[drostie]

One tip which I didn't see: set an alarm for going to bed, not waking up. You should be able to wake naturally, but artificial lighting changes your perception of when you should go to sleep, shifting you from a naturally 23-hour circadian rhythm to a 25-hour one.

So just set an alarm for 11pm, and when you hear it, immediately stop what you're doing, save any open documents, turn the TV or computer off. The next 30 minutes are for brushing teeth, settling into bed, and preparing for the following morning only. By then you should be settling into a good night's sleep.

[tptacek]

A plug here for F.lux, which attempts to correct for the unnatural color balance of computer screens and seems to have more or less eliminated my insomnia problems; the only times I have trouble sleeping anymore are traceable either to caffeine after noon, or forgetting that I've disabled F.lux.

[ics]

I recommend F.lux as well, but I've noticed a very unfortunate effect over the last few months... because of how soft it is on the eyes at night, I've learned that with it enabled I can continuously work 16-26 hour sessions without even realizing that I missed a sleep cycle. Obviously, this isn't a problem with F.lux itself, and I've tried very hard to tweak my settings so that this doesn't happen (it is auto-on/off, have experimented with different temp. levels too). In fact, I've gotten so used to it that when I know I need to go to bed soon I disable it entirely– once the blue light starts irritating me, I switch to a lamp and paper until I'm ready to get some shut-eye.

Notes: I don't drink coffee, green tea once in a while, and minimal late-night stimuli (lights mostly off, no music, ...).

[brittohalloran]

Really? You worked for 26 hours and didn't realize it because your screen was the right color?

[ics]

Read it again– I'm not saying F.lux is the source of my sleep issues, just that it's made the exacerbation of said issues occur less noticeably (to me, of course).

Before I started using F.lux there was an obvious taxing period around 1-2am where my eyes might have started to get blurry or headache would set in, assuming I had woken up and started working by ~8am. From there I would either go to bed or brute force the next few hours, despite being aware of the time in general. Now, I don't get that feeling until much later– either at 22hrs when the sun has come up and F.lux begins fading out, or a little later if I'm not paying attention until after the sun has come up and the screen's been blue for a while. (At that point, I either notice the sun through the trees or get a splitting headache).

To further describe where I work: shaded area, floor to ceiling books, no clock, no phones. I do graphic work during the day and by early evening I'm in the command line until whenever. I can usually get out during the day, but sometimes I just don't. I think the proper advice here would be to stop working at home while living in the city, but that's enough OT– I was simply pointing out my experience using F.lux!

[ankitml]

this is funny, because of how soft it is on the eyes at night... blame it on your stamina, work being interesting or your superior motivation and lack of distracting beings around. Dont blame it on a software man.

[reeses]

Go to bed!

[ics]

By far the fastest way to make myself fall asleep is to enumerate all possible excuses for not going to sleep yet. Either way I "win"...

[SeanDav]

Surely F.lux is fairly pointless unless the only source of light in your room is your computer monitor?

I would imagine that any windows or external lighting is going to have a far greater effect than F.lux. I tried F.lux a while ago when it was recommended in a previous HN post but for me the only difference it seemed to have, was to make my computer monitor more difficult to read by making it too dim.

[SeanDav]

Just tried it again. Still can't live with it at night, makes me feel like I am going blind with the shift to red. Might try it 1 more time with a gradual shift and see if that works but right now, certainly not useable for me.

[Centigonal]

I couldn't stand F.lux the first time either. What I did was set it to where I could barely tell the difference. After a week or so I would find myself thinking "too bluish" staring at my screen at night, at which point I lowered the color temperature slightly.

Within two months, I had found a setting I felt comfortable at (right now it's at 3500K).

[hmottestad]

Actually. Staring at a screen until midnight, the screen is a major light source.

Also for me, my desk lamp automagically dims from 11 to 1pm, just to make me feel a little more sleepy.

[wglb]

Do you mean 11pm to 1 am?

[hmottestad]

yes :)

[tptacek]

F.lux has not been fairly pointless for me. I am sure of that.

[ajdecon]

It's had some helpful effects for me, even when I have other lights on. The computer is what I'm spending the whole time looking at, after all.

