16 ms·

28h Days: year 1 update

198 points by HAMSHAMA 2y ago

xedrac 2y ago
This flies in the face of circadean rhythm research. I know the human body is extremely adaptable, but imagine making every single day a jet-lagged day. My younger self may have been able to tolerate it well enough, but there's no way I'd come out unscathed now.
- ty6853 2y ago
  I have tried on occasion to work night shift. It is OK for a few weeks but within months I reach extreme exhaustion falling asleep while operating dangerous machinery, despite sleeping during the day. I experienced a similar phenomenon working on a fishing boat where I simply never adapted to sea sickness and after weeks of throwing up almost all food and fluids it took months to crawl back to activity and recover including the pneumonia induced from my immune system and homeostasis being beat down. Human body can be really bad at adapting to unworldly environments to the point you totally break down.
- pcthrowaway 2y ago
  You must not be aware of the research on Non-24[1] (or "Non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder") which OP seems to have (though perhaps they also aren't aware this is a thing). Not saying non-24 is good for you, but for people unable to follow a 24-hour schedule, free-running sleep (which is what OP is doing) is vastly better than constantly pushing through sleep deprivation, when one's schedule allows for it. Speaking as someone with non-24 myself (which is much more severe in the winter) edit: after reading more closely, it appears OP has entrained to a 28-hour day rather than doing free-running sleep; 28-hour days are convenient in that the week gets sliced into 6 days and allows for a consistent weekly schedule. However, I suspect OP actually naturally gravitates towards a shorter day like 26 or 27 hours based on their napping patterns. I also wonder if they might even have more success with 24-hour days and regular exercise, as from their description it almost seems like the daily exercise practice which they started after the 28-hour day might be regulating their circadian rhythm to be closer to a natural day. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake...
  - niz4ts 2y ago
    I did free-running sleep for a while (I mention this in the original 28h day post), but decided on 28h days to weekly match other people's schedules. I exercised regularly before 28h days, and my sleep was still chaotic with that. I didn't exercise daily though, it was hard to fit everything I wanted to do on a 24h day. Having longer days means I can fit more things, which I think is one of the reasons why I increased the amount of exercise after moving to 28h. I also haven't read any research on this, I just did what felt more natural and logical to me.
  - scrollaway 2y ago
    I miss being able to do free-running sleep. I remember so many people in my life being skeptical about my claim that I naturally have longer days than 24h. Then ~6 years ago I actually tested it; my watch recorded my sleep, and it became obvious: https://photos.app.goo.gl/rTh2vkEMPEiJXx5Y7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/rTh2vkEMPEiJXx5Y7 [time-asleep graphed on a daily 24h chart] And only then did I learn what a non-24 was.
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  I doubt your assertion about circadian rhythm research, largely because of the cave experiments that show that people naturally assume non-24 hour days when removed from sunlight and social cues.
  - wbl 2y ago
    The melatonin response to sunlight shortens the cycle so the oscillator runs long without it. It wouldn't work well the other way.
  - aaron695 2y ago
    [dead]
  - silversmith 2y ago
    So, in other words, get more sunlight?
  - energy123 2y ago
    > I doubt your assertion about circadian rhythm research You seem oblivious to the decades of research into chronobiology and studies into shift work, jet lag, etc. Your loss.
- xyzzy_plugh 2y ago
  I did 36-hour days (awake for 24, asleep for 12) for a long time and it was fine. I'm unable to do so now, due to other obligations, but I still think it worked better for me than a 24-hour day. Even today I inevitably stay up all night, getting at most 1-4 hours of sleep, 2-3 times per week. I don't see anything problematic with TFA's 28-hour days.
  - sethammons 2y ago
    I have slept 12+ hours less than a dozen times in my 40 years, and nearly every time was due to being sick. How did you manage to sleep so long?
    - BenjiWiebe 2y ago
      Not who you are asking, but for me if there's no noise or activity in the house, I usually just keep on sleeping. 10 hours would be more common for me but I've done 12 hours pretty easily too.
    - aradox66 2y ago
      I think I'm somewhere on the long right tail of needing a lot of sleep, I feel best with 10 but I can do with 8. Less than 8 and I don't feel too good. In the winter I can do 12 hours pretty often. It's not always but every few years I get a few weeks or months of 12 hour nights. I love sleep.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - bcrl 2y ago
    I lived on 36 hour days for a good year or so as well. It made being social very difficult, and was not the greatest thing for me overall, although I did get a lot of code written. A few months ago I finally got a CPAP machine after getting a sleep study due to abnormal blood pressure patterns (my blood pressure wasn't dropping overnight on a 24 hour monitor). I can now wake up feeling alert and ready to go after 6 hours of sleep (even though I could use a little bit more); I haven't felt rested this way in the morning since more than 15 years ago in my 20s. I'm not particularly overweight, nor do I snore, so it's worth checking into if your sleep patterns tend towards abnormal.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
  > imagine making every single day a jet-lagged day. That's exactly what this pattern is trying to avoid. For people whose sleep cycle is longer than 24h, a "normal" rhythm makes every single day a jet-lagged day, and in the "wrong" direction (it's easier to travel west/stay awake longer rather than travel east/go to bed earlier for most people).
- levocardia 2y ago
  Actually it's pretty in-line with it. Natural circadian rhythm is ~25hrs, with some individual variance, and it's easier to extend a circadian rhythm than shorten it. Jet lag research finds that flying west (lengthening), you can adapt at a rate of ~1hr per day. It's not crazy to think that someone might naturally be at 26-27hrs, then stretch it an hour each day no problem.
johnclema 2y ago
See a sleep psychologist. This is likely a non-24-hour sleep-wake rhythm disorder.
- tyzoid 2y ago
  Why should they? If they've got a workable solution and are living a happy life, there's no reason to treat it as a problem.
  - johnclema 2y ago
    That is a fair point, though understanding one's sleep patterns through professional evaluation can be valuable even if one plans to continue one's current schedule. A sleep psychologist could provide insights about optimising the chosen schedule, identify potential health considerations, and offer additional tools and strategies. The goal is to have more information to make informed choices about one's health.
whatever1 2y ago
We don’t approve. You are only productive if your butt is on your office seat 9-5.
tiiiij 2y ago
Most of the benefits are things that you could just be more intentional about in a 24h cycle. Glad it works for him on 28h and I don't think he's endorsing this for others necessarily, but my goodness quite a lot of disruption to accomplish what others should be able to accomplish in a standard 24h day.
