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Personal Growth Series: Dr. William Dement on Healthy Sleep and Optimal Perfo...

56 videos recommended on HN
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6 HN users recommended this talk9 months2008–2024 score 10.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN has recommended it for years as the most useful and entertaining talk on sleep, often to people struggling with tiredness or productivity.

A Google Tech Talk by sleep researcher Dr. William Dement on healthy sleep and performance. He argues sleep debt must be repaid and describes the three characteristics of healthy sleep.

“The source of information about this that I have found most useful is an hour long talk given by Dr. William Dement” (HN, 2022)

3 strong recommendations · 6 recommendations · 3 citations · Talks

12 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@Deadsunrise Nov 2008 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Prolonged Partial Sleep Deprivation for a Job (The worst year of my life [so far])
I don't have any sleep disorder and never really paid much attention to the duration of my sleep or the time to go to bed. After watching this video [this video] ( Dr. William Dement on Healthy Sleep and Optimal Perfomance ) I'm going to bed at 11 and waking at 7 with excelent results.
Talk on healthy sleep that changed commenter's sleep habits.
@m0llusk Jul 2022 Strongly recommends
on HN thread The effects of sleep debt
The source of information about this that I have found most useful is an hour long talk given by Dr. William Dement at Google Tech Talks called Healthy Sleep and Optimal Performance: [this video]
Hour-long talk, most useful source on sleep found.
@bd Jan 2009 Recommends
on HN thread Lack of sleep 'raises cold risk'
I remember awesome Google Tech Talk about sleep that mentioned sleep debt requiring full repayment. Dr. William Dement on "Healthy Sleep and Optimal Perfomance" [this video] It was linked from an older HN sleep thread: [link]
Sleep debt requires full repayment.
@seanb Jul 2010 Recommends
on HN thread Ask HN: Please, help me understand what I am doing wrong.
Getting enough sleep? Definitely worth a watch: [this video] Personally, I found that taking a full-time programming job destroyed my out-of-office motivation and productivity. It might be worth trying a job in a new industry for a while, or working out some sort of part-time agreement with your employer -- you might find your brain itching to code and produce something after work hours.
Sleep talk relevant to productivity.
@m0llusk Oct 2022 Recommends
on HN thread Finding the Joy in Feeling Tired
Lauded Stanford sleep researcher William Dement has done a lot of work to characterize fatigue and drowsiness. Generally speaking his conclusion is that sleep debt is extremely common and also damaging. He gave an hour talk at Google going over many of his results. His manner in this is informal and drags a bit but the information is potentially extremely valuable for anyone experiencing the feeling of tiredness: [this video] Personal Growth Series: Dr. William Dement on Healthy Sleep and Optimal Performance
Dement's findings on sleep debt, informal but valuable.
@m0llusk Nov 2024 Recommends
on HN thread Engineering Sleep
Kind of tangential, but some time ago now passed famous sleep researcher William Dement gave a presentation at Google TechTalks about healthy sleep and optimal performance that is a good overall review of what we know about sleep: [this video]
Good overall review of what is known about sleep.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@watwut May 2014 Cites it
on HN thread Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation
Related google tech talk: [this video] Somewhere in the middle he describes experiments they made with sleep. Essentially, they took a person, made them sleep a lot and then measured performance difference. Performance went up. Sleep a lot meant sleep enough to recover from sleep dept and then around 8 hours every night.
Sleep experiments show performance rises after recovering sleep debt.
@smartbit May 2017 Cites it
on HN thread How to Sleep
William Dement gave a Google Tech talk on September 23, 2008. Dement recalls that Randy Gardner who stayed awake for 11 days in 1964, when asked some 40years later " would you do this again? " he replied " No way would I do this again " [0] Very interesting from Dement's talk is that equilibrium daily average sleep for completely health young adults is 8:15 ± 50min [1]. Most people I meet contest these results and state that they can work optimal with less than 7h25m daily sleep. [0] [this video] [1] [this video]
Equilibrium sleep for healthy young adults is about 8:15.
@olau Sep 2017 Cites it
on HN thread Benefits of Napping in Healthy Adults (2009) [pdf]
Managed to find this talk I watched many years ago on Google Video: [this video] IIRC, the professor explained that if you fall asleep faster than around 10-15 minutes, you're probably sleep deprived and need to sleep more.
Falling asleep within 10-15 minutes suggests sleep deprivation.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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