[gingerlime]

I love f.lux, but it doesn't seem to work so well with my dual-monitor setup on xubuntu... and I'm never really sure if it's working properly. I wish it had some kind of a 'temperature indicator' or something.

[Inufu]

If f.lux doesn't work properly, give redshift a try. Does the exact same thing and works perfectly for me.

[gingerlime]

thanks for the tip. redshift seems to crash immediately after I launch it... not sure what's going on. Maybe it's time to switch back from xubuntu to ubuntu or something...

[parennoob]

Try the one-shot option. 'redshift -O 4700' should set both your monitors to 4700K.

[sneak]

If Ubuntu doesn't work properly, give OSX a try. Does the exact same thing and works perfectly for me.

[aclevernickname]

That's funny, because I have the opposite anecdote; I have been regularly converting OS X user to Kubuntu Lucid/KXStudio (with backports) for the last year or so. Know all those guys that are avoiding Lion and Mountain Lion like the plague that they are? Yeah. that's my market.

Tons of people with 3yo MBP's with an install of Snow Leopard, looking longingly at how pretty and useable my little powerless Netbook with 2GB of RAM is with OpenOffice/Dolphin/Blender/Gwenview/Firefox running and 40+ tabs open. They can barely run Safari, iPhoto, Mail.app, and Skype at the same time without constant beachballing, so they sit in quiet humility while I actually get stuff done.

Once installed on their computers, an install that just works, I grab AppMenu (QML) from kde-look and replace the default one. At this point the MBP owner has a better OS experience than Snow Leopard could/does offer, and we haven't even done any tweaking yet. like f.lux or redshift (which you can grab from a ppa). I don't see the crashes you guys do on these apps, oddly enough. just works for me and my customers.

I love you Mac guys, really. You pay top-dollar for your hardware, and then Apple forgets about you in less than 4 years. I almost feel like I'm a rescue worker for abused and battered Apple customers.

[eropple]

> They can barely run Safari, iPhoto, Mail.app, and Skype at the same time without constant beachballing

I am skeptical of your anecdote. My 2010 MBP was perfectly happy running Xcode, IntelliJ, and pretty much any other applications I'd care to run, and that was before I put a SSD in it (which, naturally, helped a lot).

I think you're stretching the truth by a great deal.

[sneak]

Top dollar for hardware that lasts 36 months (the length of applecare) means $100/month. For people who "get stuff done" this is nothing. I literally spend more on bottled water than I do my top-dollar computers.

[parennoob]

Snarky as this is, I'm sorry to say that it's probably correct. I've never had to have any configuration or other problems with f.lux on OSX, it just works there. On Ubuntu, it just doesn't work. :)

(Ubuntu user since 2004, OSX since about last year)

[bkanber]

You can always observe what happens if you hit the Disable option. If there's a noticable difference, it was working.

[6d0debc071]

Its defaults, at least on windows, are quite striking. You ought to be able to see your screen's colour balance change in the space of a few seconds when it reaches the relevant time of day.

[adito]

someone suggest the opposite[1]:

    If you sleep set hours, you’ll sometimes go to bed
    when you aren’t sleepy enough. If it’s taking you
    more than five minutes to fall asleep each night,
    you aren’t sleepy enough. You’re wasting time lying
    in bed awake and not being asleep. Another problem
    is that you’re assuming you need the same number of
    hours of sleep every night, which is a false 
    assumption. Your sleep needs vary from day to day.

    ...

    The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy 
    (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with 
    an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week).

I've done this tips and have good sleep each night (and also become an early riser as side effect).

[1]: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-ea...

[colkassad]

The only time I fall asleep in less than 5 minutes is if I am completely exhausted. I have to go through a mental winding down period while I lay in bed. Usually through reading or just closing my eyes and thinking about something pleasant. This usually takes me about a half-hour on average. Anyway, from my point of view, I never understand how someone can just lay down and be asleep in a few minutes.

[blazingfrog2]

+1

It's called sleep envy and, some nights when I can hear my wife drift off in minutes and I'm not even close to it, it throws me into that mental tailspin that goes through multiple stages like the whiny "why-me", plain anger, frustration and more. The only result, of course, is an even more delayed start of sleep phase.

