The culture of "napping = weakness / laziness" is still so prevalent in the US workforce. It's frustrating - because it's not logical, it's just pretty deeply ingrained.
I set up a (rather nice) nap room at my company's office and I'm the only person who EVER uses it. It turned into a storage room. I sent articles about the virtues of napping - the studies - the benefits - the facts - to all of my employees, and nobody seems to care. I _still_ get an eye-roll when I head off to the nap room in the middle of the day for a 20-minute power nap.
Meanwhile, the employees in the office just head to the espresso machine and down shot after shot to keep themselves lit up. It's so odd - I can explain 100 times over how I get all the benefits of caffeine (and MORE) by taking a 20-minute nap, and they just don't seem to care. Deeply ingrained, hard-to-change views.
I suspect there might be something else at work here. Ask yourself this question: if you take a 20 minute nap at work, will that count as part of your working hours or not?
Even at the places where employees are not expected to rigidly conform to fixed working hours, there's an expectation to put in a certain minimum of hours. I'm not talking about producing a certain output: even in the most "goal-oriented" places I've worked at, there was still an unstated, tacit expectation that you were supposed to put in a certain minimum of effort, regardless of your results.
What I'm getting at is that if you have employees who nap and those who don't, there will almost certainly exist an expectation that those who nap should put in extra time equal to the length of their nap. Therefore, those who do nap will lose some of their free time.
If you're single, that could be an acceptable bargain: instead of sleeping for (say) 8 hours at night, you would have a 20 minute nap at the office, stay 20 minutes longer and then sleep for 6 hours at night. The net gain would be 80 minutes, which isn't bad at all.
On the other hand, if you're a family person, then that's 20 minutes less with (say) your kid after school.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're getting sufficient amounts of quality sleep at night, there is no reason why you should need 20-minute "power naps" in the middle of the day. (There may be exceptions, such as extremely demanding manual labor, but I think we're talking about white collar jobs in this context.)
Not for me. I can get 10 hours of sleep at night but I'll still hit an afternoon lull post-lunch. I'm sure if I really worked at it I could figure out why (too big a lunch? blood sugar spike?) but regardless, I'm good to go for 6+ more hours w/ a 20-minute nap. Meanwhile everyone else sits and forces their eyelids open, stares at YouTube videos, and downs espresso shots...
There are a few things other than Celiac disease that cause problems with wheat; I've never been able to get a solid diagnosis other than ruling out Celiacs but I know if I have too much wheat, especially in the form of light fluffy baked goods, I get very tired and cranky as well as having digestive issues.
It could be an additive used in commercial baking because I seem to be fine with no-wheat gluten and some forms of wheat,but pragmatically avoiding wheat helps me.
This entire thread is like a WebMD page. Somehow a food coma resulted in a Celiac disease diagnosis. Not that it's impossible, but it's certainly implausible.
Sounds like your lunches include a bunch of carbs, too much sugar, and/or maybe a drink or two. If it happens frequently, habits form.
I didn't say I have Celiac disease. I said, since I quit wheat, I never get food comas. I used to get them routinely.
I don't know WHY I don't get them. Celiac is not the only issue wheat can cause.
I feel fairly confident in these results. I tested wheat in isolation, repeatedly. I've tested other variables: carbs, sugar, dairy. None of them ever gave me a food coma, in the absence of wheat.
It seems completely reasonable for me to avoid wheat, given the results of my experiments. Why are you so certain I must wrong?
Don't tell me you don't know that gluten, along with any form of sugar or anything else outside the paleo diet,, is not hacker-halal. You should be eating strict paleo or keto lest you die early, bloated and tumescent like that kid from Akira after he started mutating.
Yeah this is due to high GI, fast-acting carbs. I've experimented with this heavily with my lunches - it's always anything that is high GI (potato chips, cookies, any sort of sugary food) will cause that "crash" after lunch. That's why I save carbs for post-workout after my evening workout.
tl;dr: the insulin spike from high glycemic index foods causes sleepiness, and low insulin sensitivity which can be caused by sleep debt and lack of exercise exacerbates it.
