One point that I would like to see discussed is the relation between lack of sleep and allergies. In general, I have some minor dust allergy. However, when I’m sleep deprived and something triggers my allergy, the symptoms (sneezing, nose running, red eyes...) are several orders of magnitude stronger and really impede normal life. The effect is cumulative, I mean that this happens only when I haven’t slept enough for several days. I take it as something valuable, as it is a reliable sign for me that I need to rest.
I have once quickly searched a bit the scientific literature for this effect and seemed scarce. Some research mentioned it, but it really seemed something very under-studied.
Beyond this comment, my personal experience with productivity vs. sleep is that when I don’t sleep enough, I am really much less productive. The periods when I have slept the fewest, I have gotten up at very consistent times, so this does really not seem the cause. When I’m sleep deprived, I don’t have problems doing physical stuff but I’m much less able to concentrate, so the effect depends a lot on the nature of the work. Probably I also don’t have any major issue doing fun stuff even if it needs concentration. Sadly we mostly cannot only do fun stuff… But, for example, in the Uni I started to get much better grades when I decided to never sign up for lectures starting before 10h, because I was (partly for external factors, partly for lack of will power) unable to go to sleep early enough to get enough sleep time otherwise.
One point that I would like to see discussed is the relation between lack of sleep and allergies. In general, I have some minor dust allergy. However, when I’m sleep deprived and something triggers my allergy, the symptoms (sneezing, nose running, red eyes...) are several orders of magnitude stronger and really impede normal life. The effect is cumulative, I mean that this happens only when I haven’t slept enough for several days. I take it as something valuable, as it is a reliable sign for me that I need to rest.
I have once quickly searched a bit the scientific literature for this effect and seemed scarce. Some research mentioned it, but it really seemed something very under-studied.
Beyond this comment, my personal experience with productivity vs. sleep is that when I don’t sleep enough, I am really much less productive. The periods when I have slept the fewest, I have gotten up at very consistent times, so this does really not seem the cause. When I’m sleep deprived, I don’t have problems doing physical stuff but I’m much less able to concentrate, so the effect depends a lot on the nature of the work. Probably I also don’t have any major issue doing fun stuff even if it needs concentration. Sadly we mostly cannot only do fun stuff… But, for example, in the Uni I started to get much better grades when I decided to never sign up for lectures starting before 10h, because I was (partly for external factors, partly for lack of will power) unable to go to sleep early enough to get enough sleep time otherwise.