[meric]

I count numbers from 1 to X, where X is the number I get to before I fall asleep. I concentrate on the numbers and nothing else. Eventually I get to X and I fall asleep. The speed of counting should fast enough I am not bored, but not so fast that I have to spend effort. The speed varies depending on how close I'm to sleep. The closer I am to sleep the slower I count.

[capedape]

I do the same but I also visualize each number differently; different shapes, textures, sizes. That seems to help engage the monkey chatter and the wacky visualizing takes me closer to dreamland.

Plus one for F.lux, I have it on everything I use but recently I updated my phone to the standard IOS thinking it wouldn't be missed since it was the only Jailbreak tweak on my phone, but now I'm missing it so hard I'm seriously considering an Android and its equivalent app. With F.lux on my phone my light sensitivity was better in the day and sleep was better at night.

[pingou]

Could you please elaborate on your method? Do you decide before hand what X will be? If not, it looks a lot like counting sheep.

[meric]

It's exactly like counting sheep, except counting sheep doesn't work for me. Either every sheep is the same, I get bored and revert to background chatter, or every unique sheep takes too much effort to imagine, I revert to background chatter.

[bumbledraven]

I do math problems in my head.

[gknoy]

Perhaps they read in bed, or otherwise have a calming period (yoga, meditation, etc), before they consider themselves as lying down to sleep. e.g., they lie down in bed, read for $(time), and then put the book away, turn out the lights, and lie down and fall asleep.

[kzrdude]

It's easy, if you exhaust yourself by reading or browsing until you drop. (Not saying it's a good idea, but I do it a lot).

[bane]

I had to opportunity to work one time where the time I came in didn't really matter. I decided to sleep when I was tired and wake when I was refreshed. Over the next few months I started to slowly cycle around the clock as my sleep time shifted about a half hour to an hour later each day and thus did my wake up time. It was a bit strange, but once I got into the rhythm of it...I've never been as productive in my entire career.

[lucian1900]

I've stayed in bed and not fallen asleep until it got light again outside. I am almost never sleepy, it is very annoying.

This advice only works for some people.

[dkersten]

I agree with this. I have a wake up alarm, but I'm usually awake before it goes off.

I've also never been a morning person, but when I keep to a strict go-to-bed time, I feel refreshed and awake in the morning even if its early. I guess part of this is that when I'm careful when I go to bed, I also time that I 1) get a plenty of sleep and 2) get up on a 90-minute boundary.

Unfortunately I have a habit of ignoring my go-to-bed alarm :-(

[hndl]

I thought I could wake up before my alarm went off too, but after a little retrospection I considered that perhaps I "trained" myself to get up at the time. That is, I used to use the alarm, then stopped using it, but continued to get up at the same time.

[superuser2]

You're clearly not a student :). I'd love to choose when to go to bed, but that's not really compatible with a workload challenging enough to appease admissions counselors.

[dredmorbius]

If you think life's going to become any more considerate of your sleep requirements, think again.

Use time-boxing as a scheduling mechanism. If you find you have more work to do than time to do it, start lopping off items from your to-do list, and/or identifying how you can accomplish a sufficient effort in the time available.

That is likely to be a far more useful life lesson than whatever subject it is you're studying at the moment.

You also have to learn how to schedule downtime. People cannot run 100% 24/7/365, and attempting to do this is at best very painful, and at worst, literally, suicidal.

[huntaub]

You can get all of your work done before a certain time. It just involves more rigorous organization. It is never good to put anything at a higher priority than your health.

[drostie]

Just to respond a little, I actually just finished with my Master's in applied physics, so yeah, it can work with an academic life. ^_^ Actually it can even be beneficial, much like turning off the Internet -- where yes, you lose access to help docs, but you also lose access to distractions.

If you want a little more unorthodox advice I'd offer, "don't buy the textbook unless either (a) it is a workbook which must be submitted for the grade or (b) you were really so powerfully impressed that you want this book as a lifelong reference." Ask the professor to ask the library to put the textbook on reserve in the library -- so that nobody in the course can take it out, but rather you share it at the library. If this leaves you muttering about Kant's categorical imperative, remember that if someone else is using it, you can form an impromptu study group and make a new friend. :D. For that matter, student societies should have copies of the texts, and a study lounge at the department might also have them. If nothing else works, copy homework problems from a friend taking the same course and look up the same material in alternative texts in the library (or on the Internet) -- but that's almost never necessary.