> When foods with a high glycemic index are consumed, glucose is absorbed rapidly from the gastrointestinal tract into the bloodstream, and in individuals with normal carbohydrate metabolism, insulin levels rise concordantly to drive glucose into the body's tissues and maintain blood glucose levels in the normal range. Insulin stimulates the uptake of valine, leucine, and isoleucine into skeletal muscle, but not uptake of tryptophan. ... Uptake of tryptophan by the brain thus increases. In the brain, tryptophan is converted to serotonin, which is then converted to melatonin. Increased brain serotonin and melatonin levels result in sleepiness.
Research on this very subject was cited on a Norwegian show called Pulse, but it's too long since I saw it that I'd be able to find it again. There apparently is a correlation between wheat and sleepiness, for some.
That's biorhythm, it has nothing to do with food intake. You will have a tendency to fall asleep around 2 pm, more or less, everyday, based on your internal clock.
I try to take 10-15,000 IU (of D3 in gel cap) two to three times a week. Yes, it really works in that my blood testing showed the difference. I have seen no side effects, but then I was really, really deficient.
One side benefit: No more symptoms associated with Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Biphasic sleep is built into our sleep rhythms. There is a longer, deeper sleep period at night, and a shorter, lighter sleep period at the opposite time of the day (2-3 pm). This is more or less prevalent for different people, and you don't NEED to nap, but it certainly is not unusual.
I turn into a zombie whenever I eat carbs during lunch.
Try it and see - the next time you go out to lunch, don't eat pasta, bread, potatoes, corn, tortillas, dessert, coke.
Have a steak and green veggies. I can eat an enormous 24oz prime rib plate and not suffer the zombie state that I would if I ate a hamburger and french fries.
Don't discount a burger without the bun, and a mostly greens salad... I'm not strictly paleo, but if I avoid going over 100g or so of carbs a day, I tend to do a lot better.
Oh shit. So do I. Only a slight problem as I can't use a CPAP or VPAP because I tear the mask right off while asleep. I have some spare weight + Marfan's ENT issue that I found in a research paper. Also don't bother with any surgery, it's like RSI surgery... almost no average net benefit.
Yeah I just started logging everything before consuming... Age too means I've to permanently cut the daily calorie budget and ditch 9 kg (20 lbs) ~ 70M cal.
"but if you're getting sufficient amounts of quality sleep at night"
Ideally yes. But there are times that even with the best intentions that can't be done. Anxiety, sickness, some important schedule issue. Maybe a big lunch that you shouldn't have eaten.
For me that is normally true. However, I find that naps are also beneficial when I am doing something that is extremely demanding mentally. Of course, I would probably get the same benefit from just slacking of and browsing HN for a while.
It's worse for me. I fall asleep, then wake up groggy, often times with a headache.
Every once in awhile I achieve the perfect nap - and that's usually in a noisy place, very well lit - and after it, I barely feel like I was really "asleep" - not the same way that I feel after I sleep in a dark room under a blanket.
Have you considered if you're waking up in the middle of a cycle? Maybe you could experiment with the length of the nap and/or cycle detecting apps or gear.
That's exactly it (except that k=5 is not reasonable). The REM periods get longer and longer as you sleep; that is, the "cycles" do not have the same period.
Edit: also, k=0 is valid, and what most people have been advocating here (as 20 minutes).
Back in the 90s I worked in a fast-food pizza joint. I washed dishes and also took delivery orders on the phone. Normally we'd stand up while taking the phone orders, but one time I sat down on a chair there and the manager berated me for it. As if it was somehow lazy to be sitting, even though it had absolutely no effect on how well I did that work.
I think its worth noting that this isn't just prevalent in the workforce, but before many individuals get to the workforce, the cram and jam lifestyle of college student start carving this rut long before they are employed. I have to assume after anywhere between 4-8 years (sometimes more) of late night, caffeinated (sometimes worse substances) cram sessions this type of mentality and habitually terrible sleeping would be difficult to get out of.
This rut actually begins much earlier in some areas of the United States. Many high school students face early school start times and late nights of homework and studying. Add in sports, music lessons, extra curricular activities, or any combination thereof, and you get a recipe for sleep deprivation. Do that for 4 years of high school, and then 4-8 years of undergraduate/post-graduate/doctoral schooling, and you end up with some seriously sleepy people who have a hard time maintaining a healthy sleep schedule.
