz claims somewhere that without naps, his brain is at 60% or somesuch second half of day. Same for me (likely even worse since I usually don't get enough night sleep).
One reason I never want to work for a normal company is that I wouldn't be able to take naps. Not sure how I'd survive that.
One note for anyone reading this wanting to try naps: the timing matters a lot. Woz recommends napping around 7-8
hours from waking, NOT at a fixed time of day. (https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Best_time_for_napping).
There's lots of individual variance meaning it requires experimentation. For me, I usually take a nap between 5-7 hours from waking.
If you use supermemo/are interested in it, it has a thing called sleepchart (https://supermemo.guru/wiki/SleepChart) in which you can log sleep data and then see some cool graphs spit out (if you also use supermemo for learning, you can very cooly see correlations between sleep and repetition grades).
When you get hooked on SuperMemo and embrace the idea of incremental reading, it becomes the primary software on your computer. You end up spending more time in SM than you do in the browser. People use it not just to memorize flashcards, but to read articles and books... even to write and edit their own articles and books... track their sleep... plan and execute their daily schedule... keep track of tasks and priorities. It's a quirky piece of software but quite a mature one. After all, it has been in continuous development since the late eighties!
There is a lot of info here and much I agree with but without reading the whole thing a few things I noticed that I disagree with:
1) the fatal result of rats being tortured to deprive them of sleep seems to have been traced to oxidative stress in the gut (there was an article on this here not that long ago)
2) while I don't have an easy reference, a number of studies have found that even strenuous exercise before bed does not seem to impair sleep. As with everything sleep related there could easily be lots of individual variation but in general I don't think it usually causes trouble.
3) the author seems to consider free running sleep entirely posistive, however I think it is likely to cause circadian issues in a number of people who try it and may be quite dangerous. I think in my case going from a sleep deprived state to free running sleep (in an attempt to deal with insomnia) induced non-24 (it may be that non-24 has both a genetic susceptibility and a trigger event and that once triggered is essentially irreversible). In my case it also seems that there is an issue with internal coherence of the circadian rhythm with different parts of my body proceeding on different scheduled and rarely synchronized, leaving me disabled with memory issues and fatigue. So I encourage everyone to be careful when making changes to sleep schedules. For someone who already has a circadian issue it seems often better to sleep on the delayed or shifting schedule, but few people can do that without significant disruption caused by interacting with the rest of the world and there may still be some issues, at least for some people, due to being awake at night.
4) I think alarm clocks can in some cases keep a healthy circadian rhythm synchonized with the sun. Maybe consider them more like a prescription medication than smoking, try to avoid if possible but if using one can help you keep a healthy circadian rhythm then it seems likely to be healthier than a disrupted circadian rhythm. In my experience, when you wake up seems to be more important for setting the circadian rhythm than when you get to sleep.
I don't think there is anything natural about such a rigid "circadian rhythm".
Its a leftover from feudal / agricultural society where you had to get up to do different things on the farm _all day_ until you where so tired you crashed and slept for 8 hours. Nothing natural in that.
I totally agree that "getting up early" can have its benefits, and so can an uninterrupted 7 hours - but the body is built to get up in the middle of the night, do stuff, then go back to bed, get up again, scavenge, build, talk to someone, then take a nap with your family/tribe etc.
As long as you follow the inner rhythm, and can zone-out and relax, you are probably most healthy going through various states multiple times a day, from intense focus, to alert, to way more relaxed than anyone are today.
This is in stark contrast to the toxically over-caffeinated over exerted extremely long days where you never really go through any different "mindstates" but just "plough through" until you crash - and then think that you need 8 hours and to get up early - no you only need that because you are abusing your body. Also you are missing out on so many states that make life worth living, ie the liminal hypnagogic state, the absolutely magical hypnopompic state, wonderful actual alpha-brain relaxation etc.
This is also why people become sad, superficial, loose connection to the magic of existence and ultimately become sociopaths constantly seeking superficial hits because they have no space or time for the liminal states.
2) while I don't have an easy reference, a number of studies have found that even strenuous exercise before bed does not seem to impair sleep. As with everything sleep related there could easily be lots of individual variation but in general I don't think it usually causes trouble.