readthenotes1 2y ago
I once had the opportunity to do a transatlantic Cruise from west to east in which we changed ship time every two days, resulting in 24.5 hour days. They were much more natural to me than a 24 hours day length. If I ever win the lottery, I just may sail endlessly west to east...
- eru 2y ago
  You might like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Forties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Forties
  - readthenotes1 2y ago
    Nice! And if I were a billionaire, I could afford to heat the ship!
    - eru 2y ago
      Just put on a jumper. Or several.
S_A_P 2y ago
After reading the article I didn’t pick up what any of the advantages are of 28hr days other than being able to communicate with other regions of the world on certain days. I suppose that could be a very important factor for some people who do work in a geographically dispersed area. A few things I would be concerned with are: 1) your SO is not on the same schedule and really for what isn’t a solid reason. I could see this becoming a source of resentment at some point. 2) you have to cut people out of your life vs explaining the schedule when they don’t understand why. I understand that the lectures would likely get tiresome at some point, but it seems a bit selfish to switch to this schedule when it could become problematic for friends and family members. 3) I think cardio and total health should be measured and monitored as part of the experiment. It is entirely possible that this schedule can have real benefits for health or at the least not negatively affect your health. You mention that you are able to workout more often and effectively, so it may also be interesting to track your fitness level on the schedule vs 24 hr days. It would just be anecdotal but it would at least be some data. I guess the only other things I would want to know is what factors pushed most to switching schedules? How long do you plan to stay on the schedule? How does your employer handle this schedule change? Or are you self employed/running a business? What do you think the biggest challenges are during the switch aside from being tired at hour 10-11? What does your SO really think about this schedule? The more I think about this, the more questions I have :)
- fastball 2y ago
  I'm not the OP, but I've considered doing this (have personally tried tri-phasic sleep in the past as an alternative) so I'm assuming the motivation might be the same: I just don't have a 24hr circadian rhythm. I'd guess mine is more like 26hr, not 28hr, but same idea applies. If I wake up after getting 8 hours of sleep, after 16 hours I am just... not sleepy. I can go to bed and not use screens and take melatonin and whatever else but I'm just not tired. So I end up staying later and getting less than 8 hours of sleep. Since many studies seem to show that getting a solid amount of sleep is good, my actual patterns seem bad. Much better then (maybe) to switch your cycle to be however many hours you need to get a solid night (~8hr) of sleep and feel tired at the end of the day, like the author is doing. EDIT: just read the original post[1] from the author and indeed this is the reason. He maybe explains it better than me so give a read. [1] https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/ https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/
daft_pink 2y ago
Is there a link to the initial post where you explain the whole thing? I’m curious now.
- fastball 2y ago
  Yes, it is linked[1] in the first sentence of the article. [1] https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/ https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/
  - daft_pink 2y ago
    Thanks somehow I missed that!
dinkumthinkum 2y ago
Honestly, this reads like some kind of mercurial character in a sci-fi novel.
timerol 2y ago
It makes me happy that OP posted https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/ https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/ in October of 2023, and somehow lasted 4 months before learning about https://xkcd.com/320/ https://xkcd.com/320/. It's interesting that OP decided to try to align to a daytime schedule on the weekend, instead of during the workweek as in the comic.
4fterd4rk 2y ago
“Leave it to a white man to cut a foot off the end of a blanket and sew it on the top of the blanket and think it makes the blanket longer.”
WillAdams 2y ago
I maintained such a schedule for over a year when I was in the Air Force --- the schedule was 9 days on, 3 swings, followed by 3 mids, followed by 3 day shifts, then 3 days off --- extending one's sleep cycle to a longer "day" allowed one to make things fit together w/o too much disruption. That said, avoiding having to do that again was a big motivation in getting out.
santoshalper 2y ago
This may be the most Hacker News thing I've heard since Soylent.
- henry2023 2y ago
  This is objectively worse than Soylent.
404mm 2y ago
I find it amusing how the OP has the need to label meals within the day and gripes about how they don’t match when talking to others on a regular 24-hour schedule. They are just meals. You’re hungry, so you eat. It’s a meal. Only one note: OP sounds like a younger person, probably in their 20s. My body was able to take some serious abuse when it came to sleep schedule back then. I had a job that kept alternating between 2-3 day shifts, then 2-3 night shifts, then 2-3 days off. Sometimes I’d not go to sleep for 24+ hours. I’m twice the age now, and I’m still paying for it. My sleep is not great. I have to be very responsible with sticking to my schedule, and waking up anytime after 3 a.m. results in an inability to fall asleep and a day-long headache.
- gorbachev 2y ago
  My experience is very similar. When I was young, I could stay up for 26 - 30 hours regularly without any issues, even on multiple consecutive days. I would be fine no matter how I slept. No more. If my sleep schedule gets disrupted in any way, too short or too long, my body will immediately go into "things are not right" mode.
- yard2010 2y ago
  Reminds me of my trip to south america, in which I had no meal plans, just munchies plans
Aurornis 2y ago
I’ve been fascinated with alternative sleep schedules since I was very young. My initial interest turned to a fascination when I realized the only positive long-term reports were usually from people trying to sell something: Their book, a sleep plan, or just using their sleep cycle as a social hook to impress others (influencers, basically). All of the forum reports started out optimistic and then ended in disappointment with basically nobody enjoying them after a long time. One of the common themes was that people would think their lives were better at first. A sort of placebo effect. They’d push through the adaptation phase, which was miserable, and when they adapted they felt slightly better. Often this improvement (relative to the miserable adaptation period) was mistake for an absolute improvement because it had been so long since they had a normal sleep schedule. What was really interesting was that most people reported some variation of the same thing: They didn’t realize how much they disliked the alternative sleep schedule until after they stopped it. Some people stuck with it for a long time until life forced them to change (job, marriage, etc). It wasn’t until they went back to normal that they realized how much better it was to just not fight the sunlight and night time that drives us. It would be interesting to see how this person feels at some point in the future if they go back to a normal sleep schedule.
