Sleep

Yeap, I was thinking about creating a thread like this lately as well, because I came to the realization that although sleeping 5/6 hours a day worked for me for the last 10+ years, it's more and more becoming a habit that is slowly deteriorating my mind and my body. This topic goes hand in hand with being a night owl for me as well, so read up if you're interested.

I try to force myself to sleep, but as the extreme night owl that I am, it's one of the battles that I try to fight every night since I can remember. After a lot of research, (I actually spent a long time looking this topic up) I think what I am experiencing relates a lot to the definition of "Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder". Basically, after dinner I feel a boost of energy and I really feel that crave to sit in the computer and do some work / learning.

Big problem is, next day is work/school day and waking up early is where everything goes to shit for people that suffers from this.

In the end, being like this is extremely shitty because there's literally no way around it (I tried, there's some things you can do to make it better tho) so you end up living two lives, you live the life that our society portraits as normal (so called 9 to 5) and you live your night life where you're really in the mood and creating your best work. The result of this? 5 hour sleep nights on average, which you try to compensate with coffee, exercise, (etc) but do it for as long as I've been doing it and it starts to take it's toll on you.

It's frustrating and infuriating because it's hard for "normal people" to understand what this shit feels like. You can't just flip a fucking switch and change who you are. Unfortunately for night owls, this is frowned upon by society and night owls are labeled as lazy fucks who tend to sleep in in the morning. Truth and fact is, I probably work more hours than the majority of the so called "early birds", the bright and golden individuals of our society. I am firmly convinced that I am not biologically "wired" to go to sleep at 11pm like a robot just because society turned off the lights. After dinner, I get this burst of energy and creativity that typically lasts until 2/3am. All of my best work has been created during those hours, this has been going since I was 16 or 17 which coincides with when I had my first computer, which also proves that blue light at night will develop Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. (And since we deal a lot with colors and art, that flux app is not a solution for me)We will see how long this will last until I have some kind of collapse. But seriously tho, since I've started to exercise a couple months ago I feel i need more sleep so I've been thinking about REALLY forcing myself to go to sleep early'ish on the days that I exercise, and only do work on the days that I don't. I hate treating my life as a fucking calendar, but for the sake of health this sounds like a good thing to do. tl:drzzzZZzzzz

Btw, that was an amazing watch! It's really interesting how when you're asleep you're actually assimilating the info that you've learned during the day, it carves it into your memory. Interesting fact that really makes you consider sleeping some more on it's own.

Sleeping is my #1 problem too. I suffer from chronic migraines and usually have outbursts when I don't get enough sleep for a few days straight. What I found that helps me a lot is to take a natural sleep aid on thursdays, which is usually the day that I feel the shittiest since I can never get enough sleep on weekdays, and go to bed earlier (like 10 pm or so). This way I break the chain of not getting enough sleep and kind of reset my body for the weekend

I've always slept for 10+ hours and I feel sharp and aware and good when I do and like a bread loaf when I don't. There is no question lack of sleep will literally kill you D:

Quote from [HP]

Yeap, I was thinking about creating a thread like this lately as well, because I came to the realization that although sleeping 5/6 hours a day worked for me for the last 10+ years, it's more and more becoming a habit that is slowly deteriorating my mind and my body. This topic goes hand in hand with being a night owl for me as well, so read up if you're interested.

I try to force myself to sleep, but as the extreme night owl that I am, it's one of the battles that I try to fight every night since I can remember. After a lot of research, (I actually spent a long time looking this topic up) I think what I am experiencing relates a lot to the definition of "Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder". Basically, after dinner I feel a boost of energy and I really feel that crave to sit in the computer and do some work / learning.

Big problem is, next day is work/school day and waking up early is where everything goes to shit for people that suffers from this.

In the end, being like this is extremely shitty because there's literally no way around it (I tried, there's some things you can do to make it better tho) so you end up living two lives, you live the life that our society portraits as normal (so called 9 to 5) and you live your night life where you're really in the mood and creating your best work. The result of this? 5 hour sleep nights on average, which you try to compensate with coffee, exercise, (etc) but do it for as long as I've been doing it and it starts to take it's toll on you.

It's frustrating and infuriating because it's hard for "normal people" to understand what this shit feels like. You can't just flip a fucking switch and change who you are. Unfortunately for night owls, this is frowned upon by society and night owls are labeled as lazy fucks who tend to sleep in in the morning. Truth and fact is, I probably work more hours than the majority of the so called "early birds", the bright and golden individuals of our society. I am firmly convinced that I am not biologically "wired" to go to sleep at 11pm like a robot just because society turned off the lights. After dinner, I get this burst of energy and creativity that typically lasts until 2/3am. All of my best work has been created during those hours, this has been going since I was 16 or 17 which coincides with when I had my first computer, which also proves that blue light at night will develop Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. (And since we deal a lot with colors and art, that flux app is not a solution for me)We will see how long this will last until I have some kind of collapse. But seriously tho, since I've started to exercise a couple months ago I feel i need more sleep so I've been thinking about REALLY forcing myself to go to sleep early'ish on the days that I exercise, and only do work on the days that I don't. I hate treating my life as a fucking calendar, but for the sake of health this sounds like a good thing to do. tl:drzzzZZzzzz

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I had a revelation on this topic myself, and ironically the solution is not less sleep, it's more. You sleep during the day for a large part of it, wake up around 4-5 then go back to sleep around 4-5 in the morning. That means you end up waking up around 9AM, what's considered normal for most people. Then you're in the good cycle again. It saved my sanity quite honestly

I've never had problems with not sleeping, but I always feel really shitty if I get more than 8 hours of sleep. I'm most productive in the morning though so that probably has something to do with it.

