Posted by downbad_ 1 day ago
To pre-empt a few objections: I did not need an alarm clock to wake up. I am not taking heavy stimulants other than caffeine at this time. I am not stressed. I am not unhappy. I don't have memory issues (in fact, I am cursed with a very good memory and it is usually harder for me to forget than to remember). I can score above the Mensa bar on an IQ test. I can take an interview. I can give a demo. I can run 10km. I do not have "bipolar disorder" or any such nonsense. I don't need medication. I don't need therapy. I don't need a better mattress. I'm not already in a mental asylum. I'm married with kids, I work a high-paying job, I give to charity and I pay my taxes. In fact, today is tax day, I should probably take care of that instead of getting upset at hacker news comments.
Over time, it supposedly significantly increases the likelihood of certain diseases/conditions.
Peter Attia was one of those people who got by with little sleep, and for years, well into his medical career, was dismissive of those who preached the importance of 8 hours of sleep a day. He then looked into the research, and completely changed his mind:
Here's the thing: say what I have is a "disease" and currently, the best cure for this disease is a pill that would slow down my thoughts and make me into a bland emotionless vegetable during my waking hours in addition to reducing the amount of waking hours that I get to enjoy. Even if that magic pill buys me 20 extra years of old age at the tail end of my life, is it rational for me to take it in my early 30s?
In other words it's possible to "feel fine" on little sleep and yet be significantly cognitively impaired. Worth measuring that, if possible.
(It might have been Gwern, he's got a big page on the subject.)
My philosophy is: either I'll live to benefit from technology that can repair the damage caused by aging, in which case health micro-optimizations early in life are not that important, OR this won't be achieved within my lifetime, in which case I prefer a short life with concentrated happiness, vitality and intensity in my youth.
You should at least monitor your deep sleep using a smartwatch. Less than 1.5 hours and I would be worried.
I am not too worried about Alzheimer's as it tends to start pretty late in life (I think average onset is around mid-60s?). If I get that and we don't have a reliable cure by then, I wouldn't really mind ending it quickly after getting the diagnosis. I'm a bit more worried about heart disease as that tends to hit earlier.
It seems like we're all just looking at the title and talking about our sleep habits.
Also, I'm really curious to know if some of it is no longer valid. 14 years is a long time in science
I don’t always nap, but I make sure to do so if I haven’t had enough sleep or when I’m stressed or overworked. The more work I have, the more naps I take. Three back to back meetings? 15 minutes nap for your brain to organize and process the information dump. You get the gist. Doesn’t have to be after lunch, just a few minutes when you need/have them.
I used to do the Dali nap: find a comfortable spot, hold a spoon in your hand, and close your eyes. Once you fall asleep the spoon will fall from your hand and wake you up. That makes sure you go into hypnagogic state, great for problem solving as the brain is in a creativity sweet spot.
The technique I use now is not strictly a nap but a relaxation technique called NSDR: Non-Sleep Deep Rest. It’s kind of a guided meditation that deeply relaxes your body and nervous system. Just 10 minutes can feel as restorative as hours of sleep. You can check Andrew Huberman's scripts or Youtube videos for a more body-hacking, science-backed vive, or channels like are Ally Boothroyd's [0] for a more spiritual take on the concept, also known as Yoga Nidra.
I hope that helps. And best of luck with your napping, honor the ancestors!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL19-3B-OVYoc1sdjBBKLB...
I've also read about NSDR and wanted to try it, so having some sources is really helpful. Do you always practice it with some guided meditation or can you do it on your own? I kind of not like guided meditation. (No reason, it's just that kind of feel wrong. Probably I should just open my mind and try it more.) Thank you so much!
I currently do not do guided NSDR that much, but it helped a lot at the time learning how to calm my thoughts and become deeply relaxed, especially the Ally guided sessions (as everything else, takes practice) so I would recommend to try the guided ones even if it feels awkward, until you learn how to stop your mind from wandering. I find it helps both with quick reset/recharge naps and falling back asleep if I wake up in the middle of the night (happens often for me).
For example, I can't fly, but I can (apparently) move the whole universe by a specific offset. I can also change the specific offset at a specific motion. So basically, I don't have flying powers, but I do have the powers of treating my dream like a Unity3D scene. And in that way, I can mimic flight.
I can also turn into a monster myself, usually into a worse monster than whatever I'm facing. I have become my nightmare's nightmare at certain points.
Nowadays though, whenever a nightmare hit I'm just unfazed. What also helps is that I let my nightmare and the creatures within it know that I am immortal. No matter what they do to me. In my dreams I am The Beginning and The End. I am all that will be there. They are there because of me. I'm essentially the only god that there is (I'm not religious but as far as my dreams are concerned, I am a god).
That throws off quite a lot of nightmares. The ones that persist, it's fine. They can test my immortality.
I got interested in lucid dreaming for its own sake, and trained myself for it. I did all the common stuff in the guides, and eventually I had a habit of many times a day rubbing the back of my hand or something else tactile and asking myself if I was dreaming. After quite some time it did start to actually work in my dreams. I would frequently become "aware" in my dream and realise I was dreaming, and in my dream I would dream I would have control, but once I woke up it didn't even really feel like I had full control. It was not the experience I had been expecting, where everything becomes clearer, you can literally consciously control the dream. It was more like dreaming that I knew I was dreaming, and then controlling the dream, but I could never quite control it to the full extent I wanted to. No matter how much I practiced, this is all I achieved.
However, it wasn't nothing. It did let me start to realise I was dreaming in nightmares, and immediately just change them and become "in control" to the point where I could push back on whatever the nightmare was about, dictate on my terms. It still wasn't full lucid/awake control, but it was enough that I become the power in the dream, not the subject of the nightmare.
I really encourage you to keep trying. It took a lot of repetition during the day for the habit to finally enter my dreams. A lot more than I expected. But it did eventually work, to the extent I mentioned.
Arguably the best thing you can do is simply keep a dream journal (aside from deliberately waking up in the middle of the night and falling asleep with a clear intention - but that is more invasive in one's schedule and can also trigger nightmares).
That's just incompatible with modern life right?
So I tried sleeping when I was really tired, waking up without an alarm, eating when I was hungry, etc. I ignored watches, daylight and society. For context, my internal days have always been much longer than 24 hours, often finding myself going to sleep at sunrise; so I thought this was gonna be great, not having to spend an hour awake in bed.
It was horrible. And I mean HORRIBLE. I became a zombie, even though I was sleeping more than ever. I felt deeply depressed within two days. I lost all concept of the passage of time, and could never tell how long ago something had happened. I couldn't think properly or comunicate with other people. It affected me physically too, my weight, my stomach.
The experiment didn't last long. But I couldn't tell you how long.