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Sleep Deprivation and Studying | ||
Tags: Sleep | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5563 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes  Speaks: English*, French | Message 9 of 27 03 August 2013 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'd be interested to hear a bit more about this system, as someone who (due to an erratic work schedule) alternates nights of minimal sleep with marathon lie-ins (although without any perceptible increase in productivity!) What would a typical week's sleep/wake schedule look like? Did you always get up at the same time? And how long is a "good solid nap"? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4626 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 10 of 27 04 August 2013 at 2:40am | IP Logged | |||||
I'd definitely recommend reading the Wozniak article if you haven't already done so. There is a heck of a lot of detail in there, but his basic principles seem to be: 1. The ideal sleep pattern would probably be to "sleep like a [traditional] farmer", probably rising fairly early, in bed fairly early, lots of physical exercise during the day. 2. But no.1 is not realistic in the modern world (we have and use electric light, for example). Use of electric light to artificially prolong the day isn't necessarily a bad thing, but should be used wisely. His ideal mode of sleep for people in the real world he would call free-running sleep. This basically means to go to sleep when you feel tired and allow yourself to wake up naturally. 3. Don't use an alarm clock. He's very firm about that. A healthy person who gets enough sleep should awaken naturally, and being awoken unnaturally is quite harmful. 4. The average human sleep cycle is greater than 24 hours, about 25 to 25.5 hours. This obviously means that we can easily get out of phase between our natural cycle and our work/school/etc schedule. However, there are some techniques one can use to try to get back in sync. 5. Most people (he would argue) are "bi-phasic", i.e. they sleep in two phases over the 24-25-5 hour cycle: A (normal) long-night sleep, and a much shorter "siesta", ideally timed to start around 7-8 hours after normal wakening time from the long sleep. This should also be natural, and not controlled by alarm clocks, etc. It could be typically 20 minutes to 2 hours, but it all depends on the individual. My guess is that Iversen in the period he describes had naturally developed his own bi- phasic system that suited him. The difficulty with napping at work would be finding somewhere where you can guarantee not to be disturbed, and also be comfortable. And if you follow the no-alarm-clock rule, there would be the danger of oversleeping, missing meetings, etc. I used to have a boss who seemed to take a short (maybe 15-20 minutes) nap at his desk around lunchtime. He'd just sit in his office chair with his legs stretched out on the desk. It didn't look very comfortable, but seemed to work for him. I used to be able to nap for 5 minutes or so in my office chair, sitting normally, and it was reasonably refreshing, but I doubt if it fitted properly in with Wozniak's guidelines. (It would not have been enough to properly make up for sleep deficit, I don't think). Anyway, I'd definitely suggest people read at least some of that article (it's quite long). 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4466 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 11 of 27 04 August 2013 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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All studies of sleep deprivation are based on ''experiments'' in people
who were staying wake just for the purpose of the ''experiment''. They were not people studying for exams in medical school and stuff like that. It's pretty easy to stay awake for 5 days/nights doing virtually nothing (listening to music, relaxing). (Trying to) stay awake for 5 days/nights while studying extensively is something completely different. Not only it puts a lot of stress on the person staying awake, but also compromises the learning process, so in the end, you don't learn/memorize more in 5*24 hours without sleep compared to 5 normal days (with minimal 5 hour sleep each night). In theory, only 2 hours a day are needed for normal sleep, (Dimaxion and Überman sleeping maximize the effectiveness of sleep by prioritizing NREM sleep over REM sleep), but make sure you take fast acting melatonin supplement in each cycle. (*) Dymaxion 2.0 h 8.33% Four 30-minute naps (every 6 hours). Überman 2.0 h 8.33% Six 20-minute naps (every 4 hours). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep#Comparison_of _sleep_patterns * because our pineal gland does not release melatonin during the day (even if you put yourself in a dark room), lack of melatonin is linked to immunodeficiency and cancer. Sleep deprivation is tricky because it can induce psychosis and psychotic phenomena (like out-of-body experience) in previously healthy people. Edited by Medulin on 04 August 2013 at 3:16pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4687 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 12 of 27 04 August 2013 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, Teango, that thread brought out the crazy! Although I stopped when I hit
