Crack

This is a little off topic from the post but I wanted to get your input.
From 10PM to 3AM is where I get the most work done, although, this has not worked well with personal relationships since it makes me seems overly obsessed with work. How does your wife deal with the fact that you regularly pull all nighters? Do you point to your mortgage payment stub or the fact that you are trying to create a sustainable business?

OK, I’ve taken a couple of approaches to this over the years, depending on my circumstances.

When I was at the Defence Force Academy it was catch up on sleep whenever there was scheduled downtime. One hour between lectures? Great, get some shuteye for 45 mins. In essence, this meant getting 6-7 hours sleep per night (weekly average). Probably one of the more important things they could teach you in the Armed Forces, but they don’t.

When I was single, it was getting 4-5 hours sleep a night (2-3am to 7am), then trying to get 2-3 hours sleep in the afternoon (3-4pm to 6pm) if I could do so. Weekends would be catchup time, either in the morning or afternoon depending on activities.

Now that I’m married with a second bub on the way (due date about the same time as yours Vlad!) I’m sleep deprived! The pattern is screwed! The arrangement I’ve come to with my wife is that she gets up on weekday mornings to our first (she naps when our first has her midday nap) and I let her sleep in on Saturday. I try to organise most stuff during week mornings starting after 9.30am – this gives me some room to maneouvre during the evening regarding work habits. Sleep catchup can occur on Saturday pm or Sunday again depending on activities.

This is obviously going to change with the second bub!

Ideally, a fixed bedtime and wakeup time to get about 8 hours sleep (or whatever is sustainable for you) is best, but what I’ve found out over the years is that there’s a sleep quota. If you take off an hour’s sleep, you need to catch it up somewhere. And it boils down to how long you can sustain this for. I can hold out on 1-2 hours loss of sleep for 1-2 weeks. After that I need to catch it up. Not generally in one sleep, but 2-3 big sleeps, or some additional pm naps.

Caffeine (and other stimulants) will only keep you going for so long. Cardiovascular exercise is a better approach for longer term stamina, but again there are some hard limits to what your body will tolerate regarding sleep deprivation.

Hope this helps!

There are alternate sleep schedules I’ve read about discussed in various places. One called for a 30 hour day cycle, which is really inconvenient. Another calls for a 30 minute nap every 4 hours (Uberman sleep schedule).

Like Vlad, I’ve always been most effective after about 10pm, and I still occasionally pull all nighters but extremely rarely, usually due to international time zone and scheduling issues.

The truth of the matter, nothing whips you into shape like having a kid. Before my daughter I rarely woke up before 8:30. Now I’m generally waking up in the 6-7:30 range depending on whose turn it is. Also, your productivity will drop like a rock.

I’ll second the kid…once the baby comes along you will have a new understanding of sleep deprived. If you get to sleep 8 hours in a WEEK you will be happy. But as they get older you can either get more sleep or use the time to get more done! Seems to be working for me at least.

I sleep from 10pm to 3:30am every weekday and 12am to 5:30am on weekends. Although i agree staying up might be more productive than the early morning i feel that dealing with people is much easier when their phone calls are not waking me up at 8:15am…

I’ve been on the interweb and it says people who never get enough sleep get all irritable. Don’t go officially bongo brains on us.

Sleep, Vlad, sleep…

If you don’t your brain will explode!