There's a "quiet room" in my office and I think i'm the only person that uses it. It's really nice to take a laptop, headphones and soda in there and just get work done without any distraction. And it has a window, with real light! There's also a "gaming room" which is now the storage room, but it still has a sofa and xbox that maybe somebody uses.
The culture of "napping = weakness / laziness" is still so prevalent in the US workforce.
Perhaps I've just been extremely lucky not to have seen this, but I don't think it's a justified generalization. I've only worked at length in two states, MN and FL, but I have never seen anything overt to suggest this is some sort of vastly applied cultural judgment.
For my part, I see napping as something that requires a big investment (learning how to nap) with an uncertain payoff, while coffee is something that works and seems to be beneficial for health. I certainly am not tired enough to fall asleep at 2-3pm given my current ability to fall asleep quickly.
Also, there are other strategies to deal with the 2-3pm slump, e.g. doing less intensive work.
But don't worry about what is written. Just give it a try and see how much you naturally sleep for and when you wake up and go from there. This can be as simple as just laying your head down on a desk with an eye patch and ear plugs. Airline tarmack type ear muffs also work well for this and completely block out most noise.
Everyone is different. I don't care much for what has been written about this I just experiment and have found what works for me.
I have been doing this from way before there were even things written or it was something that was even considered a strategy. To me it just made sense. I don't really care what others do or whether they think it's good or bad.
I recall reading that anything over an hour disrupts your sleep pattern. 20 minutes might be a magical number for best effects.
It also might be the length of a lunch someone gives up to nap after eating (or could be the full lunch).
While studying for the bar, I used to take 2 hour 'naps' in the middle of the day. My schedule was 4 hours on, some food and nap, 4 hours on. Probably most productive 3 months of my life. I got to say, those siesta embracing countries might be on to something.
"His book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria. "
I was not aware of this book. Sounds fascinating. One of my favorite articles I've ever read was in an anthropological course that detailed some of these same findings cross culturally.
The title of the article is "Slumbers Unexplored Landscape" I'd link to it but what I've found is I believe behind a paywall. I'm employed at a university so sometimes I don't notice paywalls.
I agree. A weekend nap is a beautiful thing. Couldn't pull it off at work. Sometimes I cheat by having coffee just before. Then I wake up 20 mins later with the dual benefit of sleep plus caffeine kicking in.
It's not the nap that makes you groggy, it's at what point your sleep cycle you wake up - you want to wake up at the end of one, but before the next one kicks in. It takes a bit of practice to figure out what yours is. If this is very hard
it probably means you're sleep deprived in general (then again, living a Western lifestyle makes it likely you're sleep deprived by default).
There are thing you can do to make naps more effective. I do well with a 20 minute nap in mid-day, but I'll feel groggy if I nap for too long. It's better if I don't lie down, but instead sit in a comfy chair, so I don't go too deeply asleep. If you drink coffee, have a cup before the nap, and the caffeine should kick in about the time you want to wake up. Other suggestions can be found on line.
For me I think part of the problem is that I cant just go to sleep it takes me almost 30 minutes just to relax into a state where my mind isnt thinking.
A little exercise after your nap, like a few pushups or a run around the block really pushes the grogginess away in my experience. As others pointed out, the timing is key too. 15-20 minute naps works because you are in the pre-sleep state, so you never completely turnoff. However, if you sleep longer, you need to sleep for at least 90 minutes or so, otherwise you will wake up right in the middle of your sleep cycle. I am not sure if that's bad for you, probably not, but it does make you feel like crap.
It's probably a little different with everyone, so practice makes perfect :)
What? I just see a black screen with INVEST IN YOURSELF. I cannot understand the confusion of ideas that leads people to prevent visitors from reaching their content. I'm not going to click that ad, I'm not going to view your page so I'm not going to see the other ads on that page either.
I take my sleep advice from infamous hip hop artist Nas - "I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death"
In reality I sleep 8+ hours and laugh at those who "boast" at how little sleep, or how many hours they work at the expense of other valuable things in their life (family, socializing etc.)
Also, a lot of these comments are about the mid-afternoon/post lunch nap. Honestly I'd prefer to get home to my family a bit earlier, than take a mid day siesta and have to come home later in the evening.
