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Comment by barrkel | Hacker News Reader

I don't find alcohol helps me at all; it takes an edge off me for several days. I very rarely drink, almost only at special occasions and then matched wines with meals and that kind of thing.

But I do find that being somewhat tired helps me get into a certain kind of "getting things done" zone: when the creative planning is not necessary, and mostly the grunt work of pushing things through to implementation remains.

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Being tired makes it easier for me to do public speaking and sales presentations. I've never locked up in the middle of a presentation when I've had a bad night's sleep beforehand. It's almost getting to be something I optimize for: set up travel so I'm as tired as possible before presenting.

Heh, yes, I can confirm this. The one time we met you said that you weren't sleeping well (since school had just started) and, as a result, were talking more than usual.

Whenever I'm low on sleep, I'm mostly just irritable and more prone to making mistakes, although once, when particularly sleep deprived, I found myself reading the back of a shampoo bottle as if it were a cooking recipe. A couple minutes in, I realized it wasn't a recipe, thought to myself something like "Snap out of it!" Not more than five minutes later and I was reading the "recipe" again.

Anyways, personally. I'm certainly neither more productive nor more talkative when sleep deprived.

That's exactly my experience, as well, only I think I'm pretty good at creative stuff when I'm tired, in addition to accomplishing any grunt work I have...

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