I think this might come down to heart rate. I've found that when I bike home at like 10 pm from somewhere say 30 minutes away, I'm fine now with sleep but when I first started biking back from somewhat far places I couldn't sleep well all night.
https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Circadian_phase
I follow this graph from him and I've found that if I exercise at the time marked as "sports" even 1 hour isn't enough for my heartrate to lower which leads to a worse siesta nap. I'm hoping that long-term as I get more aerobically fit it becomes less of a problem.
More generally, I don't think the argument is that strenuous exercise impairs sleep. More that it effects your circadian rythm. iirc from talking to Woz, for him, sports make him more tired and bring sleep phase earlier and I think my experiences are somewhat similar, though both of us exercise in late morning.
Regarding 1: Sleep loss lethality is caused by gut ROS in mice and flies [1]
> ...researchers demonstrate in flies and mice that sleep loss leads to an increase of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the gut, and that neutralization of ROS can prevent oxidative stress and prolong the lifespan of sleep-deprived flies.
Various biological systems seem to have recovery mechanisms associated with the sleep cycles. These cycles are measured using EEG devices but all the major SmartWatch vendors are adding predictive machine learning algorithms to generate the equivalent sleep cycles using optical heart rate data.
Continuous sleep cycle tracking might provide crucial insights related to optimal health.
> 2) while I don't have an easy reference, a number of studies have found that even strenuous exercise before bed does not seem to impair sleep. As with everything sleep related there could easily be lots of individual variation but in general I don't think it usually causes trouble.
Hopefully.
These days, with all this working and staying at home, I'm sure for a lot of people their most strenuous exercise is just before going to sleep.
> In my experience, when you wake up seems to be more important for setting the circadian rhythm than when you get to sleep.
That's my experience too, however I think it is misleading, for some people, to describe circadian rhythm as a single daily clock.
In my experience it's more like:
1) There are a small number of distinct rhythms. When these are aligned, sleep is more refreshing, and they feel like one larger coherent process. When they are unaligned, sleep is less refreshing, and the awake time has a number of "different kinds of tired" intervals, as varies cycles that would ideally be during sleep occur during awake time instead. When severe, it's difficult or impossible to work during these intervals, even when getting plenty of sleep as well.
"Different kinds of tired" means things like tired muscles, or tired mind, or difficulty focusing, or poorer temperature regulation, or... Basically different processes in the body, which could all be conflated as "tired" yet are distinct from each other.
One of the most annoying is feeling very sleepy and needing to lie down, yet not falling asleep because it's the wrong kind of tired for actual sleep. After hours of that, maybe the right kind of tired will happen, at which point actual sleep happens. When these cycles are misaligned the overall process can take most or even all of the available 24 hours a day; it is very difficult to hold down a job when this is a regular occurrence.
2) The overall circadian cycle sometimes breaks up into pieces, like those 24 hour mechanical timers with a separate bit of plastic for each 15 minutes, which can be set to one long interval or more than one shorter interval.
As many other people point out, regularity is good for maintaining a strong circadian rhythm. I find that includes these multiple intervals: They seem to appreciate consistency too. I also find waking earlier/later (e.g. due to the sun, work, clocks etc) doesn't always drag the whole 24 hour cycle forward or backward; sometimes it seems to create a new interval and allow an old one to shrink or fade.
> trigger event and that once triggered is essentially irreversible
I had a trigger event which I can trace back specifically to age 15: Working on school coursework in bed in the early hours of the night. It's not really a single event so much as a time period of a few months.
Up until that point I had reasonably regular sleep.
Ever since then I suffered from essentially chaotic and unpredictable sleep times for about 20 years.
No amount of "discipline", from school, jobs etc., fixed this. It just meant I was tired, and late getting to work a lot, because the alternative is to be on time but too exhausted to be useful, a real dilemma.
Eventually after about age 35 it started getting a bit more regular. But it's not great, and I have to be very conscious about managing sleep.