Sleep bad now? Wait till you have kids.

Used to stay up late at night at Uni but since working at Crytek and moving out into the countryside (and having two Springer Spaniels) it's easier just to go to bed around 10/11pm and not just do pointless stuff on computers at night.

I'm up at 6am anyway walking the dogs and in the office for 8am whereas the city dwellers come in looking like crap at 9:30am after being up till 2am.

I have a similar sleep pattern to HP, I am highly awake in the evenings and it always when I do the most work. However on the weekends and holidays I often sleep 12-14 hours easily and still wake up feeling shit. My mind just doesn't like waking up, I generally have very deep sleep and barely anything will wake me up.

Great post, HP.

Regarding assimilating knowledge whilst you sleep, I totally agree with that. I used to play Piano, and if I practiced a lot the night before and couldn't quite play a song 100% correctly with no mistakes, if I just went to sleep.. The next morning, I could play the song perfectly. The human brain is a weird thing!

I sleep 6-7 h tops at normal days more theb that make me oversleepy and i feel like shit and VERY impprtant thing to feel good after waking up

Stand up after first signal of your alarm clock not trying to sleep for another 5 min and after that again.

Quote from knj

I sleep 6-7 h tops at normal days more theb that make me oversleepy and i feel like shit and VERY impprtant thing to feel good after waking up

Stand up after first signal of your alarm clock not trying to sleep for another 5 min and after that again.

unfortunately getting my legs to respond is very hard when I first wake up, might be something to do with being so tall and blood flow when ive been lying down for 6-7 hours.

For some reason my REM sleep is synced up in intervals of 4. I can sleep 4/8/12/16 hours and wake up perfectly fresh. If I break this rhythm my body gets fucked, especially my stomach. It seems very similar to how much tiredness scale works as well, I have these peaks of tiredness where I can just fall asleep very easy because I'm exhausted, but outside of those I'll have to lie in bed for a while before something happens.

Quote from PogoP

Great post, HP.

Regarding assimilating knowledge whilst you sleep, I totally agree with that. I used to play Piano, and if I practiced a lot the night before and couldn't quite play a song 100% correctly with no mistakes, if I just went to sleep.. The next morning, I could play the song perfectly. The human brain is a weird thing!

There have been many late nights I've had trying and failing to come up with some programming solution, only to find the next day I have it instantly.

Quote from Vilham

unfortunately getting my legs to respond is very hard when I first wake up, might be something to do with being so tall and blood flow when ive been lying down for 6-7 hours.

Do you stretch? Try to force yourself out and do a couple of exercises like a series of squats. I'm not tall but I often feel like my legs are made of wood after getting up.

Quote from [HP]

I am firmly convinced that I am not biologically "wired" to go to sleep at 11pm like a robot just because society turned off the lights. After dinner, I get this burst of energy and creativity that typically lasts until 2/3am.

Could this have to be also with your diet? I mean, I think everybody (here) can relate to what you are saying.

I haven't done any research, but my personal experience just tells me that the "delayed sleep" in my case is self-induced by staying up to party/play/study/sport. In the latest years in particular i did notice that after my basketball trainings I was too awake, if i'd go to bed i would generally turn in it for hours. Even worse if i did eat something when I got back/after the matches (around 11pm).

So, at least for me, it's just a matter of self-discipline and patience to take the time to adjust your sleep: when I was running in the morning, waking up 6-6:30, I would go to bed around midnight and sleep without any problem. When I was working in Namibia, I adjusted too* and most of the time I would fell in complete coma at 23:00 if I tried to watch a movie (still dunno how my laptop did never fell from my laps).

Anyways, my recent visit to the oculist, revealed that I sleep with my eyelids not completely closed, and this must be a change that happened (in fact I started to be disturbed by LEDs in recent years, so I must cover those if I want to leave the laptop on in the night to download stuff).

*took me a couple of months, it was tricky because i went from the then extending daylight of the north emisphere to the opposite cycle.

What sucks for me as i got older is how symptoms of not enough sleep have changed. I used to feel just sleepy and yawned a lot during the day. But nowadays it makes me feel sick. I get headaches, feel dizzy and weak. I can even get panic attacks if it's really bad. The strange thing is i almost never yawn anymore or feel like taking a nap. It's like my body/mind doesn't know anymore what normal being tired is.

And what always was strange for me is that my biorhytm seems wired in a way as if days have 25 hours. Without discipline of when to go to bed and when to wake up i would always go to bed one hour later then the day before. Couple years ago when i was unemployed that lead to some strange sleep patterns like going to bed 11am one day and then a week later at 6pm etc.

Quote from Thrik

There have been many late nights I've had trying and failing to come up with some programming solution, only to find the next day I have it instantly.

excessive learning/adaptation takes sleep to work out. subconscious thinking is blooming while you sleep, so even though you think you may be dreaming, you brain may actually be computing a thousand of different scenarios of how to solve a problem to find a way of doing it.

also my point with the previous post was: if you don't break your REM cycles, you can wake up and feel rested fairly fast. If you do break them, you're only fucking yourself over.

All of this is way too familiar to me.

Thankfully work starts at 10 here, the sad part is that I rarely make it in before 10:30

haha yes, work is the only thing that keeps my sleep on track, I get about 6-7 hours a night on workdays, and weekends I get about 12 hours sleep - so basically I'm catching up on the "standard" sleep hours for an average joe ;P

when I'm not working, and have time at home I usually find I start to sleep about 5am and get up about 3pm naturally, I suppose that is my natural cycle.