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Sleeping Patterns
The Cat
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
So, this article is pretty interesting:
And is it practical to have people working and learning in staggered groups? I can see the upsides - peak hour traffic easing off, less overcrowding on the evening busses, no mile-long queues at my supermarket at the only time I can get there. Many industries already have staggered shifts over much longer periods than the standard 9-5 - hospitals and call centers for one. I don't see why other places can't possibly do the same, although small retailers would prefer to maximise their customer throughput over a smaller amount of time to keep overheads low. Some jobs can also only be done at certain times of the day - concrete has to be poured before sunup, baking needs to be done at night/in the early morning. And some people really hate the idea of '24/7 culture'.
speak, and be heard!
So, trust the Danish and Swedes to be on to this :P, but who else thinks this has merit? I'm a slow starter in the morning, although not nearly as bad as some of the examples in the article. I'd be much happier working from, say, 10am till 7pm. Wanna have a revolution with me? There'll be pie!Night Owls Rise Up
Rebecca Hardy
August 29, 2007
For some people, getting up early is unhealthy.
THEY'RE CALLED MANY things - "lazy", "unproductive", "lacking in ambition"- but late risers are starting to fight back. Long the butt of demeaning office jokes, sleepyheads are officially up in arms thanks to a Danish campaign to stop "the tyranny of early risers".
"The Owl has the right to say: 'Give me the late riser's rhythm at work, at home and in society,"' trumpets the B-Society website, a movement rallying against Denmark's 8am to 4pm working culture. "Let me come to work at 11am and go home at 8pm. Let me have quiet mornings to read my newspaper and ease into the day gently and peacefully."
It may sound far-fetched, but the B-Society has packed quite a punch in Denmark, attracting almost 5000 members in its first four months.
Copenhagen city council is preparing jobs for "chronic late risers" and Carina Christensen, the Danish minister for family affairs, has thrown her weight behind the campaign, saying: "We all live better if our existence is not constantly dictated by an alarm clock."...
...According to Kring, an individual's preference for early rising (an A-person or lark) and late rising (a B-person or owl) is as genetically determined as eye or hair colour. And, she says, far from the stereotyping of people who can't get out of bed in the morning as lazy sods, it's all down to different circadian rhythms.
"B-people find it easy to stay awake at night, preferring to go to bed at around 1am or 2am but have difficulty waking in the morning, not feeling fully awake until after 10am," Kring explains. "A-people are the opposite - they love the mornings but collapse in front of the TV at about 10pm."
And is it practical to have people working and learning in staggered groups? I can see the upsides - peak hour traffic easing off, less overcrowding on the evening busses, no mile-long queues at my supermarket at the only time I can get there. Many industries already have staggered shifts over much longer periods than the standard 9-5 - hospitals and call centers for one. I don't see why other places can't possibly do the same, although small retailers would prefer to maximise their customer throughput over a smaller amount of time to keep overheads low. Some jobs can also only be done at certain times of the day - concrete has to be poured before sunup, baking needs to be done at night/in the early morning. And some people really hate the idea of '24/7 culture'.
speak, and be heard!
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Every time I get a good idea and start working on it I end up going "oh damn time for bed" half-way through. :P
Go Denmark, go!
I'm definitely a B person. I get way more active as the sun sets.
...and it's 2:30 am here now, and I need to get up at noon, so I guess I should force myself to bed.
There's only one problem with it...
I guess this doesn't make me a B person. I'd rather get up and go strait to work upon waking than have time to get relaxed and then have to head out to work.
not that I think it's a bad thing at all. It makes a lot of sense, actually.
in fact it probably makes too much sense to ever be put into effect here
Right now, I wake up at 6:00, and go to bed at 12:00-1:00. And there's not a single problem with it.
I pretty often wish I could restructure my schedule so that everything was happening a few hours later, but too many establishments are open hours that force me to be active at times I'm uncomfortable; then, I'll have a surplus of energy and the want to do things when there's nothing available to me.
This is fine when I'm at school or have work I can do from home, since I can be very productive in those late hours-- terrible for jobs with strict hours though and the like. Picking out these "A" and "B" groups and setting up staggered schedules accordingly seems like a fantastic idea; I really don't see the downsides, or at least none that wouldn't be mitigated by upsides.
I mean really, are there any obvious problems with this?
Completely agree. I live in a college town that seems ironically enough to shut down by 11-12, except for the bars which are generally open till 2ish. But I am definitely a B person, no matter how much sleep I get I detest waking up before at least 10, and I much prefer sleeping till 11-12ish.
I dunno where I was going with this. I'm basically a B-society member these days.
There have already been studies amongst industrial shift workers that show how much production drops in the early hours of the morning, regardless of the amount or regular sleep workers get. Then again, there's a more than a few variables unaccounted for there, and maybe people commited to the lifestyle who had time to master some pretty messed up CRs would benefit from the change. All power to the danes if they want to go for it. I bet the ratio of genuine 'night owls' to 'lazy bastard just out to screw the hardworking danish people dont think i'm not on to you you bastards' is pretty low though.
Edit: See this?
This is all kinds of bad for you. I do something vaguely similar at the moment, where I work at all kinds of random hours, although no where near as many shifts, and it's not a healthy way of getting sleep at all. Luckily I'm too young to really notice any downsides at the moment.
Wake up at 9:30, get to work by 10:30, lunch from 3-4, get off work at 7:30, stay up till 1:30.... oh god I want it now.
Age probably contributes to ones capacity to handle weird hours, although some of my coworkers in that job were three times my age. So who knows.
Regarding light exposure, that's definitely an issue. I've spent the last half-decade at about 65° latitude, where, due to work hours and class schedules, I might not see the light of day for a week at a time during the winter months. It has really adverse effects on some people (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and not everybody can handle it. My campus actually rents out these boxes fitted with full spectrum light bulbs, where I guess you're supposed to just bathe in the light for twenty minutes a day as treatment.
I'd never considered myself a morning person. I have all kinds of trouble getting myself out of bed most mornings. However, once I do get up and get moving, I actually enjoy early mornings. I am rarely able to sleep past 9:00, no matter how late I was up the night before. At night, I love to stay up late, but there are plenty of days I practically force myself to stay up later than 10:00 or so in order to be able to fit everything into my day. I'd consider myself probably an "(A-) or possibly (B+) person"
I also think in many ways it is fashionable to be a morning-hater who is forcing yourself to fit into a schedule "the man" is requiring of you. I remember taking two kids into a convenience store on the way to the airport at about 5am a couple of months ago and spouting the formula "way too early for this" to the clerk just out of habit. But thinking about it now, it really wasn't too early for me. I was perfectly functional and able to hold cheerful conversation while wrangling a toddler, which I'm often unable to do in the afternoons.
I'm not sure, though, how practical it is to keep a whole society on a 24-hour schedule to accommodate everyone. In urban areas, it's probably workable at least to the extent that we're already seeing it happening (at least in the US) or maybe slightly more. Some businesses will find it financially useful to stay open longer hours, and others will not. In less-populated areas, the overhead of keeping the lights on and paying employees for a period of time when they might make one sale over the whole 8-hour shift would be prohibitive.
By the way... the normal schedule for a civilian air traffic controller (the folks who keep all of those big airliners from running into one another -- the ones we all want to be alert and awake) in the US is 8 hours on / 8 hours off for 3-4 days (through 5 shifts on) and then two days off. Talk about messed up sleep schedules.
But how much of that "would suck" comes from your perception that it is later than normal, and that everyone else is going home at 6, or from the impact it would have on the amount of time you had to yourself in the evening? I'd bet that if you were able to shift your entire schedule (so dinner would be later, bed time would be later) and it was an accepted, normal thing that plenty of other people were also doing, you'd probably lose much of that distaste.
