Methods I’ve personally found useful for improving productivity when temporarily my cognitive ability or conscientiousness is lowered, not necessarily due to sleep deprivation:
Selecting from my TODO list tasks that are either non-demanding, or very exciting
Sitting next to a big window and spending a lot of time people-watching. I don’t understand why it worked, but I noticed it would put me in a rhythm where I would make slow but consistent progress with my work.
When a lot of mental energy needs to be mustered (and so the above two methods are not an option), cut out all the stimulation: put away my phone; close all the non-relevant web browser tabs; put on noise-cancelling headphones with pink noise playing; go to a separate room and/or use big objects to restrict my field of vision to nothing but my workstation. Also, make sure that I won’t be disturbed for the next couple hours at least: prepare a glass of water, go to the toilet, make sure my co-workers understand this “do not disturb” mode.
You seem to assume that your lowered ability is caused by sleep deprivation. Is that an assumption? If so, I would encourage you to track your sleep quality and your cognitive performance and see if they really correlate, if you can think of a way to do it.
My fully subjective impression is that my insomnia never impacted my cognitive performance. I used to stress about it impacting my bodybuilding. Then I started believing that the impact of my sleep deprivation is minimal, if any, and that new belief probably helped me improve quality of my sleep.
Sitting next to a big window and spending a lot of time people-watching. I don’t understand why it worked, but I noticed it would put me in a rhythm where I would make slow but consistent progress with my work.
Going for a long walk similarly seemed to help temporarily.
You seem to assume that your lowered ability is caused by sleep deprivation. Is that an assumption? If so, I would encourage you to track your sleep quality and your cognitive performance and see if they really correlate, if you can think of a way to do it.
This is an assumption in the sense that I haven’t compared any formal cognitive test results between days when I do/don’t sleep well. However, there are two factors that make me skeptical that it’s placebo-like, as you seem to be indicating:
I’ll often get up and be surprised to find I’m struggling more than usual with hard cognitive tasks, so it can’t just be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I do feel fairly confident that on days when I sleep under a certain amount, I struggle more to make progress on math & programming, which at the very least measure my ability to concentrate for long periods of time and think without external aids. Specifically, I’ve noticed that on days when I sleep less, I can’t manage complicated trains of thought as well without writing stuff down.
That said, hopefully getting a Dreem as ChristianKI suggested will help me better measure my sleep quality and get a better sense of whether low sleep quality actually aligns with days on which I struggle.
skeptical that it’s placebo-like, as you seem to be indicating
Just to clarify my point: I was suggesting it was more like a confirmation bias than placebo. In my case at least, I used to think that sleep deprivation lowered my performance, and then started believing there was no correlation at all (although lack of sleep still affected my mood, so it was undesirable). However, I have little confidence in that belief, and even if I was more certain about it, it’s just an anecdote.
I don’t think that lack of sleep is any more a problem than it is a problem with sleep.
I don’t see the problem. Your mental experience is that it’s hard to get to sleep, especially if you have to memorize your concept and use it in different situations.
I think your ability to sleep is much more a problem than it is a problem with sleep.
You have not even taken a CFAR unit and started using it for yourself.
I am going to stick around to write a lot of stuff and try to analyze people’s ideas without having to read this stuff (eg if I think I have to, I should check the answer once I know it well).
I am going to write stuff which covers interesting areas in math and computer science (for at least a decade is more than an hour).
(For my own part, though, I’d say that I would have to read it before I had any experience with what you point out as important and interesting information.)
Methods I’ve personally found useful for improving productivity when temporarily my cognitive ability or conscientiousness is lowered, not necessarily due to sleep deprivation:
Selecting from my TODO list tasks that are either non-demanding, or very exciting
Sitting next to a big window and spending a lot of time people-watching. I don’t understand why it worked, but I noticed it would put me in a rhythm where I would make slow but consistent progress with my work.
When a lot of mental energy needs to be mustered (and so the above two methods are not an option), cut out all the stimulation: put away my phone; close all the non-relevant web browser tabs; put on noise-cancelling headphones with pink noise playing; go to a separate room and/or use big objects to restrict my field of vision to nothing but my workstation. Also, make sure that I won’t be disturbed for the next couple hours at least: prepare a glass of water, go to the toilet, make sure my co-workers understand this “do not disturb” mode.
You seem to assume that your lowered ability is caused by sleep deprivation. Is that an assumption? If so, I would encourage you to track your sleep quality and your cognitive performance and see if they really correlate, if you can think of a way to do it.
My fully subjective impression is that my insomnia never impacted my cognitive performance. I used to stress about it impacting my bodybuilding. Then I started believing that the impact of my sleep deprivation is minimal, if any, and that new belief probably helped me improve quality of my sleep.
Going for a long walk similarly seemed to help temporarily.
This is an assumption in the sense that I haven’t compared any formal cognitive test results between days when I do/don’t sleep well. However, there are two factors that make me skeptical that it’s placebo-like, as you seem to be indicating:
I’ll often get up and be surprised to find I’m struggling more than usual with hard cognitive tasks, so it can’t just be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I do feel fairly confident that on days when I sleep under a certain amount, I struggle more to make progress on math & programming, which at the very least measure my ability to concentrate for long periods of time and think without external aids. Specifically, I’ve noticed that on days when I sleep less, I can’t manage complicated trains of thought as well without writing stuff down.
That said, hopefully getting a Dreem as ChristianKI suggested will help me better measure my sleep quality and get a better sense of whether low sleep quality actually aligns with days on which I struggle.
Just to clarify my point: I was suggesting it was more like a confirmation bias than placebo. In my case at least, I used to think that sleep deprivation lowered my performance, and then started believing there was no correlation at all (although lack of sleep still affected my mood, so it was undesirable). However, I have little confidence in that belief, and even if I was more certain about it, it’s just an anecdote.
I don’t think that lack of sleep is any more a problem than it is a problem with sleep.
I don’t see the problem. Your mental experience is that it’s hard to get to sleep, especially if you have to memorize your concept and use it in different situations.
I think your ability to sleep is much more a problem than it is a problem with sleep.
You have not even taken a CFAR unit and started using it for yourself.
I am going to stick around to write a lot of stuff and try to analyze people’s ideas without having to read this stuff (eg if I think I have to, I should check the answer once I know it well).
I am going to write stuff which covers interesting areas in math and computer science (for at least a decade is more than an hour).
(For my own part, though, I’d say that I would have to read it before I had any experience with what you point out as important and interesting information.)