A challenging aspect of this is I'm far more productive if I decide to pull an all-nighter than if I remain disciplined about sleep. I have found with great consistency that in a well-chosen all-nighter, I've often got more things sorted out than a month of regular work. It's frustrating; I would like to do that in the daytime! If I'm disciplined and avoid doing that, months can go by with only "mundane" levels of productivity, and it's disappointing knowing I'm capable of more. As a decent programmer, I'm lucky that "mundane" is still good, but it's not what I can do at my best. I'd still like to crack this problem but I haven't found a solution yet.
It is a big statement. I've personally not used an alarm clock in about 10 years, I wake up naturally. The times I do use an alarm clock I can genuinely say often make be feel ill for the rest of the day.
After covid hit I'm having trouble sleeping too much. I'm doing 9 hours a night and occasional 1 hr nap after lunch, I feel my metabolism is slowing down and I'm putting on weight. I've started doing more aerobic exercise and it just makes me need my after lunch nap.
The section about not sleeping being lethal should be changed. First I talks about rats, secondly it's lethal for insomnia sufferers cause it makes them extremely scared and afraid of not sleeping (I'm obviously in this group).
[+] [-] lolive|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snicky|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pleasesurfmore|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lamename|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlokier|5 years ago|reply
The state of a person's life circumstances, which can change, has a huge effect on mental capability.
[+] [-] martindbp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markus_zhang|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PhilosAccnting|5 years ago|reply
It comes off the inspiration from my First Big Personal Project: https://adequate.life
[+] [-] telesilla|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muzani|5 years ago|reply
Some stuff I got out of this:
1. The ideal sleep pattern is sleeping when tired and walking up without an alarm.
2. Biphasic is recommended. Homeostatic is how easy it is to initiate sleep, circadian is how easy it is to maintain it. Circadian cycle is usually nightly, homeostatic peaks with fatigue. It's easy to have a 20 min midday nap but hard to do a midnight one.
3. Brainwork is great as soon as you wake up, and if you need caffiene, this is the time for it. Bundle stress and exercise and keep it away from the night.
Take note this is all theory and not practical, and the author hints that society should follow these and not the other way around. It took me half a decade to find a way to fit it, and what I did was:
A. Force myself to wake real early, about 4 AM. You will feel horrible for a week, but it moves your circadian rhythm forward to wake and sleep naturally without an alarm.
B. Naps in the car at lunch. Waking early gave more time to cook, which means packed meals are done in half an hour, followed by a quick nap. I set an alarm but never need it. Exercise is easy; a quick run and a lot of strong deodorant.
[+] [-] japhyr|5 years ago|reply
When I had an important exam or something else I really didn't want to miss, I'd set an alarm for a while. But then I just went all in, and never set an alarm. That made me pay more attention to when I was going to bed at night, and the quality of my sleep. When I started working I would set an alarm for about half an hour after I typically woke up, just in case, so I wouldn't be late for work. But after six months of that, I stopped setting my backup alarm as well. I was late for work maybe twice in five years, and it was never significantly late, and it was at times where my body really needed sleep and it probably helped me avoid getting sick. These days I only set an alarm if I have to catch a 6am flight, or if I'm getting up super early to climb a mountain or something.
If you're battling your alarm every day, I highly encourage you to experiment with not setting an alarm.
[+] [-] hx2a|5 years ago|reply
When I had sleep apnea I could fall asleep at any time of day, no matter how much sleep I got (or thought I was getting) each night. The alarm was necessary because I never felt well rested and couldn't get up without it.
Then I went for a sleep study and was told that during a night of 6-7 hours of what I thought was continuous sleep, I actually woke up 120 times. Eek! Of course everyone normally wakes up at least a few times and doesn't remember it the next day, but most people don't choke and stop breathing 120 times a night. I rarely got any real deep sleep.
I had sleep apnea surgery, which changed my life. Almost right away I got better sleep and was more alert during the day. It was like getting an extra 2-3 hours a day, every day.
Now I get up without an alarm every day and never need caffeine. It's a great way to live.
[+] [-] zemvpferreira|5 years ago|reply
My biggest pet peeve is that it ignores the role technology (in the form of artificial light and comfortable indoor space) completely subverts our natural sleep cycle. It's a lost battle.
