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Ask HN: How many hours of sleep are you getting?

28 points by yitchelle ↗ HN
Reading blogs and stories around the internet, I get the feeling that sleep is not as important as shipping a product. So how much sleep are you getting, and how has that effected your health?

Personally, I am getting about 5 to 6 hours of sleep per night for about 2 weeks, and then I have a big sleep of about 10hours after that.

Edit: More info.

55 comments

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weej
Given that I work full time, have two kids (one being a newborn), and play in a band I sleep very little 4-6 hours a night.

That said, I've been doing this for almost a decade when I was in graduate school and working full time.

Over the last 13 years I've probably put on 10-15 lbs. I try to exercise at LEAST 3 times a week while eating as healthy as I can within reason.

Sleep is critical for memory retention, keeping up your immune system, maintaining serotonin level, general stress relief, etc. With that said if you have to you can adapt running on limited amounts. You'll have to be careful w/ weight gain or depression.

yitchelle
Totally agree about the kids. However, it is the one thing that I would gladly give up sleep for.
xSwag
I've always had a mentality that if I say I'm going to finish x, I finish x before going to bed. This, as you can imagine, means that I have a very unreliable sleeping schedule. I probably average 5 hours a night every week.

A really good comment I read on HN a few days ago recommended that I set an alarm for going to bed not for waking up, It's been working really well for me.

yitchelle
Doesn't the hacker in you just forces you to ignore the alarm to go to sleep?
xSwag
I forced myself to go to bed for a week at midnight and now I start to feel sleepy/tired around that time. I also stopped drinking coffee or energy drinks after 6pm.
aaronblohowiak
Kudos. For some people (like me) the caffeine has to stop around noon in order to get a good night's sleep. Caffeine metabolism is highly variable between people, so it is worth experimenting on.
Kaivo
I often end up almost entirely stopping coffee as soon as a term ends. Last time I did, I also forced myself to go to bed earlier and do some work at home before leaving for work. It worked for quite a while but as the term progressed and work from both job and university piled up, I started to not have time to follow this strict schedule and to drink more and more coffee. It's very difficult when your schedule is tight, but I believe it's better to stick to way nevertheless. Tomorrow, I'm starting this schedule again. Keep going on yours!
japhyr
This is such a good idea. I definitely reach a point where staying up later does absolutely nothing for me.

I can get more done in one extra hour in the morning than I can in two or three hours past the time my body needs to go to sleep.

bluepanda_
I have an average of 7 hours of deep sleep, as confirmed by my newly acquired sleep tracker. I generally feel well-rested and able to use my brain at its maximum.
CmonNoReg
Which one did you get?
bluepanda_
I got the Fitbit One. You have to manually tell it you're about to sleep and you just woke up, then it tells you how long you stayed in bed, how many times you woke up, and how much deep sleep you had.

Based on that, I averaged that I needed 8 hours of in-bed time to get 7 hours of deep sleep, and then I had no need for the device anymore. Until my sleep patterns change.

shanelja
I tend to go through phases of getting plenty and then getting none. Up until a couple of weeks ago I was getting 8 hours a night, steady but since then I've been back in the habit of only having 2 -5 hours per night, last night I got 3 hours, woke up at 4AM and started working, had my first weekend project finished by 3pm today, starting working on the next one, nearly finished that.
luisivan
5 hours a night on weekdays and like 11 hours a night on weekends. I have figured out that I'm way more productive, happy and healthy on weekends because of the more sleep I get.
t0
10-12
hartleybrody
I average about 8 hour a night. I'm not the best at keeping a consistent bed time, but I won't get out of bed until I know I've had my 8 hours. Thus, my sleep schedule tends to drift later as the week progresses, and then I can reset on the weekend.
cpncrunch
I average 7-8 hours per night, which is basically as much as my body seems to need. I work for myself from home, so I don't have to get up at any particular time - I just sleep as much as I need.

This seems to work well for me, as I have had pretty much perfect physical and mental health for the last 10 years (nothing but the occasional cold about once a year or so), and I have high motivation, productivity, etc.

hoka
About 8 hours, sometimes more, sometimes less. I lift regularly, so there's no point in lifting if I'm not sleeping and eating right.
alatkins
This may have been far more useful to you as a poll.
yitchelle
Maybe. I feel that the context surrounding the number of hours slept is also interesting. That may be missing if this was a poll.
herdrick
HN polls are useless now. Too many trolls. :(
eddieroger
Average of six and a half hours. It was higher for a brief period when I returned from international travel and my body had no idea where it was anymore. Other than that, I wake up tired, which I mostly attribute to breaking a REM cycle, since once I get going, I'm pretty much great until the afternoon. I think a siesta would do me well, though, but I don't work in a siesta-friendly world. So, coffee. But never after 5, or I don't sleep until later.

My take on it is that I sleep when I'm tired, with the asterisk that I have work in the morning most days, and that means I should try to be tired before 11:30p. But I also look at it like I look at treatment of my laptop battery - if I spend more effort worrying about and attempting to optimize the thing than it's worth, then that is effort wasted. The best I can hope for is good sleep when I am sleeping.

All of that said, sleep is obviously important since we all do it. I wouldn't make a habit of not sleeping so I could ship, but I also wouldn't let shipping get in the way of many things, like time with my family. Maybe my priorities are messed up, but they're mine.

thifm
5-6h weekly. I live very away from work(2 hour trips) and I still want to get home and go to gym&OSS.

