Staying Awake - How do you do it?

[Deleted]

I love energy drinks in those occasions. Else, if you feel the need to sleep, then you should do so. Might raise your concentration and efficience.

[Nurabashi]

Water. Bright Room. Walk and stretch once in a while.

Don't need caffeine.

[xytech]

No, not fatty foods.

OP didn't just ask for advice, he asked how we do it. I like to prepare with some homemade pizza (freeze it) so I can just take a couple pieces in the micro whenever I get hungry.

[Jackmoves]

Caffeine pills always work.

[Danifilth]

When i have to stay awake i tend to eat more calories since its fuel and 1 energy drink not like kids drinking 5 of those then having a heart attack at the age of 15. And do something you like for example i like playing Sim games since it last more than 700 hours not like your usual 2 hour game for 190$. But if you end up getting bored you will fall asleep so keep your mind busy. If you stay awake for too long expect an accident to happen

[Sphinx]

Not sure but maybe play WoW thought the night?

[Afrospinach]

It amazes me that some people in my life function on 4-5 hours a sleep daily and are still more active than me.

It amazes me more on WoW expansion releases that people are capable of staying awake for over 100 hours.

Waking up after only 6 hours of sleep has me crashed the entire day, and I live an overly active life.

This is actually genetic, I forget the exact rate but something like 1-2% of people are mutants who only require 4-6 hours of sleep to be fully functional, the rest of us 7.5 or there abouts.

Don't need caffeine.

Agreed, caffeine always feels like borrowed time, and poor quality time at that. Protein shakes have been the thing to perk me up when I am tired.

[Korrawi]

I do that with lots of caffeine usually. Energy drinks/coffee, lots of it. But I need to sleep after the 36 h marathon. It will affect your work somewhat. Be extra careful not to mess up stuff, you should be fine if it does not involve anything dangerous.

[Akraen]

drink things that make you have to pee, you'll never fall asleep with that feeling all the time

Stephen Fry said on QI that this is how Native Americans set alarm clocks way back when-- drinking a quantity of water that would wake you up at X time.

[Marthenil]

My brain is being helpful enough to not need aid to stay awake. It turns into a quantum computer the moment I lie in bed calculating Graham digits.
Sometimes though, I do really need a kick and nothing beats a strong cup of black coffee.

[Zogarth]

Take naps. Just keep them under half on hour.

[Collegeguy]

Lifting weights will keep me awake. Also sex. Anything that increases your heart rate I guess.

[Ghostpanther]

It amazes me that some people in my life function on 4-5 hours a sleep daily and are still more active than me.

It amazes me more on WoW expansion releases that people are capable of staying awake for over 100 hours.

Waking up after only 6 hours of sleep has me crashed the entire day, and I live an overly active life.

What amazes me is people being stupid enough to lose sleep over some dumb video game. Getting the correct amount ( for most, 8 hrs a day. ) of sleep is extremely important for a healthy life. It is not worth the risk to your health to lose sleep, even for a job. Too many horror stories of people falling asleep at the wheel of a car, truck. A recent train wreck in the US was caused by the engineer falling asleep.

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Lifting weights will keep me awake. Also sex. Anything that increases your heart rate I guess.

Those two have always made me sleepy afterwards. Work out well or work hard outside on a job and sit down on the couch. I can fall asleep very fast.

[Gheld]

Hello Guise! I'm a students apprentice at this welding company that I started at 2 days ago.
I need to do something about my sleeping pattern, so I decided to stay awake all night, go to "Work" and remain awake until tomorrow night.

I need a couple of tips to staying awake that doesn't include taking walks and drinking coffee, I'm already doing these two.
Please, gimme all you have. I need it.

*Also for the curiosity of me, so, how do you do it?*

Shouldn't you wait for the weekend and do it on the weekend so that you aren't working while sleep deprived?

[Drusin]

Handstand Push-Ups.

[Deleted]

You know, there are illegal drugs that will keep you awake for a whole week.

Anyway, staying awake for just 24 hours is easy even without coffee or any other help. The longest I've been awake without any help is 3 days, but I don't suggest working under such conditions. But seriously what's the big deal with skipping just one night of sleep? It's nothing special if you ask me.

[Bender]

If I'm performing some sort of activity I just keep doing it, I don't fall asleep while playing computer games or similar tasks. When reading or listening to a lecture at uni for example it's a much more difficult task, I pretty much have no tips for that. My advice is to not be sleep deprived, which is vastly underestimated. Get to bed early and get up early and ensure you get all the sleep you need (ideally you should wake up on your own a couple of minutes before the alarm goes off). The amount of energy I have after switching to this lifestyle compared to how it was before is absolutely insane, I would never go back now.

[Deleted]

Well my cousin used to pop 4-5 painkillers into about 3dl of water (the kind that dissolves in water). Then he would mix that water with a few cans of energy drinks. Then he would sit and sip on it for the entire LAN party : / My cousin was fairly weird.

He used to say: "Den här skiten grabbar, den blir man jävligt pigg av."

[Sengiratolom]

Longest i've been awake in 1 sitting was 68 hours, was @ a lan party and we tried to break the (then) record of 72h of gaming, drank like 12 red bull in that time period, after that i fell asleep against some pillar next to my chair, only to wake up 30min later. Deceided it was enough sleep deprevation, shut the pc down and went to bed. Felt like a zombie the next morning.

staying up 1 night is fine, but when you go beyond 48h you are just harming yourself.

[Deleted]

Always eat at roughly the same time, make sure your sleep is as beneficial to you as possible, have at least a somewhat healthy diet, and supplement vitamin D, as you're most likely getting way too little of it.

Also, try to do something you're interested in. If you're doing some monotonous robotic menial irrelevant shit work, you'll fall asleep, no matter what.

I go to bed at like 01:00-02:00 because of the asshole teen couple living next door, and I wake up at 07:00, so that's 5-6 hours of sleep for me on weekdays. Then I'm usually drunk off my ass both Friday and Saturday, which leads to me sleeping most of Sunday. However, I'm finding waking up relatively easy, although I sometimes snooze for 10 minutes like 1-3 times. During the day I'm usually quite fresh and awake. My diet isn't the most healthy out there, but I try to stay away from wheat, rice, pasta and shit like that, and eat plenty of stuff like vegetables, fruit, yogurt and so on. Works for me.

I think one of the most important things would be as I said before; make sure your sleep is beneficial to you. That means making sure you and your surroundings are ready for sleep. There's like 20 different things to check off a list to ensure you get a good night's sleep, and that might be the problem for you. You can sleep for 12 hours and it won't help you at all, if you're doing it wrong (usually though, sleeping 12 hours IS doing it wrong.)

Anyways, that's just general stuff about how to get most out of your sleep and as such stay awake. Since you're already trying to stay awake for a longer period, you're going to have to rely on some crutches. Do something interesting, drink energy drinks and/or coffee, take showers but don't go lie down on a couch afterwards, go for a walk but not too tiring a walk, and so on.