I'm impressed by your determination.
A while back, I had a big paper deadline a week away and knew I didn’t have enough time to finish without sacrificing sleep.
Rather than cutting my sleep short, I decided to stick with 7–8 hours of rest and instead lengthen my wake window. I worked out a schedule that gave me six nights of sleep across seven days. It meant waking up at stranger and stranger times as the week went on, and getting some odd looks from my roommates when I emerged from my room. But in the end, it was totally worth it. I was waking up well-rested and ready to tackle those extra-long days.
The effort paid off 100%. Not only did I make the deadline, but my paper was accepted as well. A year later, that same paper helped me get into my PhD program of choice.
It’s funny how these short bursts of intense effort can sometimes have such a big impact.
Best of luck with your side hustle!
> I'm impressed by your determination.
I'm depressed by their determination.
Indeed. Imagine organizing your life around a $20/month subscription.
Worked for me, too, in similar circumstances. 30-32 hours with 8-9 hours of sleep and 21-24 hours of activity is a somehow better sleep/activity ratio, closer to 1/4 than to 1/3. More important for me were longer stretches of uninterrupted concentration time. Likely it's not important in the vibe-coding case.
Ah, the classic 28 hour day
https://xkcd.com/320/
Reminds me of:
https://web.archive.org/web/20020802073153/http://www.kuro5h...
Not loading for me. IIRC a Manhattan Project scientist chose 26 hour days till he started waking up to the sunset.
I'm surprised to hear that that schedule worked well. Even if you woke feeling well-rested, what did you feel like towards the end of the day, at your normal/previous sleep time?
Personally in that situation I would (and do) get plenty of sleep every night and then skip the final night. I find the fatigue from a lot of lost sleep normally doesn't hit me in full until the second day after, and the final-day panic is enough to counteract the lack of sleep.
I’ve tried this because I’ve long thought my circadian cycle is just a bit longer than average, where I just don’t feel tired until late at night, and traveling westward feels great because I can take an extra long day. Waking up early on a regular schedule is hard for me generally, like, I can do it but I feel braindead. Eastward jet lag of 3-6 hours is awful if I have to do stuff in the mornings.
So I tried a complete “cycle” of 28 hour days until I realigned with the normal day. Which happens to be the same thing GP did. LCM(24, 28) = 168 which is 7 days with 6 cycles. Roughly 19 hours waking and 9 hours sleeping. I did let myself sleep longer instead of holding to 7-8 hours like GP.
It definitely felt weird because my wife wasn’t on the schedule, but I didn’t feel super sleep deprived. I’m sure with multiple complete cycles you’d see more adverse effects, so it’s probably best to only do this very sparingly. Maybe napping during the wake period could alleviate issues.
This sounds quite like Non 24 hr Sleep Wake Disorder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake...