21–30 of 83 posts
When my wife was pregnant with our first kid I did this for a while. She was exhausted and went to bed early and so did I. Bed at 8, up 1-3, bed 3-7. I got a ton done in those two hours. I remember looking for an e ink display to use with my computer so I could do it by candlelight, to no avail
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And it feels bad as well. I have polyphasic periods and I'm always relieved when they end. Not sure why I don't feel too good, because I have ways to cope now, but good monophasic sleep makes me wake up rested and without a headache.
I think it feels bad because it inevitably messes up one's digestive clock (which is implicated in robustly configuring the sleep clock) and by implication, particularly with modern food, blood sugar levels. (I suspect that the long cultural stability of the Spanish long siesta has a lot to do with the cultural stability of mealtimes -- and meal types/sizes -- that developed around it.) The other day I felt queasy, s…
I'm trying to watch it from blood sugar perspective, I'm pretty good at extending periods between meals due to intermittent fasting, but there may be connections since Im not fasting all the time.
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> Hardly a singular obsession of one person The parent post means the study of the practice, not the practice itself. It might make sense -- I think it probably does -- but that doesn't mean that it's not true, when you dig into it, that the major study here is Ekrich and all the articles about it, articles about Ekrich. Making intuitive sense isn't really enough. It's difficult to study the habits of the long dead,…
Aside from Ekrich - who can at least point to the extracts he has found in historic archives, there are sleep study results that suggest humans still have remnant night waking behaviour; these fall into the intuitive. Which leaves what I first raised - a thousand years of documented broken sleep by monks in monestaries getting up to pray late at night and again early in the morning. Some might write that off as hair…
Did anyone suggest this? I think it is rude to suggest that the comment you are replying to did any such thing.
(I have noted the long Spanish siesta elsewhere)
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I think that future generations may forget most details of our way of life. However, as you said, it won't be due to lack of a historical record, but instead it will be due to a lack of interest in uneventful details combined with a plethora of information. I think with history we often have no clue about certain details even though the evidence is right in front of us; it's just not something we find interesting.
I've been reading the book Debt by David Graeber, and it went a lot of places I didn't expect. I suspect a lot of things we would take interest in are just not written down, or not commonly explored. For example, it was common for people to visit all their neighbors each day. It was also common for people to give each other gifts, not too large or too small or too equal to form a community.
I am sure there is some regional variability, but at least in these parts you can still see that habit ingrained in those now around 80 years of age or older. But it seems to quickly taper off in anyone younger. By the time you get to my generation it is effectively unheard of.
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I think that future generations may forget most details of our way of life. However, as you said, it won't be due to lack of a historical record, but instead it will be due to a lack of interest in uneventful details combined with a plethora of information. I think with history we often have no clue about certain details even though the evidence is right in front of us; it's just not something we find interesting.
> I think that future generations may forget most details of our way of life. Oh no what will future generations do without doomscrolling.
Caveat that doomscrolling specifically maybe isn’t a great example given that we are collecting a ton of data about it, we’re mostly just ignoring it.
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Aside from Ekrich - who can at least point to the extracts he has found in historic archives, there are sleep study results that suggest humans still have remnant night waking behaviour; these fall into the intuitive. Which leaves what I first raised - a thousand years of documented broken sleep by monks in monestaries getting up to pray late at night and again early in the morning. Some might write that off as hair…
> but it's not exactly the case that he is drawing on forged entries with no other examples to be found. Did anyone suggest this? I think it is rude to suggest that the comment you are replying to did any such thing. (I have noted the long Spanish siesta elsewhere)
> (Has this) evidence been examined sceptically?
The implication there is that the "evidence" quoted might not exist, might be a stretch of translation, misreading of spidery handwriting, or spun whole from new cloth to fit a narrative.
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> but it's not exactly the case that he is drawing on forged entries with no other examples to be found. Did anyone suggest this? I think it is rude to suggest that the comment you are replying to did any such thing. (I have noted the long Spanish siesta elsewhere)
Not that specifically but that's certainly one whisp of smoke that might be found should: > (Has this) evidence been examined sceptically? The implication there is that the "evidence" quoted might not exist, might be a stretch of translation, misreading of spidery handwriting, or spun whole from new cloth to fit a narrative.
I personally read "sceptically" to imply the idea of seeing whether the study falls victim to significance bias -- e.g. once you see it, you see it a lot, but is it an indicator of a widespread habit, or just a not-particularly-unusual one?
Edit: And indeed if you read on a bit about Ekrich, he suffers from sleep disorders for which he takes medication. That's a potential risk factor for significance/confirmation bias here, I'd have thought. But there's no reason to jump to the conclusion that fabrication is being suggested.
I'm waiting for 8am, then feed + walk the dogs, then I'll go back to bed for 1h or a bit more (tops), and it'll still be early when I wake up again. Most of my colleagues will show up around 10 with bleary eyes while I've done most of the stuff I wanted to do already!
... So that gives me a lot of time for a good walk, or tinkering etc in the afternoon.
I used to be a 'night owl' really, going to bed at 2am; but I realized I was never really terribly efficient until about lunchtime the following day, while I was also wasting my time in the evening for no real reason. AND wasting the short winter day at my desk.
Nowadays, well, I got the whole day to myself!
It's so interesting to me that fundamental ways of life like this can go nearly undocumented save passing references. We know a lot more about the annals of Greek history, for example, because that's what was written down. Ekirch took years to rediscover all these references to biphasic sleep because it was so fundamentally normal that historic writers never thought to focus on it. Now, with our obsessive encyclopedi…
...will bitrot away in 50 years.
In 1000, future historians will probably view our period as a curious dark age. (Where are all the books and the monuments??)
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By not scraping pans in the middle of the night. Bigger, and well built dwellings help, as do earbuds and soft shoes.
I have to tell you, 4am-5am, between sleep phases, is the best time to clean a kitchen. It's vaguely contemplative and when you go into the kitchen later that day it's like the cleaning fairy did it.