- pcthrowaway 2y ago
  Please familiarize yourself with the community of https://www.reddit.com/r/N24 https://www.reddit.com/r/N24 No one is selling anything. There are many of us who benefit remarkably from what you're calling an "alternative sleep schedule" (I'm not specifically talking about 28-hour day entrainment like the blog author, but whatever works for each individual based on their own idiosyncratic circadian rhythm) Many of us have periods where we have to go back to 24-hour schedules due to external factors, and sleep quality and duration suffer as a result. For myself, in the winter when my schedule is a little >27 hours, when I enforced waking up at 8 AM Monday-Friday for a 9-5, my schedule might go something like this: > Sunday night: Sleep 7-8 hours starting at midnight. > Monday night: Sleep 5 hours starting ~3 AM Tuesday. > Tuesday night: Sleep 2-3 hours starting at ~5 AM Wednesday. Sometimes with exhaustion I may then be able to fall asleep at 5-6 PM (Wednesday) but often would stay up til closer to midnight-2AM. Regardless, when I fall asleep I likely will wake up in 1 or 2 hours and be unable to go back to sleep, as my body doesn't believe it's in the sleep phase. > "Wednesday night?": There isn't really a Wednesday night except on the occasion where I managed to sleep more than 2 hours. Sometimes I'm up all night with no nap; more than half the time I can't sleep more than 3 hours. Occasionally I'm actually able to stay asleep during what my body thinks is a nap to pay off sleep debt. > "Thursday night?": Exhausted from having slept no more than 9 hours in the last 48 hours, and usually closer to 3-4 hours, I'll collapse around 5-7 PM from exhaustion and sleep until midnight-5AM. > "Friday night?": Often I'm ready for sleep by 5-8 PM and will sleep 8-9 hours. But I'll also occasionally try to sleep less and push myself to go out at 9-10 PM if there's an event happening. After being more active and if I slept less than 4 hours I can usually pick up another 1-3.5 hours of sleep after 4 or 5 AM. > Saturday night: If I got a full night's sleep, or went out Friday but slept a little bit after, I may be more energized, so this is the more consistent day for weekend plans. If sleep was poor I'll try to sleep an hour or two early in the evening before going out and then sleep 3 AM to 9 AM or so. If I didn't have Saturday plans I may go to sleep at 8 PM and sleep til 5 AM. > Sunday night: Usually fall asleep somewhere around midnight but who knows? I could be up til 3 AM depending on how the weekend went. All told I would probably get an average of ~5.5 to 6 hour of sleep per 24-hour day, but with significant periods running on very little sleep. Now that I work from home and have few meetings, my schedule may look more like the following: > Sunday night: Sleep from midnight to 7 or 8 AM > Monday night: Sleep from 3 AM (Tuesday) to 10 AM (in time for my 10 AM Tuesday meeting). > "...": Sleep Wednesday from 6 AM to 1 or 2 PM (Wednesday) > "...": Sleep Thursday from 9 AM to 4 or 5 PM. Stay awake for my 10 AM meeting Friday. > "...": Friday I have a meeting from 10-11, then often coordinate with coworkers til noon, but as late as 2 PM (rarely later). So I sleep after and wake up any time friday from 7 PM to 9 PM, go out feeling relatively well-rested. > "...": Saturday if I have plans I take a nap then go out and fall asleep around 3 AM until 10 AM. Sunday I probably won't be able to sleep at midnight. Tuesday my 10 AM meeting this week will probably interrupt my sleep phase, but I can usually go right back to sleep after. All in all on this schedule I get longer periods of uninterrupted sleep, get an average closer to 6.5 hours of sleep per 24-hour period, and never have periods of 48 hours where I only sleep 2 hours, so my overall energy and focus over the week is much better.
avidphantasm 2y ago
[flagged]
memhole 2y ago
Really interesting! I was interested in polyphasic sleep for a moment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep I never actually tried it from what I remember. Cool to read someone’s experience with it.
efitz 2y ago
I once changed my schedule for a month to sleeping 4 hours, waking for 4, sleeping 4, and then waking for 12. I would work in the day, come home, sleep 4, wake 4, and then sleep 4 more, then off to work again. On weekends I switched to a normal 16/8 schedule. I got plenty of rest and got all my domestic stuff done overnight - 24h grocery store, laundromat, etc. I was never unusually tired. The down side is that it mostly killed my social life. So I quit; the advantages didn’t outweigh the disadvantage of being on a different schedule than everyone else. Also this was in the late 80s/early 90s before cell phones and the internet.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
  My brother had a friend try this in university while studying for exams and, according to my brother, it basically made the guy lose his mind. Seems like a roll of the dice on whether it works for people or not.
- batiudrami 2y ago
  This seems like the biggest disadvantage to me too. I see friends four or five nights a week so I would have to give a lot of that up. Which is a shame because longer days would probably significantly improve my sleep.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bigiain 2y ago
  > I once changed my schedule for a month to sleeping 4 hours, waking for 4, sleeping 4, and then waking for 12. That's pretty common for crew on yachts. I'd do that when racing or cruising ocean going sailboats. The crew gets split into 3rds, and everybody gets to do a 4 hour night watch. (For racing for me, that'd usually be only for a few days or a week tops. I twice spent ~6weeks on that schedule cruising the Great Barrier Reef.)
- aomurphy 2y ago
  There's a very active historical debate about whether a schedule like this, often called "biphasic sleep", was more common in pre-industrial societies. There's a historian called Roger Ekirch who thinks it was, starting in his 2004 book "At Day's Close - Night in Times Past". There's a bunch of criticism of it, since the sources are a bit ambiguous, or if he's generalizing from Medieval England (his main focus).
uint8_t 2y ago
See also these internet-historical gems from everything2: Uberman's sleep schedule - every 4 hours, sleep 20 minutes. https://everything2.com/title/Uberman%2527s+Sleep+Schedule https://everything2.com/title/Uberman%2527s+Sleep+Schedule Everyman sleep schedule - per above, with an additional 3-hour nap each 24 hours. https://everything2.com/title/Everyman+Sleep+Schedule https://everything2.com/title/Everyman+Sleep+Schedule Of course, the surest way to experiment with an alternative sleep schedule is to simply take care of a newborn, something humans have gotten pretty good at over the millennia.
- collinmcnulty 2y ago
  Yep, I remember reading about these as a youth and thinking, wow what a random bit of biology. Then I had a kid and was like, oh, I see why this is in there.
zblevins 2y ago
My wife would file for a divorce. This reminds me a bit of when I tried polyphasic sleeping about 20 years ago which was an absolute disaster.
jeremyjh 2y ago