Getting up early and clocking out early are especially tempting given how little daylight we have (Northeast US) this time of year.
Everywhere I've worked (for the most part) you had to be there between 8-5 (roughly). You just couldn't leave early even if you came in early. I know it's not like that everywhere. My current job I am almost always the last one here by 5 and it's just hard to break the habit that I have to be here until closing time.
Exceptions were made if you made arrangements with management but usually only people with families or college/schooling got any leeway.
Closed the page before reading the article for the fact that they popped up a modal advertisement window with a black background - ironic is that Adblock removed the ad content so it was a white box on a black background.
And I'm sick of going back in time ten years when ads would pop up or under the page you were viewing. Then ad blockers were invented. Then popups were re-invented in the form of modal dialogs.
Seriously. If you're so [self-]important that you can't be bothered to close a modal window, you clearly don't have time to be reading articles from HN.
I wouldn't refuse to read an article because of something like that (unless it made it overly difficult to read the article), but I think bad design habits do need to be called out. They seem to be becoming more popular on sites that really should know better. If your design choices make the article uncomfortable or annoying to read, it detracts from the content.
You're not the target audience (if you're the average HN reader, that is, don't actually know you personally.)
HBR gets a high price for its ads because its audience is older businesspeople (decision makers on high-priced services and products) who consider its content high-worth and authoritative (this attitude rubs off on the ads around the content.) Having a gating ad that scares away people who don't value the content enough to close it probably increases the price per ad more than enough to make up for the slightly decreased viewership of the ad.
Calling out bad design habits would be useful if people making those decisions were HN regulars. Otherwise you're just preaching to the choir and distracting everyone from the content.
What about "if you're so [self-]important that you can't be bothered to disregard comments that don't conform to your idea of how the discussion should go". (I don't believe that BTW, surely there's space for discussion and meta-discussion).
Forget Adblock, just use NoScript. The article was perfectly viewable for me.
Not trying to start a holy war, NoScript isn't a universal cure. There is plenty of content linked to from HN that requires JS. (However, I don't bother reading most of it!)
I think the consequences of using NoScript outweigh the benefits. I don't think I could stand 40% of the sites I use being unusable due to lack of JavaScript, that's not how it's meant to be.
If the site doesn't work, you can enable scripts one by one until it does. Usually you just have to allow scripts from the domain you're visiting, and you can prevent most abuses that use third party scripts that way.
Occasionally you'll run across a site that has scripts from 30-odd domains, and after enabling a few, it still doesn't work. Those sites aren't worth visiting.
But NoScript gives you the degree of control you want. It's possible to enable all scripts by default, disabling them only when you feel there is a problem. Or you can use it for information purposes only, so you know what third party domains have scripts running on that page.
I'd rather say it's a lack of resources and interest in addressing a minority and jumping through hoops to make functionality that wouldn't work without JavaScript work without it. I'm not saying it shouldn't work when JavaScript is disabled, but some sites have functionality that cannot be easily (or quickly) reproduced without JS. They don't do it because they hate you or because they hate proper user experience.
The problem is not the minority you are thinking of: most of that minority can enable JavaScript if it's genuinely required.
The problem is people on poor or mobile connections - the majority - who have to suffer that little bit longer to wait for the blocking JavaScript to load and then burn down their limited battery for the sake of parallax scrolling or a marginally prettier icon or button on the static text site they are trying to read.
JavaScript-requiring designers do hate proper user experience.
It was my understanding that while Google has nap rooms in some offices, they are seldom used. The culture is geared around long hours and if you are seen to be napping that is seen as a potential sign of weakness. Of course I could be completely wrong (I'm just pulling this idea out of a vague memory of reading about it here on HN) so I hope a Google employee will correct me. However, it seems reasonable that a company would need to do more than just offer the opportunity to take breaks, work from home and work sensible hours. The culture of seeing hard workers as more valuable must be a difficult one to break.
Culture is what you make it. I'm a big believer in power naps, and I used to work at Google. This was a while ago and there were no nap rooms in my building, so I just lay down on a couch and zonked for twenty minutes every afternoon. This was in a hallway with dozens of people going by. Never any problem. (Of course, this only worked because I didn't mind the noise, but with more effort I could have found a quieter location.)
