# The importance of sleep



## mac (May 9, 2018)

If any of you sacrifice sleep (guilty), watch this if you can. Matthew Walker spends two brilliant hours informing you how cutting your sleep short is a seriously bad move for your mental and physical health.


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## aaronventure (May 9, 2018)

Saw it, great! I always felt like there are too few hours in a day. I tried cutting sleep for a period of time and looking back on it... really bad idea. Initially it was nice, more hours in a day, I'd get more stuff done, but eventually I started to feel different. I was more easily annoyed and couldn't focus for as long anymore - this in turn annoyed me even more and I would cut even more sleep 

Took me some time to realize why was I feeling this way, and in hindsight I think it took as long as it did because I didn't want it to be true. Luckily the whole thing didn't last long, a couple of months or so.

Went back to sleeping normal 7-8 hours and everything was fine again. 

Turns out working on your time management is a much better and healthier decision. If you still don't have enough time... work on being faster or hire help. *Do not* cut sleep. Not worth it, neither for you or the people around you.


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## d.healey (May 9, 2018)

aaronventure said:


> If you still don't have enough time.


24 hours, no more, no less.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Live_on_24_Hours_a_Day
I like the LibreVox version - https://librivox.org/how-to-live-on-twenty-four-hours-a-day-by-arnold-bennett/


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## Rob Elliott (May 9, 2018)

#1 improvement for writing better music? Get more human style hours of sleep. STOP doing - as I did for years thinking it was my badge of honor. Talk about single cell thinking. :( How many different hours (or combination of cat naps) is different for everyone but you 'know' what is right to be at your sharpest. Keep doing......that.


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## jononotbono (May 9, 2018)

Not meeting deadlines is seriously bad for my mental and physical health.


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## JJP (May 9, 2018)

jononotbono said:


> Not meeting deadlines is seriously bad for my mental and physical health.



Yeah, you and Oliver Nelson who died at his desk while pulling a late-nighter to hit a deadline. He had a reputation in Hollywood for being the guy who could always hit a deadline no matter the circumstances. It killed him. My former boss was his pall bearer.

This is serious, folks. I personally know people who have almost died from pushing themselves too far and neglecting sleep. It takes a toll far beyond any arbitrary deadline. Be smart about how you work.


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## pmcrockett (May 9, 2018)

I've worked 90-hour weeks on about 3 hours of sleep a night at my day job (kitchen manager) when things were really out of hand.

Don't do that.

Below about 6 hours a night, I stop being able to sustain creative work such as composing in the long term. Below about 5 hours, I stop being able to do it in the short term. Below about 4 hours, I stop being able even to communicate effectively with other people. And that's not even getting into the physical effects.


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## patrick76 (May 9, 2018)

For someone with insomnia like myself, these articles/videos are counterproductive. I'm already aware I should get more sleep, but the more I think about it the less I'll sleep. Sucks. I wish I could just decide I'd like to sleep for 7 hours.


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## Naoki Ohmori (May 9, 2018)

patrick76 said:


> For someone with insomnia like myself, these articles/videos are counterproductive. I'm already aware I should get more sleep, but the more I think about it the less I'll sleep. Sucks. I wish I could just decide I'd like to sleep for 7 hours.



I can really relate to you! I'm aware of importance of sleep but thinking too much about danger of lack of sleep can rather make you insomnia.
I won't sacrifice the time of sleep but I try not to care about how many hours I actually slept last night.


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## DavidY (May 10, 2018)

I found the link to the MP3 version of this podcast here:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/joeroganexp/p1109.mp3

Handy if you want to listen at night without a pesky blue-light-emitting (and sleep-affecting) screen glowing away. 
(Or it is for me, anyway - I still use an ancient device called an MP3 player.  )


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## Parsifal666 (May 10, 2018)

Back when I was in my hysterical stage of sample library/synth consumerism I was like a kid during Xmas: I loathed sleep. It just seemed like a chore, while my familiarization (and just plain inspired FUN) with all these new, wonderful instruments were like opening the present. At the same time, I was working for commissions, so that took up a lot of time when I really just wanted to open Cubase and go to town.

It was because of the lack of sleep that my commissions dried up for awhile. I found that I'd written a ton of eight to 12 bar pieces that really didn't do much besides take up room. I was writing out of sheer inspiration, but when it came to perspiration I was having too good a time to care. I just wanted to write, write, write because these vis were quite easy to work with and sounded really good. My focus on real world composition suffered, and my four hour a night sleeping average had one heck of a lot to do with that.


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## AdamAlake (May 10, 2018)

DavidY said:


> without a pesky blue-light-emitting (and sleep-affecting) screen glowing away.



That is why f.lux exists. If you work at a computer at night, I highly recommend using it.


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## DavidY (May 10, 2018)

AdamAlake said:


> That is why f.lux exists. If you work at a computer at night, I highly recommend using it.


It's a good point - I used to have f.lux on my old laptop before I clean-installed it a few months back. 
Although now there's something similar built into Windows 10 itself so I'm going to give that a go to start with, to see how I like it.

However, I still reckon that however good f.lux is for working, if all I want to do is listen to that podcast, a completely switched off screen is going to be better for sleep.


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