I assumed this is satire and ... its not? Yet lines like this just seem really tongue-in-cheek: > In fact, I avoid talking about the schedule at all with others. > The internal benefits more than make up for the slightly trickier external interactions. > I don’t keep track of this in any scientific way, only mental notes that I make along the way > There might be some longer-term changes, mostly associated with my health, but if these exist, they’ll likely start showing up in the next few years. We’ll see what the future holds.
OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago
For about 3 years, I did 12 hour days (4 hour sleep sessions) and inverted days (go to sleep at 7am, wake up at 3pm). The benefits outlined in the article were definitely there - Life felt less busy, and I had a new perspective on everything - But I got sick often, and doing a hard reversal to accommodate visiting family or friends on weekends was brutal (I fell asleep multiple times at houses when I was supposed to be "hanging out"). Overall - I don't regret it, and if you're someone who likes to try different life experiences, give it a shot! But I'm not going back anytime soon :)
ArlenBales 2y ago
I hiked the PCT last year over 85 days and slept on average 5-6 hours a night (except days off) and hiked 30+ miles a day over 16+ hours a day. It's weird the things your body can do if you push yourself beyond the expected norms.
edoardo-schnell 2y ago
Isn't this basically a curious way to stay away from people a bit more?
- fuzzfactor 2y ago
  One person's anti-social responsibilities are another person's way of getting a lot done without as many people bugging them ;)
Glyptodon 2y ago
I seem to be stuck in a loop of sleeping 9h and sleeping 6h (which I hate) because I reliably wake up at about the same time, but can't reliably fall asleep exactly 7.5h before it (I guess). Does that suggest my circadian rhythm is just out of whack w/ 24h?
- pcthrowaway 2y ago
  That depends on whether you're falling asleep around the same time (±1.5 hrs) every night or not. If you are, then you're likely adjusted to the 24 natural cycle and something else is going on. The closest thing I'm aware of is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregular_sleep%E2%80%93wake_rhythm_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregular_sleep%E2%80%93wake_r...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
JeremyBarbosa 2y ago
Interesting that there is some research (though only n=11!) on 28h days: Neurobehavioral Performance in Young Adults Living on a 28-h Day for 6 Weeks https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2706904/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2706904/
- janderson215 2y ago
  An n of almost 40,000,000 seems pretty substantial to me.
grishka 2y ago
Interesting. I have a similar problem that I haven't had any obligations to follow the "normal people schedule" ever since I graduated the university (and even then, I got like 4 hours of sleep and slept on the subway on my way there and felt like a zombie for a few hours in the morning anyway). I'm constantly out of sync with the rest of the society and this sometimes gets rather frustrating, but I can't seem to do much about it. I can try to strong-arm myself into it but that only works for so long, my schedule still slips eventually. The longest I was able to maintain a "normal person schedule" was around 2 months. Not sure at this point whether this is a blessing or a curse. So, I might actually try this.
neilv 2y ago
> Those 2 months were hard, [...] but also with the SO complaining that I wasn’t available to reply to messages sometimes (because I was sleeping when she was awake), which was no encouragement to keep going. I hope it's not too personal to ask, but I'm wondering how that is working out with the SO. My own experience thus far, as someone whose body by default seems to want to do 25-26 hour days (and can do much longer when I choose), is that an SO is one reason to force myself to stay on a 24-hour cycle. If you're both doing grad school, hospital shifts, startups, trying to make partner, traveling a lot for work, etc., then having your schedules not always overlap might come with the territory, and you both can adapt. But if they find they're often wanting to spend meaningful time with you after their work, and you're sleeping during normal-person waking hours, they might be wondering whether this is the right long-term relationship.
hattmall 2y ago
I've found that biphasic sleep seems to fill a similar role for me. When I'm able I don't set alarms or make any preparations toward going to bed. I just sleep when I'm tired and wake up naturally. That leads to me often falling asleep around dark and waking up about 2.5-3.5 hours later. Then I'm up for a few hours, and asleep again a little bit before the sun comes up for a few more hours. Now when I'm not able to just sleep and wake up completely naturally it always sucks following a more normal schedule of going to bed around midnight waking up around 7. So I try to prioritize the biphasic sleep with the idea that the stages are variable. As in sometimes I sleep through all 3 stages, sometimes I stay up after the first time I wake up, or sometimes I don't initially fall asleep until the last stage. I find that my days don't fit a 24 hours schedule either, but I don't feel like they fit the same set amount of hours each day at all.My motivational and energy levels are just different depending on the day and have a wake / rest cycle that can fit with that is beneficial.
Starlevel004 2y ago
As someone with non-24 it's crazy to see somebody wanting to do this. It's like seeing somebody actively seek out a lobotomy.
gadders 2y ago
Anyone else remember when Steve Pavlina trialled polyphasic (30 minute nap every 4 hours) sleep for a year or two? https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/ https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/ I just checked the dates and it was 20 years ago. Soooooo old....
eqvinox 2y ago
This article would really benefit from stating how old (roughly) the author is… a good portion of people in my bubble report changes to sleep habits (and needs) in their early to mid 30ies.
JohnMakin 2y ago
What wasn't entirely clear to me was the why - I'm by no means against alternative sleep schedules, but this seems far more bother than it is worth. I've struggled with termination insomnia most of my life, waking up extremely early and not being able to go back to sleep - and in recent years have managed to make that work for my full schedule by basically sleeping ~4 hours, awake for 8, sleeping 4, awake 8, etc. So a typical schedule could look like: 10pm-2am - sleep 2am-10am - awake 10am-2pm - sleep 2pm-10pm - awake I've experimented with this a lot - for whatever reason, I don't know why, this split schedule allows me to feel much more alert and attentive during my waking hours, and isn't as stressful as trying to sleep a full 7-8 per night which a lot of times feels impossible for me. Sometimes I'll do 5-6 hours sleep on 1 cycle instead of 4, so it can shift around, but otherwise stays pretty consistent. Technically I am getting just as many sleep cycles as a "normal" schedule (One part of this was a sleep study to figure out what my natural full rem cycle is, for me, it's about 2 hours long). I've been doing this for about 2 years and wouldn't do anything else, and it's really not difficult to fit it into a "normal" routine. My close friends have remarked that it makes it seem like I never sleep (due to being available at hours all around the clock), that's about all that anyone has remarked about it.
asah 2y ago
My "alternative sleep schedule" involves naps on the couch! #oldAF