It's hard to say. My attitudes toward sleep and work are somewhat neurotic.
It was glorious, to be honest. The only thing I really missed out on with that schedule was going out with friends for dinner itself, or afternoon games of frisbee. But if I really wanted to, I could just take a 3-4 hour nap after my last class and wake up for those sorts of things.
Fuck all those people who told me "once you're back in school" or "as soon as you're working full time" that I'd get used to an 8-5 day. I never have and I doubt I ever will. I'd love to be able to fall asleep at 10pm, but any routine changes I make won't let it happen so I stick with the catching up on weekends plan which is neither ideal nor possible during football season. By October or November, I'm pretty much completely useless (as opposed to mostly useless).
Cat, I'll join your revolution with or without pie.
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
Although there was one study I heard about that said your immune system needs time to get itself in check whilst you sleep, and for every hour you sleep under 7 hours you lose something like 5% of your immune systems ability for that day.
I don't know how much bullshit is contained in either of them.
But then doesn't that only matter if you actually get sick?
Could mean that you're more susceptible to viruses and infections. *shrug*
Edit: Something about the immune system or something.
It would be nice if employers were more flexible with work hours; moreso if society itself accomodated those of us who are often stalking the streets at three in the morning, with 24/7 shops and services other petrol stations and porn outlets. I'll join your revolution, The Cat, so long as we stop marching every four hours so that I can have a quick nap.
Yeah, but I mean, if your immune system is already top-notch or you're not in a situation where you're readily exposed to disease...
Though I suppose cancer can still get you easier.
I'm similar, but not quite as extreme. My preferred bedtime is 12:30-1:00 am, and my preferred wakeup time is 9:30-10:00 am.
People's body clocks do tend to swing earlier as they get older. Maybe when you and I are in our 50s we'll be able to pull off a 9-5 schedule.
It does drive me nuts that late starting is associated with laziness. Yeah, I might swing into work at 9:20 from time to time due to oversleeping, but what about all those early rising fucks who are leaving at 4:45 while I keep chugging along doing my own thing until 7? How is it any more of an inconvenience and a danger to productivity when nobody can find me at 9:10 than it is when I can't find anybody at 4:50? At least they know they can wait 10 minutes and I'll be there, I have to wait 16 hours. :P
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This.
This is the reason I'm completely unable to work any sort of industrial 9 to 5 (or 8 to 5) job.
My schedule naturally defaults to something like what Incenjucar posted, and I'm at my most productive around 10pm-midnight. And generally speaking, I like to work in the middle of the day rather than at the beginning.
In fact, I think the only reason I'm able to get up every morning is:
Anyway my point would be that the incredable thing about humans is that we are capable of adjusting and changing things about ourselves and ressetting your body clock is just as possible as changing aspects of your personality, but may be so foregien as to feel as if you are trying to write with your less dominant hand. And the genetics explanation is one of the most absurd I've heard, but according to some people there is a gene for everything.
I envy the people who get spikes though, I only seem to get them during adrenaline rushes or caffine rushes, I have founf that I get a drop around 2 pm no matter what time a work, though that could be completly psycho-samatical.
Well, the actual article points out that most people are in the middle of the two extremes and have a better adaptive capacity than others. I didn't put the entire article in quotes, because its a bit long.
I do remember that when I was quite young I was a pretty chronically early riser, but the pattern really shifted in early high school, and I've been a sleeper-inner ever since. That said, when I needed to be up early, I was capable of shifting back a few hours. It just didn't hold without the aid of alarms and a fair amount of discipline at night.
If I indulge it my whole sleeping schedule gets fucked.
I can operate on any amount of sleep.
However, one time I did sleep for 36 hours straight.
I have many alarms to prevent that sort of thing now-a-days.
Legal medicine, Cocaine doesn't count.
I think that from what a lot of people are saying here, the real problem is how inflexible management can be when it comes to the way workers arrange their day.
My sweet, untouched Miranda
And while the seagulls are crying
We fall but our souls are flying