I've noticed if you are passionate about something, you don't track time, you don't care about your surroundings and lose yourself in what you are doing. That's when productivity happens and it doesn't respect sunlight always. However, it is easier on most human beings to have a circadian rhythm aligned with sunlight and workout first thing in the morning to jump start the day. It is more sustainable in the long run to do that to have a healthy routine from my perspective and backed by research. Shawn Stevenson has some good insight on that to get you started.
Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem
31–40 of 163 posts
Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently listened to an interview with Matthew Walker (author of "Why We Sleep" book mentioned in article). Dr. Walker stated the scientific consensus is now trending toward historical biphasic sleep being a social trend rather than how we're "supposed" to sleep.
Matthew Walker's excerpt on biphasic sleep: https://delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=3524 TL;DR: There's evidence of cultures untouched by electricity sleeping 7 hours at night with a 30-60min afternoon nap, which he calls biphasic sleep, with some tribes switching to monophasic in cooler months. All humans have a hardwired dip in midafternoon alertness.
I believe the original parent is refering to the idea that people naturally wake up and do stuff in the middle of the night.
Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
My night time wakings have a very clear and strong association with those periods of time when I’m working on my side-project/startup. The bbc article mentions ‘meditating on your dreams’ as an activity for this time, however I’m likely to have a mind racing with all permutations of technical problems that I’ve evidently not managed to clear from my brain. Does anyone have experience-based advice on whether it’s bett…
Personally I find that trying to work at 3am is a bad idea. The backlighting (no matter how much blue-light filtering you have) will wake you up, and even if you solve the problems that are keeping you awake now, you're almost guaranteed to get back in bed with new ones to be thinking about.
Fwiw, I put my screen in darkroom mode and use nothing red bulbs in my evening lights.
It's very easy to avoid bluelight while you work. However, as you mention, that's only half the battle.
Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem
#34The author's experience is very similar to my own–my parents called me 'the sleepless wonder' when I was a kid, and by high school getting out of bed for morning classes was excruciating. In college I mostly chose classes that started later in the day and wound up doing much better academically. Since college I've made a point of taking jobs that offer flexible hours, which thankfully seems to be increasingly common.…
1) I was much like you. My performance in college suffered as I couldn't rouse in the morning. I recently discovered I actually did have a medical problem affecting sleep quality (partially obstructed airway from childhood injury). Can't help but wonder how things would be different if I'd figured it out sooner.
2) Had a kid, and sleeping in late is simply no longer an option. Which makes me think that despite how I covet late nights and sleeping in, it really was never the natural order of things, at least for adults.
Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently listened to an interview with Matthew Walker (author of "Why We Sleep" book mentioned in article). Dr. Walker stated the scientific consensus is now trending toward historical biphasic sleep being a social trend rather than how we're "supposed" to sleep.
Matthew Walker's excerpt on biphasic sleep: https://delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=3524 TL;DR: There's evidence of cultures untouched by electricity sleeping 7 hours at night with a 30-60min afternoon nap, which he calls biphasic sleep, with some tribes switching to monophasic in cooler months. All humans have a hardwired dip in midafternoon alertness.
> All humans have a hardwired dip in midafternoon alertness.
In my personal experience, if you don't have a post-lunch carbs crash and you do have air conditioning, the dip doesn't exist.
He doesn't really seem to back up the existence of a biological dip at all that is innate to human rhythms.
Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem
#36I'm the only person I've encountered that naturally runs on a 25 hour clock. I get the same amount of sleep per day (~8 hours) but I follow it with 17 hours of wakefulness so my clock moves forward by an hour every day. To my knowledge there are no adverse health effects, but it's certainly out of the ordinary. I often wonder if more people are like me since sleep problems are so common, but they cannot follow their…
So you then have periods where you sleep during the day? Work for yourself or have a very flexible employer?
Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem
#37What really bugs me is the self-righteousness of the early riser. There's definitely some kind of power dynamic going on. Perhaps the joke should be: How do you know if someone gets up at 5am? Because they tell you.
as an early riser myself, what bothers me about this is that I personally feel like I'm only talking about because someone else is making a big deal out of it. I don't think I go out of my way to bring the topic up, but I'm constantly getting people saying things like "omg I saw when you sent that email/made that commit/whatever, do you ever sleep", and then I gotta say something like "well I was up at 5 so I knocked it out before I drove in..." and now it's a thing we're talking about and I'm the crazy guy.
It feels like a much bigger issue to late-risers than early-risers.
Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem
#38I am an early riser. One issue I have is that I am very sleepy around 2 pm. I hope siestas are seriously studied, and the stigma on them removed.
Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem
#39As someone who also has atypical sleep patterns ( late sleeper, early riser ), there were some interesting points in here. I know there's been research done as well on the number of hours of sleep required rather than 'when' it occurs, but those haven't seem to have reached a consensus yet. I will say some of these articles sometimes read satirically. Notably, they have a diagnosis for people who can't sleep at 'norm…
Note: I pounded this out pretty quickly and don't have time to proofread. Sorry for any grammatical errors. I will say some of these articles sometimes read satirically. Notably, they have a diagnosis for people who can't sleep at 'normal' hours: Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. I have been struggling with being unable to sleep during normal hours my entire life. My parents would yank the covers off of me in the morning…
Long term benadryl use is not healthy.
After several years of melatonin use, I developed an irregular heart rhythm I could hear/feel, and you could see on an echocardiogram. It dissipated within a week of stopping.
Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem
#40Based on the title, I was hoping it was about something else, something I talk about frequently with people who think they have sleep problems: human sleep is naturally biphasic. I know a lot of people who think waking up in the middle of the night means they have a disease, insomnia. When the truth is that before electric light, normal sleep was going to bed when it got dark, being awake for a while in the middle of…
This was apparently limited to victoria england. Most hunter gather cultures slept one block at night and then napped in the afternoon, according to matthew walker.