I’d say that the idea that we can recover wasted time sleeping is predicated on the idea that sleep is not a useful thing to do with our time. I think the current consensus is that there is actually many different things that our bodies and minds do while sleeping, so you couldn’t isolate one benefit of sleep and replicate it, you’d have to replicate five or ten different benefits of sleep, or more.

If you want to recover some time, try Soylent, moving closer to the office, hiring a maid to do the cleaning, etc. Assuming that these are within your means, you can recover quite a bit of time that way.

+1 to a maid. You can get someone to clean, do laundry, and possibly cook 2x a week for less than $10k ($200 week * 50 weeks) a year in a mid-sized metro. Possibly even cheaper.

Any couple that bickers about cleaning at all should try a maid before a divorce or couples counseling.

I agree, but don't expect to escape from an argument --person A wants to subcontract work A considers boring and menial, instead of contributing their effort to work A has been shirking for x years, now they want to spend A+B money etc. Specific performative compliance may be required before outsourcing negotiations commence.

-1 to having a stranger wander through your place and things while you're not at home. As a commenter on this site you should be well aware that any computer security precautions are forfeit when physical access is available.

Get a roomba.

-1 to having a robot wander through your place and things while you're not at home. As a commenter on this site you should be well aware that any computer security precautions are forfeit when a robot, capable of interfacing with your computer without even entering a password, is allowed physical access to your home.

Hire a maid.

Sure ask the roomba to iron clothes too and watch it while it goes up the walls your kids dirtied up. Check with people with kids on the verge of collapse - if you can afford it, its a godsend (in Asia, you probably can afford it atleast part-time).

Nobody said allowing access to the helper while nobody is around. Weekend help for a few hours is a thing. You can rest and relax while they are around. Just don't be dumb enough to tempt them by leaving a purse full of cash on the table. Even the best of the people can fall prey to a moment of weakness.

I gave it a try, with the only person I could trust (a family member) that was willing to work as a maid.

They quality of the work eventually went down. Fewer nooks and crannies were cleaner each passing week, there were also "cleaning mistakes" that happened that led to a roach infestation happening (or not being prevented from spreading), such as wet dishes inside the pantry.

I just moved to an smaller apartment and will just clean it myself, maybe will ask my GF to help me out.

Like in most other jobs, the quality of work does deteriorate. People get bored, take their employers for granted, cut corners and so on. In case of family, things are more complicated.

For domestic work, you usually can't offer them a career progression path to keep them interested. So the alternative is rotation. Though trust is definitely an issue, if your location has maid agencies that arrange for this kind of work, that aspect can be mostly addressed.

I did uberman in grad school, kept it up for a few months. It technically did give me more hours in the day, however most of that free time was spent on either making sure my schedule was arranged well enough for my sleep times, or sitting around reading a book quietly at 3am because everyone else including my roommate is asleep and all businesses are closed.

The benefits weren't really as pronounced as I was hoping for. Then if you end up missing one of your scheduled sleep times it really effects you and throws you off for a day or two.

I did biphasic for awhile and had a lot of the same issues. I DID get more hours, and I enjoyed doing it, but my family did not. It was impossible for me to do a full time job + family time + biphasic, and have the least bit of wiggle room for a dinner out, or a movie, or anything that took longer than planned.

I'm back to standard 7-8/night.

I am a big fan of sleeping. It makes sense to try to optimize how you use your time awake than to try to do everything in a sleep-deprived state. I've definitely spent days after 4 hours of sleep pounding away at code, seeming to be productive, and then waking up the next morning, thinking "wtf is this garbage", and then deleting it. That's 16 hours wasted, to save 4 hours in bed. Doesn't seem like a good deal to me.

I think if you really want to micro-optimize, you need to be able to set up quantitative metrics and then start playing with variables, and then make very small changes. Maybe you only need 7.5 hours of sleep, not 8. If you are set up to measure the differences in mood, wakefulness, etc., then you can probably detect when you've not gotten enough sleep. But, you might not like the results. Rather than fight them, you probably have to embrace them (or seek medical intervention).

Have you tried lucid dreaming? I’ve been a lucid dreamer since I was a kid but I didn’t know what it was called and I thought that’s how everyone’s dreams work. Somewhere along the way in law school I started using my dreams to study. I’d slow-walk through hypothetical fact patterns or anticipate getting cold-called to recite a case we’d read. It’s been incredibly helpful and once I realized my classmates had no idea wtf I meant by “I literally study in my dreams” I found all sorts of groups online who have different techniques you can try.

I still use lucid dreaming for all sorts of things like practicing for presentations or running through meetings that I know will be difficult. I’ve found its most useful (for me at least) when prepping for interactive or adversarial situations because it forces some part of the brain to “be” both sides: the question asker and answerer.

I have, but I wake up after every lucid dream, so I need to spend more time in bed to get a full length sleep.

And it only last a few minutes, so there is not enough time to study. Even if there was, I am always more interesting in flying around.

And most of the time I only reach a half-lucid state. Like tonight I got stuck in a time loop in a train station. Like I could not leave, because I did not have the right ticket or travel card. Then on a random train the ticket inspector wanted to arrest me. I was aware enough to realize that I could control the environment and could wish the ticket inspector away, but that just triggered the time loop and put me back in the train station where I started.

I actually think the infinite loop, while frustrating, is a good sign! As a kid I had a recurring dream just about every night (I’m talking years) about infinite escalators. I’d ride an escalator up and get off only to find several more to choose from to continue riding up. No matter what escalators I chose there were always more. No end. No way out. It was pretty stressful for my elementary school self.

I had a psychologist relative who tried to help me with my “nightmares” by telling me to just accept the escalator dream instead of being frustrated by it. Somehow it worked, instead of getting frustrated by the endless escalators I eventually figured out how to just dutifully ride in peace until I woke up.

