The first piece of advice today is don’t pull all-nighters. Seriously. Don’t do it. I’ve done it, and 0/10 would not recommend. Your brain will not recover from the impact of sleep deficit, and there is no deadline that is worth your health. As a general rule, managing your time well will allow you to meet your deadlines without sacrificing sleep (and yes, sometimes this means turning off the TV or computer or phone, putting the controller down, or not going to whatever social thing is going on).
However, if you must go sleep-deprived here and there, there are better ways to do it. You don’t want to interrupt a REM cycle, for instance, which will leave you groggy and slow. You want to allow for 5-10 minutes at the beginning for falling asleep. And when the alarm goes off, you have to get up—hitting snooze repeatedly only worsens your quality of sleep. Napping between 1pm-4pm is ideal. For late night snoozes, try taking the NASA nap (26 minutes at most) periodically. You can also have a tea or coffee before your nap, so that when you wake up the caffeine has already hit your system.
Some sleep cycle apps to aid in figuring out when to go to bed and wake up include websites like Sleepyti.me, or apps like Pillow or Digipill to help you sleep. If you’re into biohacking, you can also check out certain binaural beats or ASMR to help you get into a sleepy or wakeful state more quickly.