this part: YES these psychic phenomena have been accounted many times and aren't really miraculous in anyway , They've been researched & even mastered by the US Government . The quantum holographic theory of the universe and the principles of Resonance & Non- locality pretty much explains how all of these phenomena occur , Glossolalia or Xenoglossia are also possible through the scientific theories of the Morphogenetic Universe that relates to collective memory and how any species have access to it all the time - 'cause the thread could only have gone downhill after that. In terms of real world sleep deprivation, I find it usually slows my learning process down significantly, especially with a new language. I even find that I have a harder time studying later in the evening - I just can't do the drills, or work my head around new grammar, or study vocabulary. I still do ok with reading, but it gets harder to actually learn anything new. When I write it's the opposite - I write much, much better papers when I'm up real late and jacked up on lots of coffee. For the OP, my guess is that you might do better to get a full night's sleep and eat right; in the long run I'd think you'd surpass those pulling manic all nighters. Also, lucky dog! Let us know how DLI goes, and what techniques they use. Have you been assigned a language yet? Edited by kanewai on 04 August 2013 at 9:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5564 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 13 of 27 05 August 2013 at 3:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh, wow. When I stay awake longer than my body expects me to - which is, it wants me to get 7-9 hours of sleep during a 22-26 hour period - I simply become very unproductive. Of course I can do brainless activities, even work as long as I don't actually need to think about what I am about to do, and I can take in new information as long as it's laid out in neat little packages for me - but my planning and metacognitive skills tend to be shut down on sleep deprivation. And I don't even care about it, because my mood skyrockets ... Edited by Bao on 05 August 2013 at 3:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4626 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 14 of 27 05 August 2013 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I used to regularly "pull an all nighter" at work, and be secretly proud of my "ability"
to do so. On very rare occasions it was genuinely necessary, but more often, I just did it because I wanted to. I enjoyed the fake "high" that you sometimes get in these situations. Then one day, I found I couldn't remember my main login password, and other vital information I needed to do my job. Quite a shock. (As well as feeling like death warmed up). It came back after some sleep, but that was a real warning. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4626 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 15 of 27 05 August 2013 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for reminding me of that thread. Without wishing to revive the slings and arrows of that outrageously interesting set of exchanges, it would be interesting to see an experiment based on a more reasonable sleep pattern, still reasonably intense, but with good attention paid to healthy diet and at least moderate exercise, as well as some interaction with real people. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6501 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 27 06 August 2013 at 11:49am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, it was a pattern I introduced in 1981 and used for several months without any kind of problems. I wrote a dissertation about correlative constructions in French, and somehow this project turned into a complete theory about subordinate clauses with or without finite verbs. And somewhere midways through the writing process I got the absolutely raving mad idea that I would take 10.000 pages and categorize and count ALL relevant constructions on those pages so that you would be able to see a frequency for each and every syntactical construction in French involving subordinates with conjunctions. And remember, this was in 1981 where I didn't have a computer yet so it was done by hand. I got my exam, and the results were put on the shelf never to be used again. But in the period where I made that monumental survey it was pretty clear that I needed to worked a little bit harder than normally possible, and then I slipped into the 36 hour cycle almost by accident - and discovered that it functioned perfectly well. It is well known from cave experiments that the 24 hour cycle isn't programmed into us as a 24 hour cycle - typically people have slighter longer cycles which are constantly adjusted downwards based on things like sunrise and working hours and TV schedules. And the result is that lots of os are 'owls' (Danish: B-mennesker) who tend to work late and wake up late if left to our own devices. But we aren't because of the evil 'larks' (A-mennesker) whose circadian rhythms fit the astronomical clock and who have organised society in a way that is deeply unnatural for us 'owls'. I don't really know much about the reactions of people with circadian rhythms of less than 24 hours, but maybe it is easier to extend one's internal day-and-night than it is to shorten it - maybe somebody know about research concerning that problem? Nevertheless, for me a 36 hour cycle with a nap of an hour or two worked fine, while others might prefer 28 or 32 hours. For those with shorter circadian cycles an 18 hour cycle with equally long naps and 'night sleeps' would obviously be better than the normal rhythm based on 24 hours. The only thing that can explain the tyranny of the 24 hour clock is of course the behaviour of the sun. But in the age of electricity this is basically irrelevant, and as I see it it is just inertia and stupidity and fixed working schedules that tie us all to a 24 hour rhythm. Well, and maybe the layout of our watches. Btw. I don't even own an alarm clock, and still I manage to wake up roughly around 5 or 6 o'clock each morning - and then again at 8 o'clock. But I would definitely be more comfortable AND more stable with a longer cycle, and I could also be more productive with such a scheme. Edited by Iversen on 06 August 2013 at 2:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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