Obviously, there are plenty of more traditional workplaces where this wouldn't fly. But at most tech companies, the problem is not that you wouldn't be allowed to nap, it's people not realizing the value or feeling too silly about it.
I got the feeling that it depended on your social status within the team. If you were seen to be a producer and got shit done, then sure whatever, take a nap -- just keep it up. And pretty much everyone I met was someone who got shit done, but a lot of people who get shit done won't let themselves take a nap at work. Even if it's good for them.
Some people still took naps, and I get the sense that the others felt napping would be a violation of a personal code, rather than something consciously felt as a cultural pressure.
I'm not a Google employee, but I once visited their Zürich office and was shown the nap room. Not only was it really cool, but there were several people using it (just after lunch).
There's definitely a significant difference in attitudes towards sleep and work between Europe and the US. Perhaps someone who has experience working in both can comment.
The need for a nap after food is heavily correlated with the quantity and quality of food you're going to eat. Eat light and you won't feel the need for a nap, otherwise it's hard to avoid.
If you treat your digestive system like a dustbin, of course you'll need higher amounts of insulin excretion (also called spike) to digest, higher blood pressure (heavier heart work-load) and all these nice staff which lead to hyper/hypotension disorders and finally to strokes.
That said, I'm sure that if you wake up at 5-6 a.m. a nap around 13:00-14:00 will work for you, but the most important - imho, not sure what studies says, just personal experience - is getting a good night sleep, not a nap the day after.
There's nothing like a good night sleep and there are many factors that determine the night sleep. To mention just a few:
* Food: eating a light healthy meal at least two hours before going to bed is the optimal situation.
* Room temperature: Must be optimal for blanket usage
* Oxygen: Oxygenated room possibly, open the windows a little before going to sleep. Oh and no vegetables sucking oxygen inside the room is better.
* Sound: Trying to keep the bedroom as quiet as possible from external rumors, except maybe if you are living in nature. Natural rumors (birds, grasshoppers, etc) are likely to increase the quality of your sleep but surely nothing digital will. Even if some people believe that TV helps them getting a sleep, they rarely get a quality sleep.
* Relax: A book is at least 10 times better suited than a movie before going to sleep. Relaxes the mind while a movie is like a sort of bombardment, keeping adrenaline flow, when it shouldn't.
That would be a great perk :) . I'd definitely be more productive and be able to work longer hours if I was able to take a nap (not that I want to work longer hours :) ).
I visited the Montreal office recently and I must say that they don't seem overworked at all. Some were excited about their work, some were relaxed. If they are pulling long hours is probably isn't because of some weird ego war - it would be because they seem genuinely interested in their work.
I interned at Google's Mountain View HQ in 2009 - I don't remember there being an actual nap room, they just had a few nap pods (like this http://www.hammacher.com/Product/12199) scattered around the office.
plus there is something about lying completely flat that is especially conducive to sleep, at least for me. I slept better in an overnight bus in China packed with bunk beds, than in most airplanes.
I work at Google (in Mountain View) and all of the buildings I've worked in here have "nap pods" scattered around. They look kinda like dentist chairs, with a egg-shaped cone that comes down over your head and torso to shield you from noise and distraction. See:
The pods can be reserved on a public calendar, same as conference rooms. The ones in my previous building were booked pretty solid every day from 11am-3pm.
I tried one out once but didn't find it particular comfortable or conducive to sleep. But some folks swear by them.
I work at Google, as far as I know no one uses these. I never have, although I considered using one when I didn't have any accommodation for the night (I ended up staying with a friend).
That said, people do not work long hours. Only very few people consistently working more than 45 hours a week. Napping is not going to reduce your workload, it's just a lifestyle choice that most people choose not to make. Similarly, people take breaks either to socialize with other employees, or because they can't handle working solidly for 3-4 hours.
