A full nights sleep in THREE hours!

[D.Shaffer]

For example, if you're well rested on Friday and you know you will not be able to get much sleep Monday and Tuesday night then sleeping more on Saturday and Sunday will help you get through Monday and Tuesday.

If it's true, it's never worked for me. I have to be careful because I have a habit of oversleeping on the weekends. However, when I do that I find I have a LOT of trouble going to sleep Sunday night, with the end result that I'm usually dead tired the next day.

 

[Mycanid]

A good baseline? If you have a day off or a vacation and you're still sleeping 5 or 6 hours, and you feel great doing so, you're one of the lucky few. If you find that you're sleeping longer than normal on days off, though, or you want to be, then you're sleep deprived during the week.

Well, I must admit that I get about 5'ish hours of sleep a night and feel fine. But I must also admit that I often take longish naps on the weekends, and if I don't get the naps my output during the week drops. Also on "vacations" and such I often revert to about 7 or even 8 hours for a few days, and then back to my standard 5'ish. So I don't think I am one of the "lucky ones" or "unusual" per se.

 

[Mycanid]

I may not have said it, MM, but I'm very impressed by you. You've really busted your ass to make the family work, and you have my admiration and respect for that.

QFT.

I agree wholeheartedly with PC on this Mega.

I was a live-in volunteer at a shelter for homeless families for a year and a half, and saw many an example of a family where the father (sometimes the mother too, actually, but much less % wise) just did not care and dumped everyone else because they did not want to bother with the difficulties of putting others before themselves. So ... kudos for you, sir.

 

[Vargo]

Sounds a lot to me like the old "Russian sleep machine" idea.

 

[Piratecat]

You can make up for lost sleep, and it's not even a one-for-one exchange; if you sleep five hours a day for five days, you're pretty much 10-15 hours in the hole. But one or two good sleep periods of ten hours, and you're back up to the baseline. The downside, of course, is that you spend that week dangerously fatigued and operating at sub-par status.

As Merkuri mentioned, you can also "bank" sleep. Getting several night's restful sleep ahead of time can help you make it through one or two days of low sleep; think of it as building up a bank balance that you then draw against. One or two days is all it buys you, though.

If you're going to be up all night, a 2-4 hour nap before you stay up will tremendously help you stay up and be effective. Part of sleepiness is the time of day and the length of your last sleep, the the amount of time since your last sleep has a huge effect. The longer you've been up, the worse you'll feel. The trick is not superimposing "3-6am" with "I've been up 22 hours."

 

[Agamon]

If it's true, it's never worked for me. I have to be careful because I have a habit of oversleeping on the weekends. However, when I do that I find I have a LOT of trouble going to sleep Sunday night, with the end result that I'm usually dead tired the next day.

I never have this problem in the short term, but when I go on vacation, I gotta make sure I don't mess with the sleeping pattern much, or the first Monday/Tuesday back at work is murder.

 

[Nyaricus]

If you're going to be up all night, a 2-4 hour nap before you stay up will tremendously help you stay up and be effective. Part of sleepiness is the time of day and the length of your last sleep, the the amount of time since your last sleep has a huge effect. The longer you've been up, the worse you'll feel. The trick is not superimposing "3-6am" with "I've been up 22 hours."

I've heard that if you stay up long enough, the sleepy-feeling eventually wears away, and you start to feel "high", like you're drunk or on something. Since you're the expert here: does this hold any water with what you know?

just curious,
--N

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I find that lately I have been sleeping about 7 hours a night. During the week I normally go to sleep at about 10:30-11:00pm and get up at 6am. On the weekends I mights say up to 12am-1am and get up at 9am or later. It all depends on what I am doing on a particular weekend.

I have found that if I only get 5-6 hours sleep in a given night I feel colder than normal the next day, even if it is a hot day. I can sometimes feel colds coming on (stuffy nose, sore throat) if I have too many consecutive days with less sleep. A couple of good night's sleep tends to fix that though.

Olaf the Stout

 

[D.Shaffer]

I've heard that if you stay up long enough, the sleepy-feeling eventually wears away, and you start to feel "high", like you're drunk or on something. Since you're the expert here: does this hold any water with what you know?--N

I know it happens to me. I eventually hit a stage where I start feeling really giddy and euphoric when I've been up long enough. And while I dont really 'feel' tired anymore, I know I tend to 'blank out' for a few minutes now and then as I take little micronaps. These days, I tend to take that as a signal to get to bed.

 

[Merkuri]

Out of curiosity, when do you hit that point? I'm just wondering because I've been up for 24 hours straight before in at least one instance and never reached that giddy stage.