198 points by HAMSHAMA 2y ago

This flies in the face of circadean rhythm research. I know the human body is extremely adaptable, but imagine making every single day a jet-lagged day. My younger self may have been able to tolerate it well enough, but there's no way I'd come out unscathed now.

ty6853 2y ago
I have tried on occasion to work night shift. It is OK for a few weeks but within months I reach extreme exhaustion falling asleep while operating dangerous machinery, despite sleeping during the day. I experienced a similar phenomenon working on a fishing boat where I simply never adapted to sea sickness and after weeks of throwing up almost all food and fluids it took months to crawl back to activity and recover including the pneumonia induced from my immune system and homeostasis being beat down. Human body can be really bad at adapting to unworldly environments to the point you totally break down.
pcthrowaway 2y ago
You must not be aware of the research on Non-24[1] (or "Non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder") which OP seems to have (though perhaps they also aren't aware this is a thing). Not saying non-24 is good for you, but for people unable to follow a 24-hour schedule, free-running sleep (which is what OP is doing) is vastly better than constantly pushing through sleep deprivation, when one's schedule allows for it. Speaking as someone with non-24 myself (which is much more severe in the winter) edit: after reading more closely, it appears OP has entrained to a 28-hour day rather than doing free-running sleep; 28-hour days are convenient in that the week gets sliced into 6 days and allows for a consistent weekly schedule. However, I suspect OP actually naturally gravitates towards a shorter day like 26 or 27 hours based on their napping patterns. I also wonder if they might even have more success with 24-hour days and regular exercise, as from their description it almost seems like the daily exercise practice which they started after the 28-hour day might be regulating their circadian rhythm to be closer to a natural day. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake...
- niz4ts 2y ago
  I did free-running sleep for a while (I mention this in the original 28h day post), but decided on 28h days to weekly match other people's schedules. I exercised regularly before 28h days, and my sleep was still chaotic with that. I didn't exercise daily though, it was hard to fit everything I wanted to do on a 24h day. Having longer days means I can fit more things, which I think is one of the reasons why I increased the amount of exercise after moving to 28h. I also haven't read any research on this, I just did what felt more natural and logical to me.
- scrollaway 2y ago
  I miss being able to do free-running sleep. I remember so many people in my life being skeptical about my claim that I naturally have longer days than 24h. Then ~6 years ago I actually tested it; my watch recorded my sleep, and it became obvious: https://photos.app.goo.gl/rTh2vkEMPEiJXx5Y7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/rTh2vkEMPEiJXx5Y7 [time-asleep graphed on a daily 24h chart] And only then did I learn what a non-24 was.
readthenotes1 2y ago
I doubt your assertion about circadian rhythm research, largely because of the cave experiments that show that people naturally assume non-24 hour days when removed from sunlight and social cues.
- wbl 2y ago
  The melatonin response to sunlight shortens the cycle so the oscillator runs long without it. It wouldn't work well the other way.
- aaron695 2y ago
  [dead]
- silversmith 2y ago
  So, in other words, get more sunlight?
- energy123 2y ago
  > I doubt your assertion about circadian rhythm research You seem oblivious to the decades of research into chronobiology and studies into shift work, jet lag, etc. Your loss.
xyzzy_plugh 2y ago
I did 36-hour days (awake for 24, asleep for 12) for a long time and it was fine. I'm unable to do so now, due to other obligations, but I still think it worked better for me than a 24-hour day. Even today I inevitably stay up all night, getting at most 1-4 hours of sleep, 2-3 times per week. I don't see anything problematic with TFA's 28-hour days.
- sethammons 2y ago
  I have slept 12+ hours less than a dozen times in my 40 years, and nearly every time was due to being sick. How did you manage to sleep so long?
  - BenjiWiebe 2y ago
    Not who you are asking, but for me if there's no noise or activity in the house, I usually just keep on sleeping. 10 hours would be more common for me but I've done 12 hours pretty easily too.
  - aradox66 2y ago
    I think I'm somewhere on the long right tail of needing a lot of sleep, I feel best with 10 but I can do with 8. Less than 8 and I don't feel too good. In the winter I can do 12 hours pretty often. It's not always but every few years I get a few weeks or months of 12 hour nights. I love sleep.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bcrl 2y ago
  I lived on 36 hour days for a good year or so as well. It made being social very difficult, and was not the greatest thing for me overall, although I did get a lot of code written. A few months ago I finally got a CPAP machine after getting a sleep study due to abnormal blood pressure patterns (my blood pressure wasn't dropping overnight on a 24 hour monitor). I can now wake up feeling alert and ready to go after 6 hours of sleep (even though I could use a little bit more); I haven't felt rested this way in the morning since more than 15 years ago in my 20s. I'm not particularly overweight, nor do I snore, so it's worth checking into if your sleep patterns tend towards abnormal.
tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
> imagine making every single day a jet-lagged day. That's exactly what this pattern is trying to avoid. For people whose sleep cycle is longer than 24h, a "normal" rhythm makes every single day a jet-lagged day, and in the "wrong" direction (it's easier to travel west/stay awake longer rather than travel east/go to bed earlier for most people).
levocardia 2y ago
Actually it's pretty in-line with it. Natural circadian rhythm is ~25hrs, with some individual variance, and it's easier to extend a circadian rhythm than shorten it. Jet lag research finds that flying west (lengthening), you can adapt at a rate of ~1hr per day. It's not crazy to think that someone might naturally be at 26-27hrs, then stretch it an hour each day no problem.

johnclema 2y ago

See a sleep psychologist. This is likely a non-24-hour sleep-wake rhythm disorder.

tyzoid 2y ago
Why should they? If they've got a workable solution and are living a happy life, there's no reason to treat it as a problem.
- johnclema 2y ago
  That is a fair point, though understanding one's sleep patterns through professional evaluation can be valuable even if one plans to continue one's current schedule. A sleep psychologist could provide insights about optimising the chosen schedule, identify potential health considerations, and offer additional tools and strategies. The goal is to have more information to make informed choices about one's health.

whatever1 2y ago

We don’t approve. You are only productive if your butt is on your office seat 9-5.

tiiiij 2y ago

Most of the benefits are things that you could just be more intentional about in a 24h cycle. Glad it works for him on 28h and I don't think he's endorsing this for others necessarily, but my goodness quite a lot of disruption to accomplish what others should be able to accomplish in a standard 24h day.

readthenotes1 2y ago

I once had the opportunity to do a transatlantic Cruise from west to east in which we changed ship time every two days, resulting in 24.5 hour days. They were much more natural to me than a 24 hours day length. If I ever win the lottery, I just may sail endlessly west to east...

eru 2y ago
You might like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Forties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Forties
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  Nice! And if I were a billionaire, I could afford to heat the ship!
  - eru 2y ago
    Just put on a jumper. Or several.