I work as a contractor at Google MTV. My building has a very large lounge area and I sometimes see people taking naps on the couches. I work from 6:30am to 4pm (beat the traffic!) and I use this room not for naps, but to go read for 10 minutes or so to unwind. Long walks also help me stay fresh. In any case, I have always believed that frequent breaks are important. A bit off topic, but when I work at home (which I have mostly done for the last 15 years) then I almost always take a 20 minute nap after lunch.
google mountain view employee here - there is no stigma that i am aware of surrounding the nap pods; people just get caught up in the "so much to do, so little time to do it" cycle and don't want to leave their desks to go nap. i've even seen a surprising number of coworkers eating at their desks, something i can guarantee you there is no cultural expectation of within the company - again, it's just a case of individuals feeling the real or perceived pressure of work piling up too fast for them to step away.
I think it's A) a callback to the "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" book/concept. And B) trying to overcome the macho, ego mentality that they feel is driving professionals to sleep less.
It is. Some people believe that we should lead the concept into healthier territories, which would be a superior outcome to the status quo. Others believe we should avoid using it altogether, and that any use of the term automatically perpetuates the macho, ego mentality- whether intentionally or not.
There's not much winning to be had, I've never seen anybody really change their minds about this, because we feel good about the side we pick. Best IMHO to just acknowledge the deeper issue, address it and keep moving forward.
I was honestly expecting it to point out that lack of sleep kills your testosterone levels (it didn't). As it turns out, "real" men really do get sleep.
At our offices in China almost everyone naps during the lunch break. Lights gets turned off and fold out beds dominate the floor space. Took a bit to get used to when I first got here but it's actually quite nice to get a short nap in the middle of the day.
There is definitely a "sleep is for losers" kind of machismo that pervades professional industries, but it's stupid. While sometimes you have to cut in on sleep to get something out the door, making a habit of not getting much sleep isn't likely to be a competitive advantage for you in the long run. Ironically, its the sorts of professions that glorify not sleeping that tend to require the quick thinking, creativity, and careful attention to detail that is undermined by not sleeping. It's worth while to cut into other things to make time for adequate sleep.
I'll have to admit that I try to get away with as little sleep as possible. It's not that I'm trying to be a hero or show that I'm macho, I'm doing the whole nights and weekends thing to work on my product because I'm driven to make it successful and it feels absurd to trade off progress for sleep.
I'm well aware of the potential consequences health and otherwise but I see it as a short term cost for a long term benefit.
I'm in my early 30s now, and I've noticed among my friends that the folks who aren't regularly getting enough sleep have seemed to prematurely aged. It's not one big noticeable thing, but it's lots of little things, like how good their skin looks, how much gray they have, what there energy level is.
Don't ask for sources, because I don't have any, this is just an anecdote and a hunch. :)
I'm in the fortunate position now of being able to set my own work schedule. I almost never use an alarm clock, but I still get up around 8am, which is my personal indicator that I'm sleeping enough. I've also found that I have no problem working 12 or 14 hour days, much more than your average worker, but when I do so, I never take the time away from sleeping, but other activities instead.
You would probably make even more progress if you allowed yourself a good sleep schedule. If you "try to get away with as little sleep as possible", it is very likely you are sleep deprived, which leads to bad decisions and more frequent mistakes.
It's reasonable to assume I'm hurting my productivity but like I said I'm doing the whole nights and weekends thing, a couple extra hours of less productive work is better than none.
As far as grogginess/tiredness after you wake up goes that's related to where in your sleep cycle you wake up. I use one of the numerous iPhone/Android apps that use the accelerator to detect and wake you up at the end of a sleep phase.
What about the productivity costs of sleeplessness? It might be that you're actually hurting both your health and your product by shaving off a few hours of sleep.
8+ hour sleeps every night is probably the single life rule I strictly abide by. Wake up not groggy, but refreshed, ready. Entire day you're just a power house.
My schedule is really weird. Because I work in America for a company in Scandinavia there is a pretty wide time difference. When I first started they asked if I could be "at work" around 8 or 9 my time, which is very reasonable considering that is 2 or 3 their time. I often volunteer to wake up early when there's something important that's going to happen, and I often work late into the night if I'm trying to get something accomplished, but it's all of my own doing - they never ask me to, or tell me that I have to, and I've actually been politely asked to go to bed before.