Of course that was super boring, but once I stopped frantically searching for the “right way” to do the escalators I started to figure out all the cool things I could do to entertain myself on the infinite escalator rides. I still use an escalator to “start” my lucid dreams if that makes sense. Maybe you’ll similarly take the train to lucid dreams?

All that is to say that I think the loops are actually the perfect way to practice if you can manage to abandon the problem-solving urge. Easier said than done, I know. Best of luck!

I've been doing something similar with my sleep paralysis demons. Once I realized that they are a figment of my imagination, I trained myself to conjure a demon who has the knowledge of my physics professor. Instead of clawing at my feet while muffled screams fail to escape my paralyzed larynx, he holds an informal office hours where we can work through this week's problem set.

Yes, see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23228264

I use lucid dreaming to simulate various scenarios, sometimes have fun with superpowers, usually telekinesis.

The problem I see with this kind of studies is that they don't measure long-term effects, and oh boy - do they exist. Its the topic I can be used as a bad example. When I was around 16, I found that my ideal sleep schedule was doing 20h awake and 6h sleeping. In those 20h, I'd spend around 13h in front of a monitor (monochrome, so less eye strain), and the rest doing the usual stuff (reading, eating, etc). I kept it for as long as I could (around 3 months), until it stared interfering with "life schedules" such as school. So instead of returning to the usual 8h sleep, I started sleeping when I could. It lasted a couple of years, until the brain couldn't take it anymore. After that, I spent the biggest part of 6 months sleeping (would be awake around 4-6h a day) and medicated (as far as I recall, no explicit sedatives). Fast forward a couple of years, and I'd do "marathons" like 20-40h awake, but then with 10-12h sleep time. Periodically, I'd need to sleep "a day" (usually around 14-16h) to feel recovered. In the past 6 or so years, my sleep schedules have been pretty normal, but I sill need to sometimes sleep "a day" (at weekends), and its very difficult for me to sleep only 8h a night. When I'm on vacations, I usually sleep around 12h as often as I can. Messing with sleep schedules (granted, in an extreme way) has had a profound negative impact in my life, and past 20 years, I still suffer consequences from my youth mistakes. The benefits I reaped from having "extra time" are dim compared to the long-term consequences not only on my health, but also on my personal life.

There are other schedules on that site that are far tamer, such as Everyman 1: sleep 6 hours at night, one 20-min nap during the day, which you could do on a lunch break. The fact that many think polyphasic sleep is only Uberman or other nap-based schedules is disappointing to see. There are whole gradations from 9 hours (two 4.5 hour sleeps, not necessarily reduction of total sleep time, but it gives better sleep for some) to Uberman or Tesla (~2 hour total sleep time), which by the way is not known to be stable over a longer time period, a fact that the polyphasic community willingly accepts.

It is particularly disappointing to see because, just as you say, I'd also like to see more research on sleep and perhaps synthesizing its effects into a compound, but if people dismiss these alternate sleep schedules, we may not fully understand what the brain is doing during sleep, as fewer researchers are incentivized to study it, thinking it's just BS, which hurts the field overall.

> I've always mused that we could somehow recover some of the "wasted" time of sleeping. 8 hours every night - a third of a human's lifespan - is just so much time

8 hours - I wish!

Since starting freelancing full time I've been lucky enough to not need to get up at any particular time and ditched the alarm clock - but unlucky enough to find out that it takes me around 9-10 hours of sleep to wake up naturally.

Unfortunately, after getting used to it, waking to alarm now feels like torture (well, it did before too, now that I think about it).

So much time. Every day.

Do you just sleep in a dark room until you wake up? I too want to ditch my normal alarm clock and I've been looking into light alarm clocks. These slowly grow brighter over time to try to wake you like natural light would, rather than using sound. I have not gotten one yet because unfortunately many of them seem overpriced or require using a mobile app with them, but I think the idea still stands.

> Do you just sleep in a dark room until you wake up?

Yes. Although I have no trouble sleeping even if the room isn't dark. Falling asleep is usually a little harder if it's not dark, but once I'm asleep the light doesn't wake me up, unless it's really bright (like sun shining directly through the fully open window).

Maybe light alarm would awake me, not sure how bright they are.

What time do you go to sleep? Also any hints of sleep apnoe?

I tried all kinds of schedules, currently from 4-5 to around 14h.

Regarding apnea - no perceptible stoppage of breathing during the night according to my partner, but I do snore sometimes. I was getting ready to do a sleep study just before the pandemic hit, I hope I will be able to do it soon.

Hypothyroidism? It's a simple blood test, you'll be able to get it done even now.

My thyroid hormone levels are normal, I've had them tested a few times (for reasons unrelated to sleep).

> I've always mused that we could somehow recover some of the "wasted" time of sleeping. 8 hours every night - a third of a human's lifespan - is just so much time.

Given the option, would you want to be slower and less energetic if you could stay up 24/7? We seem to make a trade-off. We sleep for 8 hours so that we can be at optimal performance the rest of the time.

> Uberman

I have never seen anyone that could sustain this. This is probably by design, the body has several mechanisms to make you go to bed. If not doing so was actually beneficial, it is likely that adaptations to this end would be more common.

> I truly wish one day we can isolate and synthesize whatever magical thing happens during sleep and recover some useful time.

Even our real world machines require maintenance stops. Don't hold your breath. Maybe we could make this more efficient in the future and speed up the processes.

That has never been wasted time for me so I disagree on your sentiment. Sleeping is a very fulfilling and engaging activity. I would rather not have the pace set by an expectation of increased "productivity".

Honestly, at least sleep makes me feel good. Distractions (like HN) make me feel worse at the end.