But late at night there are no congested areas.

What do I do.

Wait. What the hell semck youre in the US too.

When are you going to sleep?

Well, usually they're still congested enough that at 95 they're exciting. (During the day, 95 is just infeasible.)
These days, I'm usually turning in about 6 am. It's my natural schedule, or as close to it as I can get and still meet what duties are expected of me. Yourself?

(I say usually, but you're right that it depends on the city. Some cities are lame and turn in early).

what's wrong with sleep? i say if you can, go for it! i haven't been able to sleep reasonably ever since i was a baby... throughout my childhood... and it's still going strong. it's really about what's interesting to you. do you care about going to work, or whatever you do? do you love getting into work in the morning and meeting your coworkers? do you go to a coffee shop in the morning and enjoy that? it's the little things in life that keeps people sleeping regular hours. i unfortunately don't care about any of that. so work on your apathy, and you'll be well on your way to this luxurious lifestyle.

It will take a few months of gettting used to, but studies has been done to see how people would react to an alternative pattern of sleep, based on the story Da Vinci slept 20 minutes every 4 hours instead of 8 hour/24hours.
Some people got totaly mad, others found it to be perfect, so maybe your from the second group of people.

24/4= 6 6x0,33 = 2. You could do with 2 hours sleep a day.

If you blow your brains out with a semi-automatic you'll never fall asleep again.

there are some suggestions of operating on a 28 hour day. 20 hours up, 8 hours sleep.

This gives you a full 8 hours sleep while also giving you more time each day awake (but only 6 days per week)

I'm not sure how conducive your six day week (including a two day weekend, naturally) would be with schools and employers. Some may frown on your schedule.

I can say with confidence that:
a) I know more about and understand the reasons for sleep that people looking to extend their day take for granted.
b) Trying to cheat your body's need for 6 to 9 hours of unadulterated sleep in a long term capacity can ruin your life.
c) Sleep is not a bank. You're not "okay" when you put in twelve hours on the weekends and five during the weekday.

28 hour day http://www.dbeat.com/28/images/chart3.gif

this is an idea of how (using flexi-time) you can work vaguely useful hours, depending on how flexible your employer...

or perhaps this picture is better: http://xkcd.com/320/

I got beat by Geo. You can't "catch up" nor "bank" sleep.
The only way to go without sleep is death.

If you -can't- get to sleep, talk to a doctor. They can prescribe non-narcotic, non-dependent inducing meds that will help you fall asleep. There is also OTC supplements called 'melatonin.' I'm not a fan of supplements, but this was suggested by 4 med docs for me and my son (who are both prescribed stimulants and can be up till 2am every night). Take it about 1 hour before you plan on going to sleep. Melatonin is what your body releases in the blood stream when the sun goes down to start triggering sleep. Some people need a single pill, some need 4 a night. Start with one for a week, if that doesn't help, add another pill.

melatonin is available as a food supplement in the US, but not in Europe (or most of it, banned in germany i think, but simply not for sale in Ireland) I get my supply imported...

How and ever, i've heard tell that you can include in your diet a good source of Tryptophan, which the body can use to make melatonin - this would be useful if your natural levels aren't high enough to help you sleep.

Melatonin is useful if you are suffering from jet-lag, and you want to reset your natural cycle to the day/night cycle you are in (or if your natural cycle is off for some other reason...)

If you require sleep, turn on your TV and Watch Doctor Who, the X Factor or any live Basketball game...

I had a friend operating on this 28 hour day. He ended up at psychologist's after 5 weeks. If you are OK with losing all regularity in your life then go for it. Used to drink a few beers on friday evening? You're probably sleeping. Used to go to gym with friends? They can't go anymore, they're in school/work (you can probably catch them once per week when you synchronize with the outside world). Had a girlfriend? Better find a long-distance relation. It might work if you're a solitary person who can psychically live only from internet (or another source of fun/info/etc. that exists outside your local time), otherwise you're in constant pressure between what you want to do in the outside world and what your shifted biological clock and schedule dictates you to do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTcXGe93Y1Q

"if you can"

yeah Geofram is clearly correct. I'm not actually looking to stop sleeping a healthy amount for any long period.

Just kind of like this week.