[Centigonal]

My impression from reading his/her comment was that he/she is a high school senior, in which case what he says would make sense. 35 hours a week in classes, plus the activity and homework load he would need to make UChicago, plus meals and transport, add up to at least 14 hours on weekdays, without making allowance for inefficiency, laziness, akrasia, etc or leisure.

[encoderer]

Just curious: Do you think your workload will decrease in the future, or that the workloads of the highly paid professionals here are less than what's required from you in school?

Don't expect life to get easier. More rewarding, IMO, but not easier.

[superuser2]

I would assume that a highly paid professional spends a much greater percentage of his or her day engaged in actual work, is more efficient than I am, and is required to produce a higher quality output than I am. I'm sure it's cognitively harder, but I doubt it's anywhere near the number of hours.

My dad is an accountant. He gets to work at 7:30am and gets home at 4:30pm. He spends about as many hours at work as I do at school, but when he logs off for the day, he's done. I can't remember the last time I actually completed my obligations for the day. If you do manage to do a good job on all the problem sets and readings before losing consciousness, there's always a test to be studying for or a paper to be revising. I procrastinate because there is literally no such thing as "after homework is done."

I don't mean to complain - I gave myself this courseload and I've done well enough with it that I'll be going to my dream school next year (UChicago - yes, I know, the workload will increase exponentially). Sleep deprivation is a price I chose to pay. But I do think that most professionals have a day which ends - usually before 7pm, but at some point it ends - and several hours to commit to a social life, family, side projects, pleasure reading etc. as they please. Obviously not in 80hr/week fields like law and not in startups about to ship, but on balance. Is this not accurate?

[encoderer]

Yes and no. First though, congrats on Chicago. It's a great school and a great place to live. A long history of great work there.

There are a lot of great, lucrative careers that give you a clear boundary between work and home. Some of these are that way by nature, but really all can be. There are niches even in law and medicine, that provide for a if not 40 hour work week, something close to that. These often will be the jobs that pay the below-median salary in that field.

But anything that resembles entrepreneurship is going to feel a lot more like what you are doing now than what you see in your dads career. (Also worth noting on the subject of your dad that you presumably didn't see him when he was starting his career.) Sure, what I said in the previous graf applies to entrepreneurship as well, but... the disposition that drives a strong work/life balance seems often orthogonal to the ambition that leads you to working for yourself to begin with.

So if that life interests you -- if building and growing something is your destiny -- then my POV here is to know that everything you wrote about your current life, the "last time I completed", the "always a next thing to do", the "no such thing as done", all of that applies wholly to entrepreneurship.

Of course, like I mentioned a couple days ago, it can be tremendously rewarding.

I'm only 30, I have a lot to figure out still, so take all that with more than a grain of salt.

[PagingCraig]

Excuses.

[groundCode]

you're clearly not a parent.

[exue]

In general, most humans run 'late' on a 24.5-25.5 hour cycle with lack of any light - it's natural lighting that tends us towards 24 again. So it's true that artificial lighting messes with it, but not in that we were pre-disposed to sleeping earlier every day without it.

[maroun]

I couldn't agree more. This has worked wonders for a lot of people I know. I'm going to update the post so that it mentions this. Thanks! :)

[charlieok]

If you happen to use an iPhone, I highly recommend Sol:

http://www.juggleware.com/blog/2012/01/sol-sun-clock-for-iph...

I'm not sure what the equivalent on Android might be; if anyone knows, hopefully they'll weigh in.

[processyellow]

Lux is a good one. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux

[charlieok]

That looks cool, but it's solving a different problem.

The app I linked to is basically a clock that shows you your local solar times (day, night, golden hours, and twilight) at a glance, and can set alarms by them. If you want to wake at civil dawn, or at sunrise, for example, it'll do that.

[loceng]

I like this idea. It'd be a big shift from what I currently do, though I feel I could be more productive at night then.