Better to accept that we're in an artificial state our whole lives and do our best to adapt to it. What I'm trying right now is a good melatonin supplement every night to counteract the unnantural stimulus, plus a magnesium supplement, and a lot of daytime exercise. This routine has gotten me from 6 hours of anxious sleep to 8-9 hours per night plus the occasional nap. And I feel great.
[+] [-] m463|5 years ago|reply
the pandemic has let me play with sleep and sometimes it's to let it gradually drift forwards an hour each day and wrap around. (schedule meetings are the only trouble spot to that experiment)
[+] [-] tejohnso|5 years ago|reply
I interpreted this in summary as "sleep when tired and don't sleep when not tired". Which seems like common sense. That's akin to my favourite feeding pattern, which can be summarized as: "eat when hungry, do not eat when not hungry".
[+] [-] roel_v|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rajlego|5 years ago|reply
I myself only started using SuperMemo over the last 2 years but I think in the last 1, I've seen lots of friends get massively better and I'm looking forward to what we create over the next 5 years.
In terms of new implementations, one thing I'm excited about is dendro: https://dendro.com.au/.
It's made by a long-term supermemo user and some other friends and I think is the best shot at a modern incremental reading alternative to SuperMemo. It's missing lots of features and is aimed at bring IR to the masses rather than power users but I personally like it and find it good enough to use on my phone when I'm on the go.
[+] [-] sradman|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperMemo#Algorithms
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anki_(software)
[+] [-] vertak|5 years ago|reply
https://quantum.country/
[+] [-] maverickJ|5 years ago|reply
I will start by saying: "Do not engage the mind in the intense pursuit of too many things at once; especially things that have no relation to one another"
A couple of questions that can help for solve the above issue are:
1.How many subjects am I currently learning intensely?
2.Do these subjects have any relation to each other?
3.Why am I currently learning the subjects?
4.Have I truly made progress in any of the subjects?
By following the four questions above, you get a sense of what you really need to learn at a particular time.
This article https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/do-not-engage-the-mi... goes in-depth into the why and how of learning.
There are other tools that can contribute to a good life. Some of these tools are 1. Journalling. 2. Daily self reflection. 3. Some form of physical activity.
You can find out more on how to improve the mind in https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/three-actionable-ins...
[+] [-] jmnicolas|5 years ago|reply
The author "incremental reading" technique directly contradicts this. I don't know who's right though.
Here is a YT video of him watching a couple seconds of dozens of YT videos to extract knowledge : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOJyO7QDEX4
I'll admit it seems absolutely counter intuitive!
[+] [-] Smithalicious|5 years ago|reply
> do not wake up kids for school; if they cannot wake up in time, let them skip a class or two, or consider homeschooling
This, for instance, is entirely illegal (at least in my country, The Netherlands).
[+] [-] rajlego|5 years ago|reply
These suggestions cannot be taken to their conclusions in many cases but I think they are still good inspiration to try.
[+] [-] bhargav|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kqr|5 years ago|reply
However, this article does highlight the importance and naturalness of a mid-day nap. When reading this I started practising mid-day naps at my desk, but I never really learned to do it until other things got in the way and I started forgetting about it. Maybe I should try again.
At the very least, I encourage anyone to stand up for the right to take a mid-day nap, even if you don't personally use that right.
If you feel like you could use a nap, napping is probably the responsible thing to do. If we defend that position with evidence, maybe we can slowly change the culture at work to not look down upon it.
[+] [-] rajlego|5 years ago|reply
One reason I never want to work for a normal company is that I wouldn't be able to take naps. Not sure how I'd survive that.
One note for anyone reading this wanting to try naps: the timing matters a lot. Woz recommends napping around 7-8 hours from waking, NOT at a fixed time of day. (https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Best_time_for_napping).
There's lots of individual variance meaning it requires experimentation. For me, I usually take a nap between 5-7 hours from waking.
If you use supermemo/are interested in it, it has a thing called sleepchart (https://supermemo.guru/wiki/SleepChart) in which you can log sleep data and then see some cool graphs spit out (if you also use supermemo for learning, you can very cooly see correlations between sleep and repetition grades).
