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Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

nytimes.com

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Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#71

Post by k__ »

adrianmonk wrote: post #60
mmaunder wrote: post #22

What 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.

When it comes to work (or other morning activities), I think there are actually two aspects to this that often get confused. One is what you're talking about: the way people regard waking up early as virtuous. The other is that, how early or late you arrive to an event sends signals about your attitude toward the event. Or at least it is interpreted that way. For example, if you are very excited about seeing a partic…

Isn't what you saying exactly the problem mmaunder talked about?

I like to sleep from 3-12 and I like to take naps at 18.

This has nothing to do with me being unable to do a job or being not intersted in it.

I worked for a bunch of people who gave me a hard time for not being awake at 9.

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#72

Post by kazagistar »

5partan wrote: post #66

First of all, I wouldn’t consider someone who sleeps from 2a.m. To 10a.m. A night owl, everything before noon is stil morning for me :) And why do those articles never mention daylight saving time or the fact that that there is a 3 hour difference between sunrise in winter and summer? I’m pretty sure DNA doesn’t care about fixed time schedules but that it rather synchronizes to natural sun and moon light. I’m convinc…

Nice gatekeeping.

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#73

Post by rootusrootus »

mercutio2 wrote: post #41
pg_bot wrote: post #25

I'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…

Funny, I thought living with a 25 hour day was a nearly universal desire for people under 40. Certainly most of my close friends in my teens and 20s would regularly discuss that this would make our lives better. Once I experienced the pain of needing to wake up for a small child, I was forced out of my historical sleep pattern. Fortunately I, like my parents, need less and less sleep as I get older, so 24 hours with…

I suspect there is a pattern -- have kids, learn to wake up earlier. For me it was self-reinforcing; the act of putting the kids down for bed at 8:30PM is like drawing a line in the sand, with quiet hours afterward. It makes it sensible to go to bed earlier and wake up earlier.

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#75

Post by Retric »

LifeQuestioner wrote: post #54
danvasquez29 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I really wish I could sleep by 2am. It would make life possible. My natural sleep pattern is 5am-12. I've literally spent the last decade trying to solve it. Until, I gave up.

Move to a new time zone and that 'natural' 5am-12 would shift to match that time zone. So, it's really not about biology it's about how you set up your environment.

That said, as long as it's working for you great! Just don't assume it's impossible to change if it's causing you problems.

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#76

Post by bena »

gnicholas wrote: post #28
mmaunder wrote: post #22

What 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.

There are, of course, some early risers who don't do this. But yeah, the ones who do are pretty unbearable. I had a neighbor who boasted of how she woke up at 4:45a to work out. Of course, she fell asleep in front of the TV at 8p...

It's not people who get up early and brag about it that are the problem. It's people who brag about useless stuff that are the problem.

It's the same with people who go to bed really late as if it's some kind of achievement. Or people who sleep less. Or people who sleep more.

All of these things are simply facts about your life. They don't make you any more virtuous, interesting, blah blah blah, than the next person.

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#77

Post by rabidrat »

WalterSear wrote: post #39
krapsna wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Long-term inability to work is also not healthy. Obviously the parent commenter does not want to have to use these drugs as they are, but they are making a difficult choice based on the circumstances of their brain and our society. I wish they could find work that allowed them to be as healthy and productive as possible.

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#78

Post by mschuster91 »

I believe a big part of the problem is that the old larks, and with them their belief about lark superiority, simply don't retire as they used to, thus keeping young people and fresh ideas from moving up the "chain of command".

Being a hard night owl myself, I'm happy to work at a place with flexible hours, but then again most of my company is <40-50 years of age. People in BigCos often aren't as lucky and to make it worse "office politics" with the competitiveness associated there (and mentioned in the article) effectively kill off any motivation to chsnge.

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#79

Post by macNchz »

amelius wrote: post #27
mmaunder wrote: post #22

What 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.

There's also an asymmetry: the person who works late can't rub it in, because the early person has already left the building.

As much as I dislike having to play the game, late-in-late-out people can benefit by saving some email replies until the tail end of their workday...it always feels gross to me to do it intentionally, but I've found it'll often placate the types of busybodies who conflate arrival time with productivity.

Re: Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

#80

Post by bitwize »

mmaunder wrote: post #22

What 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.

"Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."

The virtue of getting up early dates from the days when everybody was a farmer. Farmers who got a head start on the work that needed to be done even befode the sun came up outfarmed late risers.

These days it is considered a mark of professionalism and respect for the job to show up for work on time or early, at 8 AM or before.

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