S_A_P 2y ago

After reading the article I didn’t pick up what any of the advantages are of 28hr days other than being able to communicate with other regions of the world on certain days. I suppose that could be a very important factor for some people who do work in a geographically dispersed area. A few things I would be concerned with are: 1) your SO is not on the same schedule and really for what isn’t a solid reason. I could see this becoming a source of resentment at some point. 2) you have to cut people out of your life vs explaining the schedule when they don’t understand why. I understand that the lectures would likely get tiresome at some point, but it seems a bit selfish to switch to this schedule when it could become problematic for friends and family members. 3) I think cardio and total health should be measured and monitored as part of the experiment. It is entirely possible that this schedule can have real benefits for health or at the least not negatively affect your health. You mention that you are able to workout more often and effectively, so it may also be interesting to track your fitness level on the schedule vs 24 hr days. It would just be anecdotal but it would at least be some data. I guess the only other things I would want to know is what factors pushed most to switching schedules? How long do you plan to stay on the schedule? How does your employer handle this schedule change? Or are you self employed/running a business? What do you think the biggest challenges are during the switch aside from being tired at hour 10-11? What does your SO really think about this schedule? The more I think about this, the more questions I have :)

fastball 2y ago
I'm not the OP, but I've considered doing this (have personally tried tri-phasic sleep in the past as an alternative) so I'm assuming the motivation might be the same: I just don't have a 24hr circadian rhythm. I'd guess mine is more like 26hr, not 28hr, but same idea applies. If I wake up after getting 8 hours of sleep, after 16 hours I am just... not sleepy. I can go to bed and not use screens and take melatonin and whatever else but I'm just not tired. So I end up staying later and getting less than 8 hours of sleep. Since many studies seem to show that getting a solid amount of sleep is good, my actual patterns seem bad. Much better then (maybe) to switch your cycle to be however many hours you need to get a solid night (~8hr) of sleep and feel tired at the end of the day, like the author is doing. EDIT: just read the original post[1] from the author and indeed this is the reason. He maybe explains it better than me so give a read. [1] https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/ https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/

daft_pink 2y ago

Is there a link to the initial post where you explain the whole thing? I’m curious now.

fastball 2y ago
Yes, it is linked[1] in the first sentence of the article. [1] https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/ https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/
- daft_pink 2y ago
  Thanks somehow I missed that!

dinkumthinkum 2y ago

Honestly, this reads like some kind of mercurial character in a sci-fi novel.

timerol 2y ago

It makes me happy that OP posted https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/ https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/ in October of 2023, and somehow lasted 4 months before learning about https://xkcd.com/320/ https://xkcd.com/320/. It's interesting that OP decided to try to align to a daytime schedule on the weekend, instead of during the workweek as in the comic.

4fterd4rk 2y ago

“Leave it to a white man to cut a foot off the end of a blanket and sew it on the top of the blanket and think it makes the blanket longer.”

WillAdams 2y ago

I maintained such a schedule for over a year when I was in the Air Force --- the schedule was 9 days on, 3 swings, followed by 3 mids, followed by 3 day shifts, then 3 days off --- extending one's sleep cycle to a longer "day" allowed one to make things fit together w/o too much disruption. That said, avoiding having to do that again was a big motivation in getting out.

santoshalper 2y ago

This may be the most Hacker News thing I've heard since Soylent.

henry2023 2y ago
This is objectively worse than Soylent.

404mm 2y ago

I find it amusing how the OP has the need to label meals within the day and gripes about how they don’t match when talking to others on a regular 24-hour schedule. They are just meals. You’re hungry, so you eat. It’s a meal. Only one note: OP sounds like a younger person, probably in their 20s. My body was able to take some serious abuse when it came to sleep schedule back then. I had a job that kept alternating between 2-3 day shifts, then 2-3 night shifts, then 2-3 days off. Sometimes I’d not go to sleep for 24+ hours. I’m twice the age now, and I’m still paying for it. My sleep is not great. I have to be very responsible with sticking to my schedule, and waking up anytime after 3 a.m. results in an inability to fall asleep and a day-long headache.

gorbachev 2y ago
My experience is very similar. When I was young, I could stay up for 26 - 30 hours regularly without any issues, even on multiple consecutive days. I would be fine no matter how I slept. No more. If my sleep schedule gets disrupted in any way, too short or too long, my body will immediately go into "things are not right" mode.
yard2010 2y ago
Reminds me of my trip to south america, in which I had no meal plans, just munchies plans

Aurornis 2y ago

I’ve been fascinated with alternative sleep schedules since I was very young. My initial interest turned to a fascination when I realized the only positive long-term reports were usually from people trying to sell something: Their book, a sleep plan, or just using their sleep cycle as a social hook to impress others (influencers, basically). All of the forum reports started out optimistic and then ended in disappointment with basically nobody enjoying them after a long time. One of the common themes was that people would think their lives were better at first. A sort of placebo effect. They’d push through the adaptation phase, which was miserable, and when they adapted they felt slightly better. Often this improvement (relative to the miserable adaptation period) was mistake for an absolute improvement because it had been so long since they had a normal sleep schedule. What was really interesting was that most people reported some variation of the same thing: They didn’t realize how much they disliked the alternative sleep schedule until after they stopped it. Some people stuck with it for a long time until life forced them to change (job, marriage, etc). It wasn’t until they went back to normal that they realized how much better it was to just not fight the sunlight and night time that drives us. It would be interesting to see how this person feels at some point in the future if they go back to a normal sleep schedule.

