I once had the opportunity to just sleep as long as I needed … as in no alarms or anything … for an extended period of time (a few months).
I pretty quickly settled into a rhythm, which was surprising as I’m the kind that likes to stay up late and have always struggled with that. And I found that my preferred sleeping duration is around 9 hours. Also, sleep is nicer when you don’t have to worry about sleeping in or not getting enough sleep … the whole rhythm seemed to be much more stable if the essential task — resting etc — is reliably achieved.
It also, I suspect, revealed why my sleep rhythm has always been off. My natural sleeping time and sleep length didn’t seem to align at all with typical working times. It seemed I naturally wanted to wake sleep from around 1-2am and wake at around 10-11am. Other factors, of course, may have been behind that … but it seemed pretty obvious why I’d always had troubles … 8-9am starts were always putting me off balance while I was never giving myself the chance to get 9hrs sleep.
I’m the same. If I abandon societal norms and work commitments, and let my body adjust to its preferred cycle, I sleep 9 hours, 1am till 10am.
I think that’s pretty common, but not useful when I work every day 8.30am till 5.30pm. It means I wake up every day tired, even if I went to bed at 9pm.
Yea. I’ve always figured that from an evolutionary standpoint it made some decent sense that you’d people to have slight but meaningful differences in their preferred sleeping patterns. That way you have in the tribe or group at least one person who’s alert and energetic at nearly all times or at least can be if necessary. And even today, many jobs require wakefulness outside of the ordinary office hours. But, IME, you can see the toxicity of the “early riser” culture by how much it can pervade even in these relatively abnormal work contexts.
This has never not been an issue for me, and I’m absolutely convinced it’s because I’m forcing myself to conform to other people’s sleep schedule. During Covid I was able to WFH - not commuting, putting on makeup, and getting my clothes together saved me a couple of hours. It made a world of difference & I miss it every day.
I suspect a massive amount of people have Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder but have been societally forced into “normal” schedules and never got diagnosed. And then they’re just tired all the damn time.
That makes sense. But if it’s the case that artificialities of modern life (light, indoor work etc) are major factors that also happen to affect people in different ways, either due to their biological inclinations or other personal factors, it still becomes an attribute in which people effectively vary and we can either force everyone into one box along with the costs or work around variation.
For me (WFH for over a decade), my perfect sleep time is 6 or 7.5h 95% of the time. I used to sleep 8h, and it was just too much, which I only found out after reducing my sleeping hours. Sometimes I don’t need an alarm (I tend to realize then when I needed 6h instead of 7.5h and my body corrects me), but it helps. 9h is left for extreme exhaustion (e.g. after returning from a festival).
I usually wake up between 4-5am, start working, and take a break later again.
I once had the opportunity to just sleep as long as I needed … as in no alarms or anything … for an extended period of time (a few months).
I pretty quickly settled into a rhythm, which was surprising as I’m the kind that likes to stay up late and have always struggled with that. And I found that my preferred sleeping duration is around 9 hours. Also, sleep is nicer when you don’t have to worry about sleeping in or not getting enough sleep … the whole rhythm seemed to be much more stable if the essential task — resting etc — is reliably achieved.
It also, I suspect, revealed why my sleep rhythm has always been off. My natural sleeping time and sleep length didn’t seem to align at all with typical working times. It seemed I naturally wanted to wake sleep from around 1-2am and wake at around 10-11am. Other factors, of course, may have been behind that … but it seemed pretty obvious why I’d always had troubles … 8-9am starts were always putting me off balance while I was never giving myself the chance to get 9hrs sleep.
I’m the same. If I abandon societal norms and work commitments, and let my body adjust to its preferred cycle, I sleep 9 hours, 1am till 10am. I think that’s pretty common, but not useful when I work every day 8.30am till 5.30pm. It means I wake up every day tired, even if I went to bed at 9pm.
Yea. I’ve always figured that from an evolutionary standpoint it made some decent sense that you’d people to have slight but meaningful differences in their preferred sleeping patterns. That way you have in the tribe or group at least one person who’s alert and energetic at nearly all times or at least can be if necessary. And even today, many jobs require wakefulness outside of the ordinary office hours. But, IME, you can see the toxicity of the “early riser” culture by how much it can pervade even in these relatively abnormal work contexts.
This has never not been an issue for me, and I’m absolutely convinced it’s because I’m forcing myself to conform to other people’s sleep schedule. During Covid I was able to WFH - not commuting, putting on makeup, and getting my clothes together saved me a couple of hours. It made a world of difference & I miss it every day.
I suspect a massive amount of people have Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder but have been societally forced into “normal” schedules and never got diagnosed. And then they’re just tired all the damn time.
That makes sense. But if it’s the case that artificialities of modern life (light, indoor work etc) are major factors that also happen to affect people in different ways, either due to their biological inclinations or other personal factors, it still becomes an attribute in which people effectively vary and we can either force everyone into one box along with the costs or work around variation.
For me (WFH for over a decade), my perfect sleep time is 6 or 7.5h 95% of the time. I used to sleep 8h, and it was just too much, which I only found out after reducing my sleeping hours. Sometimes I don’t need an alarm (I tend to realize then when I needed 6h instead of 7.5h and my body corrects me), but it helps. 9h is left for extreme exhaustion (e.g. after returning from a festival).
I usually wake up between 4-5am, start working, and take a break later again.
Yeah yeah, we all lived through the pandemic too, you aren’t special :-P
It wasn’t during the pandemic.