How To Sleep Less and Get More Done

Occasionally on the Game Development forums people will ask about sleep schedules - how much do you get per night, how much do people really need, etc. Some people get downright religious about it. Some get into the latest geek fad of polyphasic sleep. When I say I only sleep six hours per night (for a while it was five), I get someone lecturing me on how unhealthy it is. I don't FEEL unhealthy, but I do feel like I get about two extra hours in my day than they do. I actually feel it works really well for me - I'm a lot more alert during the day and I sleep VERY well at night.

And it's a big improvement over how I used to sleep.

Sleep - Too Much of a Good Thing?
When I was a teenager, I slept eight - sometimes ten hours a night. I was an extremely light, fitful sleeper, and I'd suffer frequent bouts of insomnia. I'd sometimes lay awake for an hour or two waiting for sleep to come, and when it would I would toss and turn so much that there were a few occasions when I'd wake up with my mattress slid halfway off the bed springs. On top of that, I'd STILL have trouble waking up when the alarm clock went off. Even once I woke up, I'd still have trouble nodding off in class for the next couple of hours.

My sleep sucked. In retrospect, I think I was actually getting too much sleep - and so it became inconsistent. And the body does NOT like inconsistent, even when it seems to be the culprit.

So What Changed?
The tail-end of college had me sleeping a lot less as I pulled the late-night study sessions, but the real change was forced by my first career job. As a young programmer for a start-up video-game company. The stories of psycho crunch-mode cycles in the game industry were very true at this company - not because anyone was really cracking the whip on us, but just because we had a stake in the company and we knew the first two games that we were working on for the brand-new "Playstation" game console would be critical not only to the company's success, but to whether or not we had a job the following year.

We also had our first child during this time, so even when I was home my sleep hours were tightly curtailed. Until we moved closer to the office, I think I got more sleep on the bus to and from work than I got at home.

With the psycho crunch-time hours, I was sleeping only a little more than four hours per night on the average. While it was uncomfortable, as things evened out into a rhythm I found it was working. But then on Friday night, I'd crash at 10:00 at night, and not wake up for twelve hours. Somehow, my body had gotten on a seven-day schedule and "knew" it was Friday. And it had adjusted.

Changing the Rhythm
After things relaxed a bit, I didn't go back to sleeping eight hours per night. I found I was really comfortable sleeping six hours a night (and if I needed to, I could do it on five hours per night).

What I noticed is that insomnia was no longer a problem. I rarely had problems falling asleep at night - we're talking minutes or even seconds of my head hitting the pillow, and I'm out like a light. I slept VERY soundly all night long. And I was waking up pretty refreshed, and remained even more alert during the day than I had with more sleep at night.

How Much Sleep Do You Need?
My wife expressed concern about me getting sleep-deprived on only five or six hours per night (sometimes I go on only five a night for stretches, but I haven't felt the need to get comfortable with that yet). So at one point, I read a book on the subject and came away with some really interesting new views on the nature of sleep.

One of the questions the book asked was if we are all so different in every other way, why should it be expected that we all need the same eight hours of sleep a night as society dictates? The book suggested that the whole eight-hours-of-sleep thing came about as a result of the industrial revolution. Breaking the day into three pieces meant very regular shifts of eight hours - one to work, one to sleep, and one to get all the other parts of living done.

Previously - and in more agrarian cultures - the amount of sleep people got was often more dependent upon the time of the year. During summer months, they'd sleep as little as five or six hours a night, but during the winter they'd sleep twelve hours or so.

So even for individuals, the amount of sleep you "need" is somewhat variable.

Of course, none of this is gospel truth, and can be completely wrong. I acknowledge that. But it made sense to me. So it's my story and I'm sticking to it.

How It Works
So what I figured out for myself by accident was that bodies like nice, regular schedules. To some degree, you can compress how much sleep you need into a shorter time (within limits!) Your body will eventually figure out how much time it has allocated for sleep in a night, and will adjust appropriately.

The trick is keeping to the schedule and making it a habit. Going to bed at the same time every night, and waking up at the same time every morning. For me, switching to a new schedule (because of job or whatever) takes about 2-3 weeks. But eventually, I pick up the schedule, my body adjusts, and I'm doing just fine. Right now, I go to bed at 1:00 AM and wake up at 7:00 AM. The nice thing about this is that I get a couple of "free" hours every night to get things done. I do a lot of programming (and blogging) during those hours. Or sometimes I get in some video-game playing that I just can't fit in anywhere else in my schedule.

What can I say? I love games!

Is There a Downside?
Your body can get into the habit of and rhythm of a more "compressed" sleep schedule. But what I've found is that it will hold you to that agreement. When my usual bed-time rolls around, my body starts shutting down and going into sleep mode unless I'm REALLY involved in something.

I used to be able to push my bedtime out a couple of hours pretty easily for a day or two without suffering major effects. I can't get away with it now. If I push it an hour, I'll be feeling it all the next day. When your sleep schedule is already compressed, your body won't accept too much additional random compression.

A third, more minor, downside: I used to really enjoy sleeping in on the weekends. It's harder to come by now. As your body gets used to a rigid schedule, it obliges you by waking up at the appropriate time. I haven't QUITE gotten back into the seven-day rhythm I had a few years ago. Ah, well. If I was truly out to optimize my life, I'd do something with the extra couple of hours I get on Saturday morning.

But I'm not there yet.

What Does It Take?
1. A real motivation. For me - 2 extra hours of waking time per day amounts to fourteen hours a week... almost a FULL WAKING DAY for most people. An extra day out of every week? To use being productive or squander playing video-games? Count me in!

2. A commitment to develop a habit over three weeks. The first week adjusting to a new schedule ALWAYS sucks. The second week sucks less. If you can stick it out for three weeks, you are golden.

3. Sticking to the schedule. The only way your body will adjust is if your schedule is reliable. Go to bed within a few minutes of the allotted time, and WAKE UP when the alarm clock goes off WITHOUT hitting that snooze alarm!

And Then What?
So - if I were way more goal-directed than I am, I'd probably exercise more or do something more with all the extra time I have in the day. While I've been on this sleep schedule for YEARS now, it's still an ongoing project.

I think I could compress my sleep schedule down to five hours per night without too much trouble, but I don't have the motivation yet. Maybe if all that extra exercise started working really well for me :) Actually, it'll probably happen when I get closer to releasing my next indie game - Void War had me going down below five hours a night for a little while.

And with THAT - it's 12:49. That's eleven minutes to get ready for bed, before I fall asleep on the keyboard or something. So... Goodnight!

Labels: productivity

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:14 PM (Permalink)