On normal working days, though, I wake up naturally around 6, go through my normal routine, and am "at work" by 7-8 anyway. And then I work until around 1 or 2 at which point I take a nap for an hour or so, and then I get back to work until I've finished all my major tasks for that day which is typically 4 or 5. After that, I'm free to do whatever I want, and I try to get to bed by 11 so that I can be sure to wake up the next day fully rested (this is mostly out of respect for my employer rather than out of a sense of habit or of good health).
I do what is best described as marketing automation. For instance setting up campaigns that will send personalized content messages to client customers (think the offers that you receive from a company such a Bestbuy). So there's a lot of planning and testing involved before the campaigns are executed.
Then there's other things like designing some business processes and, occasionally, editing some HTML here and there.
I wish I could find it again, but I remember reading about a study that stated that a small percentage of the population, maybe 5% or 10%, are genetically wired so that they actually can function normally with only 4 or 5 hours of sleep.
It seemed to make sense, especially when I later heard stories of professional athletes like Gilbert Arenas (professional basketball player) who were able to play at a very high level despite regularly only getting only 3 hours of sleep per night during the NBA season.
It got me to thinking that maybe these "Sleep is for the weak" proponents like Thomas Edison, Donald Trump, and Uber's Travis Kalanick belong to this genetically blessed contingent of the general population, and that they may be mistakenly propagating this false belief that "If I can do it, everyone should else be able to do it, otherwise you're just being lazy."
It would be awesome if someone could help me dig up that study.
I feel that it's somewhat unfortunately that comments tend to hijack articles and focus on something the article isn't about. This article only mentioned napping in passing. The main topics were cultural attitudes towards sleep, allowing for flexible work schedules, and eliminating graveyard shifts.
"Sleep is for sissies." also reflected in the Ben Franklin maxim "There will be plenty of time to sleep once you are dead."
A friend had a short stint working in Taiwan and he was surprised by the fact that almost everyone took a nap sometime during the day. Long term thinking that.
1) I can't just nap like that. I can lay there for thirty minutes, an hour, or more, without falling asleep. Reading or watching something usually helps, but in all cases, the degree of exhaustion, or other fatigue or unconsciousness-inducing factor, has to be fairly high.
2) I can't wake up after 20-30 minutes. I just can't. If I'm going to take a nap, it's going to turn into a 2-3 hour nap (and more often, a 3-4 hour nap). And then I'll be up all night.
Working odd hours late at night was a habit I developed while doing my undergrad. Unfortunately, I ended up carrying it over into my professional life as well, and I'm certainly not alone in that regard. It's almost 3am here, and I still find myself working.
I hate that I know there is a 5am. Unfortunately this week I'm in a training class and have to get there earlier than I usually have to get to work. I can't wait to sleep this weekend.
The title isn't intended to be funny. It's intended to be dismissive of, and in opposition to, the attitude that "sleep is for sissies" mentioned in the article.
It's about directly opposing what is seen as a prevailing view of masculinity. Sure, it might be intended to be entertaining as well, but it's not primarily an attempt at humor. It's saying: "Here's a bunch of people who say real men don't sleep. They're wrong; real men sleep."
Sometimes I worry how men standing up for women act on how much they think women are offended, rather than how much women are actually offended. You're blowing this way out of proportion.
C'mon, if you were a real man, it would be no big deal ...
But seriously, I think the point is that it's considered 'manly' to work hard and not sleep enough. The title of the article takes on that myth directly.
I thought it was a play on the book Real Men Don't Eat Quiche which had a bunch of funny rules for "real men". The book wasn't supposed to be serious, and the formula is often used to poke fun at people who think that way.
This article argues that the 'American idea' of regarding sleep as weak/unecessary stems from the early industrial days with men like Thomas Edison. Hmmm ... it seems that the American industrial age and beyond has had a lot more productivity than at any other time in history. And you know who else didn't consider sleep of very high importance? Isaac Newton.
Oh, but some guy writing a random article with nearly zero authority has accomplished SO MUCH MORE than any of those men right?
I understand the importance of sleep and its effects on mentality and productivity. But, I really don't think we are going to properly understand the implications behind sleeping schedules for individual (types) with some random internet articles that we keep linking to on HN.
EDIT: This may get downvoted, but since I assume HN is an intellectual discussion site, it would be appropriate to offer up your counter-arguments to my points rather than just give a "NAY!" gesture hiding anonymously under the guise of some sort of self-righteousness. Thanks.