[+] [-] luigi23|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elric|5 years ago|reply
Not sure if that covers all of it, and I'm not sure whether any of it is factually correct.
[+] [-] sradman|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piotr_Woźniak_(researcher)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperMemo
[+] [-] chetangoti|5 years ago|reply
Here is https://archive.is/NLi1E
[+] [-] jmnicolas|5 years ago|reply
Is someone using his software here?
[+] [-] supersrdjan|5 years ago|reply
Oh there's a small but thriving community of SuperMemo users that sprang up recently. Here's a Youtube channel created by members of this community to help new users: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMdkN_8gHPn5vlYDe2ScrxQ
[+] [-] blarg1|5 years ago|reply
You are forced to go to bed early once it gets dark, and once it's morning even if you're tired, it's too bright to sleep in.
[+] [-] ferros|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joveian|5 years ago|reply
1) the fatal result of rats being tortured to deprive them of sleep seems to have been traced to oxidative stress in the gut (there was an article on this here not that long ago)
2) while I don't have an easy reference, a number of studies have found that even strenuous exercise before bed does not seem to impair sleep. As with everything sleep related there could easily be lots of individual variation but in general I don't think it usually causes trouble.
3) the author seems to consider free running sleep entirely posistive, however I think it is likely to cause circadian issues in a number of people who try it and may be quite dangerous. I think in my case going from a sleep deprived state to free running sleep (in an attempt to deal with insomnia) induced non-24 (it may be that non-24 has both a genetic susceptibility and a trigger event and that once triggered is essentially irreversible). In my case it also seems that there is an issue with internal coherence of the circadian rhythm with different parts of my body proceeding on different scheduled and rarely synchronized, leaving me disabled with memory issues and fatigue. So I encourage everyone to be careful when making changes to sleep schedules. For someone who already has a circadian issue it seems often better to sleep on the delayed or shifting schedule, but few people can do that without significant disruption caused by interacting with the rest of the world and there may still be some issues, at least for some people, due to being awake at night.
4) I think alarm clocks can in some cases keep a healthy circadian rhythm synchonized with the sun. Maybe consider them more like a prescription medication than smoking, try to avoid if possible but if using one can help you keep a healthy circadian rhythm then it seems likely to be healthier than a disrupted circadian rhythm. In my experience, when you wake up seems to be more important for setting the circadian rhythm than when you get to sleep.
[+] [-] kossTKR|5 years ago|reply
Its a leftover from feudal / agricultural society where you had to get up to do different things on the farm _all day_ until you where so tired you crashed and slept for 8 hours. Nothing natural in that.
I totally agree that "getting up early" can have its benefits, and so can an uninterrupted 7 hours - but the body is built to get up in the middle of the night, do stuff, then go back to bed, get up again, scavenge, build, talk to someone, then take a nap with your family/tribe etc.
As long as you follow the inner rhythm, and can zone-out and relax, you are probably most healthy going through various states multiple times a day, from intense focus, to alert, to way more relaxed than anyone are today.
This is in stark contrast to the toxically over-caffeinated over exerted extremely long days where you never really go through any different "mindstates" but just "plough through" until you crash - and then think that you need 8 hours and to get up early - no you only need that because you are abusing your body. Also you are missing out on so many states that make life worth living, ie the liminal hypnagogic state, the absolutely magical hypnopompic state, wonderful actual alpha-brain relaxation etc.
This is also why people become sad, superficial, loose connection to the magic of existence and ultimately become sociopaths constantly seeking superficial hits because they have no space or time for the liminal states.
[+] [-] rajlego|5 years ago|reply
I think this might come down to heart rate. I've found that when I bike home at like 10 pm from somewhere say 30 minutes away, I'm fine now with sleep but when I first started biking back from somewhat far places I couldn't sleep well all night.
https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Circadian_phase I follow this graph from him and I've found that if I exercise at the time marked as "sports" even 1 hour isn't enough for my heartrate to lower which leads to a worse siesta nap. I'm hoping that long-term as I get more aerobically fit it becomes less of a problem.
More generally, I don't think the argument is that strenuous exercise impairs sleep. More that it effects your circadian rythm. iirc from talking to Woz, for him, sports make him more tired and bring sleep phase earlier and I think my experiences are somewhat similar, though both of us exercise in late morning.
