Good night, sleep tight, don't forget your caffeine pills

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4 pointstomwiddles2 comments

Can someone tell me why cutting sleep to get more work done helps overall productivity? I have been a solid 7.5 a night sleeper for decades (it’s a blessing, I know). I can’t imagine getting 4-6 a night. Sure that makes the day about 20 hours instead of 16, but I feel like my mental capacity is so diminished on low sleep, that any time gained is wasted being unfocused and groggy.

It reminds me of drug addicts who claim they need it to operate. It works in the short term, but long term it becomes a catch up game. And once sober they realize they could accomplish things in-spite of the drugs, not because of the drugs.

It just doesn't, I 100% agree with you. To approach the problem from a mathematical basis, let's say one can spend half of their waking hours actually working. How much of an impact does adding an extra 2 hours to that value even make, in an 8 hour work day? That means you can work at most 25% extra, which just doesn't seem like very much in my opinion. Surely there are tools out there that allow you to make your work day more efficient, more than the blunt tool of sacrificing sleep to just work more. And that's totally ignoring the negative effect that less sleep has on efficiency.

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