I used to think sleeping is a waste of time, but sleeping is just as productive and important as we do throughout the day.

If you are going to be successful, you got be willing to give up sleep. -Eric Thomas, from his speech

I watched this video while I was in school, and really thought he was right. I slept only 2 hours before our final match in RoboCup, but lose by mis-spelling a variable in our python script and our robots just hangs because the python runtime keeps throwing exception because of undefine variable. It was largely because I was too sleepy that day.

TL;DR, notes on this video

Why sleep is important

notebook (temporal storage) - hippocampus

There are 3 different types of sleep:

  • REM: making connections between different information, it’s when all the bi-directional connection happens
  • LIGHT: before wake up, helps clean up space for short-term memory
  • DEEP: happen right after we fall asleep, helps turn short-term memory into long-term memory

so we just can’t sleep too late, neither wake up too early, because

  • Sleep too late, missing DEEP sleep, not properly storing the hard-earned notes that collected that day
  • Wake up too early, no room for new info

In short:

  • DEEP => Save info
  • LIGHT => Make space for new info
  • REM => Understand info

How do we sleep better

  1. body needs to drop temperature, so sleep in a cool environment
  2. take a hot shower 2 hours before sleep
  3. get as much light safely in the morning in the day, because when light hits our eyeball, there are certain chemical reactions, that kinda resets our circadian rhythm