Comment by pontus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pontus | Hacker News Reader

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I think this is great advice.

I remember when I was an undergraduate physics student, looking forward to grad school and idolizing all the famous physicists. My adviser, who was not the most soft and cuddly type of guy, always pushed this type of hyper-alpha stuff on me, even telling me that he himself only sleeps 2-3 hours per night just so that he can do more physics. It really does damage to you and your self image, and I don't think the advice he gave me was really meant to help me as much as it was meant to help him feel superior.

Anyway, a bit later in life now I look back and realize that there are so many times when I've idolized a certain way of living / doing things that are actually not productive at all but rather just feed that same type of alpha-image.

There's no reason why you can't be successful on your own terms, even if that means taking the weekend off, being a solo founder, or whatever. Sure, I get that startups are hard and draining, but (not to lean too heavily on cliches) there's a difference between working hard and working smart and more often than not I think these types of alpha-founders are glorifying busyness.

> even telling me that he himself only sleeps 2-3 hours per night just so that he can do more physics.

It's always fascinating to see people make claims like this, despite all evidence showing that it's impossible to maintain. Some extreme genetic outliers may be able to sustain performance with around 5 hours of sleep per night, but no one is going to last very long on 2-3 hours per sleep each night.

How do you rule out if the professor is an extreme genetic outlier? Seems like the kind of place you’d expect to find such an outlier.

Has there ever been a documented medical case of someone surviving on less than 3 hours of sleep a night indefinitely?

I've read a lot of sleep studies, and besides some non-scientifically published variations on Buckminster Fuller's 30 minute nap every six hour sleep schedule I haven't read about someone getting such low amounts of sleep.

I've been on that little sleep for months. It takes away from any clear thought. Very unproductive. Not something anyone should do on purpose.

Why are you on it? Covid insomnia?

Baby.

Welcome to parent life! Especially if the kid have colic

I had a bad reaction to a 10 day cipro prescription a few years ago and it felt like getting hit by lightening. So many things returned to normal but being able to sleep for more than 4 1/2 hours, was not one of them.

Either he is an extreme genetic outlier (by definition the rarest of the rare) or he exaggerated to enhance his reputation (a trait baked in to everyone and so pervasive we all do it without realizing it). I know which one is more likely.

Extreme genetic outliers still need 5, maybe 4 hours of sleep to function.

Going all the way down to 2 hours of sleep is doable for short bursts, but it will catch up with even the genetic outliers before long.

Many of these people are just exaggerating for effect. If you have poor time management, poor accounting for where you spend your time, and an erratic sleep/wake schedule, it's easy to get confused about actual sleep durations. Some people also use stimulants excessively during the week and then crash on weekends, but they'll only tell you about the nights where they barely slept.

Some people learn to normalize sleep deprivation and coast on a diet of frequent naps. If you take 30-90 minute naps a couple times a day you can coast for a long time on 2-3 hours in bed at night, but you're still sleep deprived. Those weird polyphasic sleep schedules that claim to reduce your need for sleep are simply normalizing sleep deprivation and masking it with naps throughout the day.

Finally, there's a common phenomenon where people misperceive some of their sleep time as being awake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_state_misperception This is a common explanation when people claim they didn't sleep at all on a certain night. It's not uncommon for people to claim extreme insomnia, but then sleep 6+ hours as soon as their sleep is objectively monitored.

In short: You can't trust self-reported sleep times. Especially not when someone feels they have something to gain by claiming minimal sleep.

In this case, there's the additional irony of ignoring science in the name of doing science.

On another note, I can't be the only person who finds this kind of bragging to just fail to register, or even to backfire. Am I meant to be impressed by how poorly they've arranged their weekly routine in terms of work/life balance?

It reminds me of a line from a Jack Reacher novel - a guy with a scarred face (who obviously thinks he looks scary and tough) asks Reacher what his face tells him, and Reacher just replies "it tells me you've lost a lot of fights."

Maybe going on a cocaine/stim bender can sustain this for a little while then crash through the weekends when everyone is less productive. Obviously a terrible idea long-term to avoid chemical dependence/brain damage, but it's common enough that I've met quite a few of these "barely sleep yet hyper-productive" types that are abusing stimulants beyond coffee to keep it going during the work week.

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