But in the weekend I sleep a lot. Maybe 12h a day.

I wish I could have more time to balance it(and my plan is that I will in the future), 8 hours a day would be ideal.

jrokisky
I feel like I lose productivity if I get less than 7 hours of sleep a night. I can't think as clearly and can't process as much information
UnoriginalGuy
8-10 hours.

Anything less than 7 and I get "brain fog." And my day is essentially ruined. Hard to be productive when your mind is mush.

Cannot tell if I am the strange exception or if only the exceptional cases (e.g. 5 hrs etc) are posting here. Kind of like asking people their height, only the people who are the extreme end of the spectrum give an answer and the whole thing looks warped.

abhia
5-7 hours on weekdays, and 6-9 hours on weekends. It varies a lot, but my Jawbone UP helps keep track - actually pretty awesome after their API came out.
staunch
I spent years sleep deprived. Sleeping around 6 hours per night. Sometimes working 36 hours non-stop. Deciding to get a solid 8 hours every single night was probably the smartest thing I've ever done for my productivity and sanity.
alan_cx
I sleep once between 4am and 7 am, then again between 11am and 1.30pm. I now cant sleep for more than 3 hrs in one go.
jamesjguthrie
The other night I fell asleep at 6pm, woke up 4 hours later (10pm) then done some work until about 4:30am and caught 3 hours sleep and I felt great the next day. It was really weird, felt like I was up all night but wasn't tired at all the next day until late evening.

Anyway, I usually get 6 hours on weekdays and feel crap for an hour before brushing my teeth etc.

everest81
7-9 hours, consistent on weekdays and weekends(Dogs don't care about weekend. :)
AliAdams
It would be interesting to try and link these numbers to some form of productivity / successfulness metric.
zephyrfalcon
At least 16 hours a day lately. :-/ (No joke.)
r00fus
I knew someone who slept that much but he was on SSRIs.
MisterBastahrd
Probably about 5-6 hours a night. People tell me that you can't have make up sleep... but during the weekends I'll hit the bed at 2am and wake up somewhere in the middle of the next afternoon and feel perfectly refreshed.

My problem stems mostly from the 7 years I spent working a night shift at a grocery store. It completely flipped my sleep cycle script and I'm about 400% more efficient/focused between 10pm and 4am than I am at any other time during the day/night.

flyinglizard
I feel the same. Worst for me is afternoon hours where I just get a drop in energy. Best hours for me is anything after 22:00, then I can go on and on until physical exhaustion.

I exercise around 2-3am daily, too, so that must contribute to my increased alertness during the night.

Falkon1313
About the same for me except that being a night person is why I used to work the night shift. My problem comes from the 7 years since then that I've spent working day shift.

I'm usually ineffective until about 10am, then good until the midafternoon, when I have trouble focusing for awhile, then good until the evening slump (transitioning out of work) then good until 2am-4am.

flyinglizard
Around 7. Very rarely do I sleep more (waking up naturally). I've been getting 2h naps in the evening lately, and I really like it (in the night after such naps I'll sleep 6h or so).
guylhem
Average 10. When I'm really tired 12 to 14. I can do with as little as 8, but if I go south of 8 for more than 2 days in a row I will not be productive. The day is kind of foggy.

OTOH I have noticed that in these foggy days, especially in the afternoon, I get very creative insights. I just write them down because I can't use them on that day, but after a good night of sleep these insights come very handy in the next days.

EDIT: that's before I stopped coffee. My sleep pattern has been irregular these last few days. I don't enough data yet, but I seem to need less sleep. I guess my average will go below 10, maybe down to 9h. I'll see in a year.

EDIT2: I'm obviously not counting "crash coding" sessions. I may stay awake for 36h, with serious pain in old injuries past the 24h mark, and hallucinations past that 36h limit. My productivity seems low after 24h, so I don't bother and just go to bed.

danoprey
What are you secrets to quitting coffee? Would love to give that a try myself but I fear I'd be nonfunctional for a few weeks during the adjustment.
guylhem
Step 1: no longer have some at home - that's passive, just don't buy it no more. Finish what you have

Step 2: refuse to use it outside your home. That's more active, and may require a commitment. You can start by allowing yourself to drink one every other day, to mitigate withdrawal symptoms.

Decaf etc - I can't say how useful it is, I wanted to cut coffee and not replace an habit by another one. No more coke or redbull either, since the problem here is caffeine: the active ingredient in coffee is also present in coke and redbull and the likes (pepsi, monster, ...)

Google plus support group : https://plus.google.com/communities/113447576520287991560

So far, I have been very dysfunctional during the first 2 days, and at my 4th day I feel normal. I was expecting to feel bad for up to 9 days.

It has had an interesting effect: it seems like I need less sleep, something I noticed when I tried to reduce the dosage these last weeks (not quitting altogether), and completely counterintuitive!

It may be just a normal variation due to a very small sample size. I would be curious to see how much sleep I will need in a year from now. Of course, your results may vary.

daGrevis
I tried to live w/o any caffeine a whole week. Expect a hardcore headache!
drawkbox
4 or 8, depends on the crunch. But I feel refreshed at those two points. 6 hours or 10 hours feels incomplete. When working on long projects I can sleep twice for 4 hours per day and am extremely productive as it feels like two mini days in one.