Being a generalist requires more sleep than specialists

http://andymckenzie.blogspot.com/2010/09/trade-off-10-plasticity-vs.html

by ruang • 16 years ago

79 28 16 years ago

andymckenzie.blogspot.com

ruang2• 16 years ago

The whole "tradeoff" series of this blog in general is really good for decision making.

It includes:

Some now vs More later

Random vs Determined

Proximity vs Scale

Training vs Battling

Loyalty vs Universality

Sure Bet vs Shot in the Dark

Switching Costs vs Change Gains

Offense vs Defense

*Efficiency vs Predicatability

kiba• 16 years ago

His blog is definitely a treasure trove of insights but I fear the principles that he confer in his blog will be lost to the sea of information that I digest daily.

This is something that I am aware for some time now. I have no coherent modeling system and my knowledge are organized very ad hoc. Some economic insight here and there, stories, evidences, etc. It's not very systematic at all.

lionhearted2• 16 years ago

> I fear the principles that he confer in his blog will be lost to the sea of information that I digest daily. ... I have no coherent modeling system and my knowledge are organized very ad hoc.

You might consider creating a file or note for every major project, campaign, or life goal you have. Then when you see something relevant to that, you copy/paste it in or make a note.

There's ideas I've done that would have been totally gone if I didn't have loose thoughts sketched into a file on them. It takes a bit of work to set up, but it's actually surprisingly easy and natural to update throughout the day.

Edit: I took a screenshot and uploaded it to Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sebastmarsh/5028168457/lightbox - that file was built out and iterated over five months, so definitely start smaller and let things expand. Feel free to email me if do something like this and have any questions on getting set up.

mortenjorck• 16 years ago

This is how I am. The way I see it, knowledge will always exist somewhere in your multidimensional conceptual space, so as long as you keep adding more with some degree of diversity, it will eventually start to form clouds, clusters, and networks. My sense is that the problem will tend to solve itself over time.

ruang2• 16 years ago

I use Microsoft OneNote to keep track of interesting things I read.

dochtman• 16 years ago

Title doesn't really reflect the contents of the article that well...

felideon• 16 years ago

You need to re-read the article, slowly. The title actually helped me understand the article.

dbingham3• 16 years ago

I definitely fall into the generalist category. Just in working on my startup I have to write code in two different languages, write markup, do design (completely different from the code), do marketing/networking type stuff (further different from either the design or the coding) and enter recipes (which means reading and parsing them - further different).

When not working on the startup I get bored if I don't get enough variety from my activities. If I'm doing too much liberal arts type work - such as when I teach, then I crave code. When I was coding all day at my day job, I got home and just wanted to read, cook or garden.

I typically need 9 to 10 hours of sleep a night. I'll take more if I can get it. I can operate on 7 with lots of caffeine. Much less than that and I'm non-functional.

My girlfriend, who only needs 6 hours of sleep a night (sometimes less), often gives me crap for being such a log. Especially when she wakes up a solid 2 hours before I do and spends the morning bored. But now I can give her a reason: I'm a generalist!

gjm114• 16 years ago

Interesting, but the article actually says hardly anything about sleep, and "generalists" here means "organisms with the ability to change in response to their environment". There's not the slightest suggestion that human beings who are more "generalist" need more sleep than ones who are "specialist" in any normal sense.

Incidentally, sloths and armadillos sleep for about 20 hours a day. Are they generalists?

city41• 16 years ago

My cat must be the king of generality.

DougBTX2• 16 years ago

Thanks. I found the article much more interesting than the title suggested.

scott_s2• 16 years ago

If A -> B, it's not necessarily true that B -> A. (A = generalist, B = sleeps a lot.)

gjm114• 16 years ago

On the other hand, if B is "sleeps more" (which was, after all, the claim in the subject line here) then A -> B and B -> A are pretty much the same thing, except that the meaning of B -> A is a little unclear.

dbingham3• 16 years ago

It says it right here:

"Synaptic pruning and other mechanisms for synaptic plasticity allow for learning and memory, but they are energetically costly. Indeed, one hypothesis holds that sleep is the price we have to pay for plasticity the previous day. (see here)"

"Synaptic pruning and other mechanisms for synaptic plasticity" -- Being a generalist.

"...they are energetically costly. Indeed, one hypothesis holds that sleep is the price we have to pay for plasticity the previous day." -- Requires more sleep.

Here's the wikipedia article on Neuroplasticity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

It is the process of changing your brain. When neurons fire together they wire together, forming a neural pathway. When they fire apart, they wire apart. So if you're doing one thing - programming requiring high amounts of logic, for instance - a certain bunch of neurons fire together. They start forming a pathway. If you then go do something else in the same day, requiring a different bunch of neurons to fire, say play an instrument or write a fiction story, you'll start forming a different neural pathway. If some of the neurons overlap, but not all, you might end up beginning to break down the pathway you were building earlier in the day.

All of these activities require more energy than simply continuing to use the same series of pathways you built earlier in the day.

onefortwo• 16 years ago

While specialists count sheep to get sleep generalist try to build a framework for selling those sheep, so they have a lot more work to do while sleeping.

Being a generalist requires more sleep than specialists

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