[+] [-] sradman|5 years ago|reply
> ...researchers demonstrate in flies and mice that sleep loss leads to an increase of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the gut, and that neutralization of ROS can prevent oxidative stress and prolong the lifespan of sleep-deprived flies.
Various biological systems seem to have recovery mechanisms associated with the sleep cycles. These cycles are measured using EEG devices but all the major SmartWatch vendors are adding predictive machine learning algorithms to generate the equivalent sleep cycles using optical heart rate data.
Continuous sleep cycle tracking might provide crucial insights related to optimal health.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41575-020-0340-6
[+] [-] jlokier|5 years ago|reply
Hopefully.
These days, with all this working and staying at home, I'm sure for a lot of people their most strenuous exercise is just before going to sleep.
> In my experience, when you wake up seems to be more important for setting the circadian rhythm than when you get to sleep.
That's my experience too, however I think it is misleading, for some people, to describe circadian rhythm as a single daily clock.
In my experience it's more like:
1) There are a small number of distinct rhythms. When these are aligned, sleep is more refreshing, and they feel like one larger coherent process. When they are unaligned, sleep is less refreshing, and the awake time has a number of "different kinds of tired" intervals, as varies cycles that would ideally be during sleep occur during awake time instead. When severe, it's difficult or impossible to work during these intervals, even when getting plenty of sleep as well.
"Different kinds of tired" means things like tired muscles, or tired mind, or difficulty focusing, or poorer temperature regulation, or... Basically different processes in the body, which could all be conflated as "tired" yet are distinct from each other.
One of the most annoying is feeling very sleepy and needing to lie down, yet not falling asleep because it's the wrong kind of tired for actual sleep. After hours of that, maybe the right kind of tired will happen, at which point actual sleep happens. When these cycles are misaligned the overall process can take most or even all of the available 24 hours a day; it is very difficult to hold down a job when this is a regular occurrence.
2) The overall circadian cycle sometimes breaks up into pieces, like those 24 hour mechanical timers with a separate bit of plastic for each 15 minutes, which can be set to one long interval or more than one shorter interval.
As many other people point out, regularity is good for maintaining a strong circadian rhythm. I find that includes these multiple intervals: They seem to appreciate consistency too. I also find waking earlier/later (e.g. due to the sun, work, clocks etc) doesn't always drag the whole 24 hour cycle forward or backward; sometimes it seems to create a new interval and allow an old one to shrink or fade.
> trigger event and that once triggered is essentially irreversible
I had a trigger event which I can trace back specifically to age 15: Working on school coursework in bed in the early hours of the night. It's not really a single event so much as a time period of a few months.
Up until that point I had reasonably regular sleep.
Ever since then I suffered from essentially chaotic and unpredictable sleep times for about 20 years. No amount of "discipline", from school, jobs etc., fixed this. It just meant I was tired, and late getting to work a lot, because the alternative is to be on time but too exhausted to be useful, a real dilemma.
Eventually after about age 35 it started getting a bit more regular. But it's not great, and I have to be very conscious about managing sleep.
A challenging aspect of this is I'm far more productive if I decide to pull an all-nighter than if I remain disciplined about sleep. I have found with great consistency that in a well-chosen all-nighter, I've often got more things sorted out than a month of regular work. It's frustrating; I would like to do that in the daytime! If I'm disciplined and avoid doing that, months can go by with only "mundane" levels of productivity, and it's disappointing knowing I'm capable of more. As a decent programmer, I'm lucky that "mundane" is still good, but it's not what I can do at my best. I'd still like to crack this problem but I haven't found a solution yet.
[+] [-] slothtrop|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ferros|5 years ago|reply
Wow. That’s a big statement, surely comparing alarms to smoking is a bit much?
[+] [-] dageshi|5 years ago|reply
Still, not sure it's as bad as smoking.
[+] [-] x87678r|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ValentineC|5 years ago|reply
https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Science_of_sleep
[+] [-] biolurker1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otar|5 years ago|reply
It's been a while when I first read this excellent article, I always try to follow the advice about free running sleep since then.