Anecdata. You forgot Margaret Thatcher (4 hour nights).
The article also pointed to a counterexample - Albert Einstein (10 hour nights).
Anecdotes are not sufficient to prove either point, you should look at the research on this. And research shows[1] that animals that are sleep deprived perform significantly worse in cognitive tasks.
Now, when humans start being "sleep deprived" will vary among individuals - but at least 6 hours is definitely required in most of us (of course, exceptions to every rule.)
Obviously, (as I am sure you are aware after careful consideration of my argument) my conclusions were towards the need for a better understanding of the subject itself and not towards "proving" a particular subjective viewpoint on the matter.
I thought it fair though to offer up symmetrical counterpoints to the OP to show that this is all drawing global conclusions on a particular set of examples (or small sample sizes if you will).
> An abundance of scientific findings, many from research sponsored by the military and NASA, has led many executives to abandon the quest to minimize sleep unreasonably.
They aren't arguing entirely from anecdotes, they are using them to illustrate the point mostly. They are writing for a broad audience of non-scientists, which they've used as an excuse to exclude references from passages like the above, perhaps justifiably.
Ah, but we would need to know the parameters and conclusions of these studies to know if the author was utulizing the data and findings correctly or if he is using it in a biased manner.
Assuming, he references the generality of the studies appropriately (abandon the quest to minimize sleep unreasonably). Then the discussion should cater towards the differences between unreasonable sleep deprivation expectations brought on unwillingly and its toll on the mind vs. sleep deprivation willingly done due to a personal will to finish a project or continue a streak of creativity, etc.
If you want to know, raise some funding and do a meta-study. This was just an article to provoke thought among business-types (being in the Harvard Business Review) - If you want to find The Truth then you can, the universe is right there in front of you to measure.
(I'm only half joking - if you put a proposal for a meta-study about this research up on Kickstarter, I will back it.)
The OP cites scientifically-established correlations between low productivity and sleep deprivation. You, on the other hand, point to a couple of heavyweight counter-examples (Edison and Newton), plus one historical period (early industrial) and leave it at that. Macho attitudes like yours are the exact reason why common-sense attitudes to sleeping hours have not taken hold in companies. There doesn't seem to be much to argue with in your comment.
This is an oversimplification of an already simpleminded discussion (in pursuit of being able to "justify" conclusions you have built on presumptions beforehand).
I am not sure where this irrelevant accusation of "macho attitudes" came from but it certainly fell in line with using terminology similar to what the article use with words like "effeminate" and "male champions".
And yet this article contradicts your argument by naming several (large) companies incorporating sleep-is-good attitudes.
SO I highly doubt that my singular paragraph offering contradictory arguments for the sake of discussion and clarity is the reason why "common-sense attitudes ... have not taken hold in companies".
Regardless of studies that have shown individualized scenarios of productivity loss due to sleep deprivation (also dependent on numerous external and internal parameters) there are still counter examples that cannot be scientifically ignored.
Your (appeared) devotion to 'scientific-establishment' is just you using particular studies to justify held beliefs (and/or just to be in agreement with localized observations e.g. your personal dependency on sleep or those you work with).
I agree here - there's no universally "good" sleep pattern. Some people thrive on pushing their minds and bodies to the limit, while others thrive on the downtime that allows their minds to reflect on their own thoughts.
Personally, I get a much greater sense of accomplishment when I can look back at a marathon 27 hour work session and see that, through it all, I did good work. But, more often than not, my work is riddled with errors that I don't see until later. So, I take naps and rest when I can, and try to get work done on an even, if not boring, timeline.
I set up a (rather nice) nap room at my company's office and I'm the only person who EVER uses it. It turned into a storage room. I sent articles about the virtues of napping - the studies - the benefits - the facts - to all of my employees, and nobody seems to care. I _still_ get an eye-roll when I head off to the nap room in the middle of the day for a 20-minute power nap.
Meanwhile, the employees in the office just head to the espresso machine and down shot after shot to keep themselves lit up. It's so odd - I can explain 100 times over how I get all the benefits of caffeine (and MORE) by taking a 20-minute nap, and they just don't seem to care. Deeply ingrained, hard-to-change views.