There’s also a sort of akrasia which is physically based—if I eat too much refined carbs, I can get a day or two of doing very little while thinking “I don’t care, I don’t care”. It looks like a psychological problem, but is really well corelated with the carbs.
After reading Stuart Sutherland’s “Irrationality”, I’m starting to think I should discard altogether my impressions of what makes the difference between good and bad days in favour of a notebook and a real regression analysis. Is that what you’re doing? If so, what is the correlation?
Be careful about your temporal order here: it’s possible that when you feel a bad mood coming on, you respond by then eating more sugary food in order to try and fight the unhappiness off.
Messing up the order of this particular problem is a mistake I’ve made myself.
Be careful about your temporal order here: it’s possible that when you feel a bad mood coming on, you respond by then eating more sugary food in order to try and fight the unhappiness off.
Messing up the order of this particular problem is a mistake I’ve made myself.
Oddly, I’m sort of the opposite. If I’m too well-rested, I have trouble concentrating. I seem to function best when I’m slightly sleep-deprived, but I frequently overcompensate and end up sleep-depped enough that the loss of sharpness outweighs the (flat) concentration gain.
Have you considered poly-phasic sleep schedules? You’ll not be getting much sleep overall, so shouldn’t get super well rested, but frequent sleep should keep you out of the danger zone.
I would really like to try out polyphasic sleep, but it’s not compatible with my work schedule. I would have tried it when I was in college, but classes presented the same problem. If I’m ever in a position where I’m working for myself, though, it’s definitely something I’m planning to experiment with.
For about a year I adopted a schedule in which I slept 4 hours one night and 10 hours the next. It was convenient, and I got the nice sleep-dep focus you describe every other day. I stopped because I developed emotional instability, but I’m pretty sure the sleep schedule wasn’t the sole cause of that.
This happens to me, too, any time I mess up my blood sugar, and often for several days at a time as you describe. But I’m also diabetic, so I would think that this response (particularly the magnitude and duration of it) would be atypical. How much carbohydrate does it take for this to happen? If you get this effect with less than 100g, you ought to perform a glucose tolerance test on yourself.
There’s also a sort of akrasia which is physically based—if I eat too much refined carbs, I can get a day or two of doing very little while thinking “I don’t care, I don’t care”. It looks like a psychological problem, but is really well corelated with the carbs.
After reading Stuart Sutherland’s “Irrationality”, I’m starting to think I should discard altogether my impressions of what makes the difference between good and bad days in favour of a notebook and a real regression analysis. Is that what you’re doing? If so, what is the correlation?
The way I talked about it implied more precision than I’ve actually got.
The “I don’t care” internal monologue only seems to happen after sugar overdose, but I haven’t been keeping records.
Be careful about your temporal order here: it’s possible that when you feel a bad mood coming on, you respond by then eating more sugary food in order to try and fight the unhappiness off.
Messing up the order of this particular problem is a mistake I’ve made myself.
Be careful about your temporal order here: it’s possible that when you feel a bad mood coming on, you respond by then eating more sugary food in order to try and fight the unhappiness off.
Messing up the order of this particular problem is a mistake I’ve made myself.
I agree; that’s what I meant by the “wetware akrasia” footnote linked to the post about glucose.
Same thing for me with being tired.
Oddly, I’m sort of the opposite. If I’m too well-rested, I have trouble concentrating. I seem to function best when I’m slightly sleep-deprived, but I frequently overcompensate and end up sleep-depped enough that the loss of sharpness outweighs the (flat) concentration gain.
Have you considered poly-phasic sleep schedules? You’ll not be getting much sleep overall, so shouldn’t get super well rested, but frequent sleep should keep you out of the danger zone.
I would really like to try out polyphasic sleep, but it’s not compatible with my work schedule. I would have tried it when I was in college, but classes presented the same problem. If I’m ever in a position where I’m working for myself, though, it’s definitely something I’m planning to experiment with.
For about a year I adopted a schedule in which I slept 4 hours one night and 10 hours the next. It was convenient, and I got the nice sleep-dep focus you describe every other day. I stopped because I developed emotional instability, but I’m pretty sure the sleep schedule wasn’t the sole cause of that.
This happens to me, too, any time I mess up my blood sugar, and often for several days at a time as you describe. But I’m also diabetic, so I would think that this response (particularly the magnitude and duration of it) would be atypical. How much carbohydrate does it take for this to happen? If you get this effect with less than 100g, you ought to perform a glucose tolerance test on yourself.