Today I slept 7 to 10AM and had a 5hr energy.

What is the effect of working out on fatigue?

I can tell you that working out when you are sick makes you worse... so I'm assuming it is the same with working out without sleep.

I think your body would appreciate a nap instead of a workout.

You need to power through a week? I can help you with that!

Rule #1: NEVER operate a vehicle after not having enough sleep. Seriously. You may feel fine, but as soon as you start driving, you WILL fall asleep and kill yourself or someone else. So, don't do it.

Rule #2: No fooling around! If you're staying up all week, it's because you have something to do. So, if you aren't working on that, doing something to reenergize yourself, or sleeping, STOP IT! That means no webdiplomacy.

Rule #3: Ask yourself, is this really necessary? Can you sleep and get it done? If so, do that instead.

So, here are my suggestions:

1) Sleep as much as you can. Can't work for some reason? Sleep. Even if it's only for 5 minutes.

2) Never be alone. It's easy to fall asleep or hurt yourself if you're alone. Can't be with someone? Listen to bad music (Rebecca Black) loudly.

3) Take a lot of cold showers. Don't stay in there long, or you'll defeat the purpose of staying awake to gain time. But, when you find you really can't stay awake, dive in for a 5 min unheated shower.

4) Eat often. Don't eat much at one time; you don't want to become full and tired. Just enough to keep tricking your body into thinking the days started because you're eating.

5) Stay away from drugs as long as possible. You're body is already sad because you won't sleep, adding things like caffeine will just make it worse. As you get further into your own personal hell, you won't be able to handle the crashes either. Try to save drugs for the 11th hour.

Good Luck! : )

@abgemacht's 5th point
if you have no moral qualms, you can bs ADD to the doctor and get an amphetamine. pretend you don't have insurance and need to get the cheapest drugs available. cause the cheapest ones are usually the non-time-release capsules. then pop a few of those. good to go!

Are you kidding? A doctor?

Walk down any dorm room and offer one of the countless over diagnosed ADD kids $20 for a couple pills.

yeah i guess that's an option. just make sure it's not one of those time-released ones. that's the key. without time-release, you really get more fine-grained control over your sleep deprivation.

abge is correct about dorm kids. lol. but i wont be doing that.

however i dunno about your caffeine point.

what i love most about caffeine is how *effective* and motivated it makes me, not the preventing sleep part. So having it when i'm already exhausted is mostly a waste, it's when i'm just middling that its good - it turns me into a god.

but yeah. good advice abge - i wont be staying up THAT much though. have you really stayed up a week before?

Yes. I went a week with a max of 2 hours of sleep per day before my senior design project was due.

I have ADD. The extended release work a hell of a lot better for me (I'm actually on both).

Also keep in mind that the more sleep you lose, the worse you will be. If you are doing it for a project, it won't be of a decent quality when you are done. If you are doing it to study, you won't remember most of it.

When I manage a project, I fight hand, foot, and tooth to make sure none of my reports has to work a minute over 8 hours each day. Why? Burnout. It happens quickly, and those burnt out don't recognize the signs until they are ready to blow. Figure out a way to do it with sleep, and drop some shit out of your life that is causing this. You are doing too much.

In general, I agree with you 100%. But, sometimes, despite your best effort, you just run out of time.

While I've pulled the literal double shift working to get a project out the door (did just last week, wrapping up coding, getting a shower, and heading on into work), I find my code quality starts to dwindle after about 12 or 13 hours. I start doing lazy shit, not using classes and methods in libraries for code I could easily resuse, and making stupid mistakes. Not just typos, but logical mistakes like grabbing the wrong field out of a database. I try to keep those extreme days to a minimum so my rework is kept to a minimum too. And I always try to get 6 hours sleep most evenings, 8 if I can afford it.

@FK - dropping some shit out of my life isn't an option. The only things to drop would be the things I enjoy. *But* fidning ways to push those things to the weekend *is* an option. Poker? Saturday evening. Woodworking projects? Saturday and Sunday afternoon. I mostly watch TV, play SWTOR and hang out here at night if I don't have coding to do, and am always falling asleep around 10 PM if I'm watchin TV, so I take advantage of those evenings to go to bed a little early and get the full 8+.