pcthrowaway 2y ago
Please familiarize yourself with the community of https://www.reddit.com/r/N24 https://www.reddit.com/r/N24 No one is selling anything. There are many of us who benefit remarkably from what you're calling an "alternative sleep schedule" (I'm not specifically talking about 28-hour day entrainment like the blog author, but whatever works for each individual based on their own idiosyncratic circadian rhythm) Many of us have periods where we have to go back to 24-hour schedules due to external factors, and sleep quality and duration suffer as a result. For myself, in the winter when my schedule is a little >27 hours, when I enforced waking up at 8 AM Monday-Friday for a 9-5, my schedule might go something like this: > Sunday night: Sleep 7-8 hours starting at midnight. > Monday night: Sleep 5 hours starting ~3 AM Tuesday. > Tuesday night: Sleep 2-3 hours starting at ~5 AM Wednesday. Sometimes with exhaustion I may then be able to fall asleep at 5-6 PM (Wednesday) but often would stay up til closer to midnight-2AM. Regardless, when I fall asleep I likely will wake up in 1 or 2 hours and be unable to go back to sleep, as my body doesn't believe it's in the sleep phase. > "Wednesday night?": There isn't really a Wednesday night except on the occasion where I managed to sleep more than 2 hours. Sometimes I'm up all night with no nap; more than half the time I can't sleep more than 3 hours. Occasionally I'm actually able to stay asleep during what my body thinks is a nap to pay off sleep debt. > "Thursday night?": Exhausted from having slept no more than 9 hours in the last 48 hours, and usually closer to 3-4 hours, I'll collapse around 5-7 PM from exhaustion and sleep until midnight-5AM. > "Friday night?": Often I'm ready for sleep by 5-8 PM and will sleep 8-9 hours. But I'll also occasionally try to sleep less and push myself to go out at 9-10 PM if there's an event happening. After being more active and if I slept less than 4 hours I can usually pick up another 1-3.5 hours of sleep after 4 or 5 AM. > Saturday night: If I got a full night's sleep, or went out Friday but slept a little bit after, I may be more energized, so this is the more consistent day for weekend plans. If sleep was poor I'll try to sleep an hour or two early in the evening before going out and then sleep 3 AM to 9 AM or so. If I didn't have Saturday plans I may go to sleep at 8 PM and sleep til 5 AM. > Sunday night: Usually fall asleep somewhere around midnight but who knows? I could be up til 3 AM depending on how the weekend went. All told I would probably get an average of ~5.5 to 6 hour of sleep per 24-hour day, but with significant periods running on very little sleep. Now that I work from home and have few meetings, my schedule may look more like the following: > Sunday night: Sleep from midnight to 7 or 8 AM > Monday night: Sleep from 3 AM (Tuesday) to 10 AM (in time for my 10 AM Tuesday meeting). > "...": Sleep Wednesday from 6 AM to 1 or 2 PM (Wednesday) > "...": Sleep Thursday from 9 AM to 4 or 5 PM. Stay awake for my 10 AM meeting Friday. > "...": Friday I have a meeting from 10-11, then often coordinate with coworkers til noon, but as late as 2 PM (rarely later). So I sleep after and wake up any time friday from 7 PM to 9 PM, go out feeling relatively well-rested. > "...": Saturday if I have plans I take a nap then go out and fall asleep around 3 AM until 10 AM. Sunday I probably won't be able to sleep at midnight. Tuesday my 10 AM meeting this week will probably interrupt my sleep phase, but I can usually go right back to sleep after. All in all on this schedule I get longer periods of uninterrupted sleep, get an average closer to 6.5 hours of sleep per 24-hour period, and never have periods of 48 hours where I only sleep 2 hours, so my overall energy and focus over the week is much better.

avidphantasm 2y ago

[flagged]

memhole 2y ago

Really interesting! I was interested in polyphasic sleep for a moment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep I never actually tried it from what I remember. Cool to read someone’s experience with it.

efitz 2y ago

I once changed my schedule for a month to sleeping 4 hours, waking for 4, sleeping 4, and then waking for 12. I would work in the day, come home, sleep 4, wake 4, and then sleep 4 more, then off to work again. On weekends I switched to a normal 16/8 schedule. I got plenty of rest and got all my domestic stuff done overnight - 24h grocery store, laundromat, etc. I was never unusually tired. The down side is that it mostly killed my social life. So I quit; the advantages didn’t outweigh the disadvantage of being on a different schedule than everyone else. Also this was in the late 80s/early 90s before cell phones and the internet.

beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
My brother had a friend try this in university while studying for exams and, according to my brother, it basically made the guy lose his mind. Seems like a roll of the dice on whether it works for people or not.
batiudrami 2y ago
This seems like the biggest disadvantage to me too. I see friends four or five nights a week so I would have to give a lot of that up. Which is a shame because longer days would probably significantly improve my sleep.
deleted 2y ago
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bigiain 2y ago
> I once changed my schedule for a month to sleeping 4 hours, waking for 4, sleeping 4, and then waking for 12. That's pretty common for crew on yachts. I'd do that when racing or cruising ocean going sailboats. The crew gets split into 3rds, and everybody gets to do a 4 hour night watch. (For racing for me, that'd usually be only for a few days or a week tops. I twice spent ~6weeks on that schedule cruising the Great Barrier Reef.)
aomurphy 2y ago
There's a very active historical debate about whether a schedule like this, often called "biphasic sleep", was more common in pre-industrial societies. There's a historian called Roger Ekirch who thinks it was, starting in his 2004 book "At Day's Close - Night in Times Past". There's a bunch of criticism of it, since the sources are a bit ambiguous, or if he's generalizing from Medieval England (his main focus).

uint8_t 2y ago

See also these internet-historical gems from everything2: Uberman's sleep schedule - every 4 hours, sleep 20 minutes. https://everything2.com/title/Uberman%2527s+Sleep+Schedule https://everything2.com/title/Uberman%2527s+Sleep+Schedule Everyman sleep schedule - per above, with an additional 3-hour nap each 24 hours. https://everything2.com/title/Everyman+Sleep+Schedule https://everything2.com/title/Everyman+Sleep+Schedule Of course, the surest way to experiment with an alternative sleep schedule is to simply take care of a newborn, something humans have gotten pretty good at over the millennia.

collinmcnulty 2y ago
Yep, I remember reading about these as a youth and thinking, wow what a random bit of biology. Then I had a kid and was like, oh, I see why this is in there.

zblevins 2y ago

My wife would file for a divorce. This reminds me a bit of when I tried polyphasic sleeping about 20 years ago which was an absolute disaster.

jeremyjh 2y ago

I assumed this is satire and ... its not? Yet lines like this just seem really tongue-in-cheek: > In fact, I avoid talking about the schedule at all with others. > The internal benefits more than make up for the slightly trickier external interactions. > I don’t keep track of this in any scientific way, only mental notes that I make along the way > There might be some longer-term changes, mostly associated with my health, but if these exist, they’ll likely start showing up in the next few years. We’ll see what the future holds.

OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago

For about 3 years, I did 12 hour days (4 hour sleep sessions) and inverted days (go to sleep at 7am, wake up at 3pm). The benefits outlined in the article were definitely there - Life felt less busy, and I had a new perspective on everything - But I got sick often, and doing a hard reversal to accommodate visiting family or friends on weekends was brutal (I fell asleep multiple times at houses when I was supposed to be "hanging out"). Overall - I don't regret it, and if you're someone who likes to try different life experiences, give it a shot! But I'm not going back anytime soon :)

ArlenBales 2y ago

I hiked the PCT last year over 85 days and slept on average 5-6 hours a night (except days off) and hiked 30+ miles a day over 16+ hours a day. It's weird the things your body can do if you push yourself beyond the expected norms.

edoardo-schnell 2y ago

Isn't this basically a curious way to stay away from people a bit more?

fuzzfactor 2y ago
One person's anti-social responsibilities are another person's way of getting a lot done without as many people bugging them ;)

Glyptodon 2y ago

I seem to be stuck in a loop of sleeping 9h and sleeping 6h (which I hate) because I reliably wake up at about the same time, but can't reliably fall asleep exactly 7.5h before it (I guess). Does that suggest my circadian rhythm is just out of whack w/ 24h?

pcthrowaway 2y ago
That depends on whether you're falling asleep around the same time (±1.5 hrs) every night or not. If you are, then you're likely adjusted to the 24 natural cycle and something else is going on. The closest thing I'm aware of is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregular_sleep%E2%80%93wake_rhythm_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregular_sleep%E2%80%93wake_r...

deleted 2y ago

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JeremyBarbosa 2y ago

Interesting that there is some research (though only n=11!) on 28h days: Neurobehavioral Performance in Young Adults Living on a 28-h Day for 6 Weeks https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2706904/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2706904/

janderson215 2y ago
An n of almost 40,000,000 seems pretty substantial to me.

grishka 2y ago

Interesting. I have a similar problem that I haven't had any obligations to follow the "normal people schedule" ever since I graduated the university (and even then, I got like 4 hours of sleep and slept on the subway on my way there and felt like a zombie for a few hours in the morning anyway). I'm constantly out of sync with the rest of the society and this sometimes gets rather frustrating, but I can't seem to do much about it. I can try to strong-arm myself into it but that only works for so long, my schedule still slips eventually. The longest I was able to maintain a "normal person schedule" was around 2 months. Not sure at this point whether this is a blessing or a curse. So, I might actually try this.

neilv 2y ago

> Those 2 months were hard, [...] but also with the SO complaining that I wasn’t available to reply to messages sometimes (because I was sleeping when she was awake), which was no encouragement to keep going. I hope it's not too personal to ask, but I'm wondering how that is working out with the SO. My own experience thus far, as someone whose body by default seems to want to do 25-26 hour days (and can do much longer when I choose), is that an SO is one reason to force myself to stay on a 24-hour cycle. If you're both doing grad school, hospital shifts, startups, trying to make partner, traveling a lot for work, etc., then having your schedules not always overlap might come with the territory, and you both can adapt. But if they find they're often wanting to spend meaningful time with you after their work, and you're sleeping during normal-person waking hours, they might be wondering whether this is the right long-term relationship.

hattmall 2y ago

I've found that biphasic sleep seems to fill a similar role for me. When I'm able I don't set alarms or make any preparations toward going to bed. I just sleep when I'm tired and wake up naturally. That leads to me often falling asleep around dark and waking up about 2.5-3.5 hours later. Then I'm up for a few hours, and asleep again a little bit before the sun comes up for a few more hours. Now when I'm not able to just sleep and wake up completely naturally it always sucks following a more normal schedule of going to bed around midnight waking up around 7. So I try to prioritize the biphasic sleep with the idea that the stages are variable. As in sometimes I sleep through all 3 stages, sometimes I stay up after the first time I wake up, or sometimes I don't initially fall asleep until the last stage. I find that my days don't fit a 24 hours schedule either, but I don't feel like they fit the same set amount of hours each day at all.My motivational and energy levels are just different depending on the day and have a wake / rest cycle that can fit with that is beneficial.

Starlevel004 2y ago

As someone with non-24 it's crazy to see somebody wanting to do this. It's like seeing somebody actively seek out a lobotomy.

gadders 2y ago

Anyone else remember when Steve Pavlina trialled polyphasic (30 minute nap every 4 hours) sleep for a year or two? https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/ https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/ I just checked the dates and it was 20 years ago. Soooooo old....

eqvinox 2y ago

This article would really benefit from stating how old (roughly) the author is… a good portion of people in my bubble report changes to sleep habits (and needs) in their early to mid 30ies.

JohnMakin 2y ago

What wasn't entirely clear to me was the why - I'm by no means against alternative sleep schedules, but this seems far more bother than it is worth. I've struggled with termination insomnia most of my life, waking up extremely early and not being able to go back to sleep - and in recent years have managed to make that work for my full schedule by basically sleeping ~4 hours, awake for 8, sleeping 4, awake 8, etc. So a typical schedule could look like: 10pm-2am - sleep 2am-10am - awake 10am-2pm - sleep 2pm-10pm - awake I've experimented with this a lot - for whatever reason, I don't know why, this split schedule allows me to feel much more alert and attentive during my waking hours, and isn't as stressful as trying to sleep a full 7-8 per night which a lot of times feels impossible for me. Sometimes I'll do 5-6 hours sleep on 1 cycle instead of 4, so it can shift around, but otherwise stays pretty consistent. Technically I am getting just as many sleep cycles as a "normal" schedule (One part of this was a sleep study to figure out what my natural full rem cycle is, for me, it's about 2 hours long). I've been doing this for about 2 years and wouldn't do anything else, and it's really not difficult to fit it into a "normal" routine. My close friends have remarked that it makes it seem like I never sleep (due to being available at hours all around the clock), that's about all that anyone has remarked about it.

asah 2y ago

My "alternative sleep schedule" involves naps on the couch! #oldAF