Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation

Re:Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation by danielbarla on Thursday May 15, 2014 @05:29AM (#7748513)

In my own experience, in the "short term" it really comes down to motivation / inspiration. If you are sufficiently motivated, overworking yourself seems to be far less painful, and productivity doesn't really seem to be impacted. I've certainly pulled all-nighters before with code going into production pretty successfully.

I specifically put short term in quotes because I'm not sure how I would define it. It probably depends on a lot of factors, but I wouldn't stretch it past several weeks. Way past that, motivation also seems to be highly impacted, and you become the kind of tired, error prone zombie who stretches out their 8 hours of work over 16.

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Re:Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation by AnimalMuppet on Thursday May 15, 2014 @01:37PM (#7750938)

One of XP's guiding principles is "Never work overtime for longer than one week."

It's OK to work an 80-hour week. You can get a lot done. But the next week needs to be a 40-hour week, or the pace isn't sustainable.

It isn't necessarily an iron-clad rule, but it's a pretty good rule of thumb. Past one week, you're just hurting your productivity.

My experience bears this out as a fairly accurate guide.

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Re:Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation by kamaal on Thursday May 15, 2014 @06:17AM (#7748650)

I agree.

Actually its about knowing when to sleep than sleeping less always, more like when to accelerate and when to brake. I guess that's what Edison did too.

Many times over a period what you really need is long stretches of un interrupted time to get something big done. You will have to take a break after that. Come back with a fresh purpose, an new challenge and start again.

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