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Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

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Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#51

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

OutOfHere wrote: post #24

There are three aspects of solar sleep: 1. Going to bed early and rising early, closer to 8 pm to 4:30 am. 2. An afternoon nap is extremely beneficial to having an attentive and productive evening. The nap makes quick work of clearing accumulated waste from the brain. Employers would do well to have nap pods for a 30 minute nap as a default, although longer is useful if you don't have a 9-5 job. A nap doesn't negate…

I _wish_ I could nap after hearing all the benefits, but for me it’s either doze off for five minutes and wake up feeling blah, or lie there for 10 minutes, MAYBE go to sleep for a bit and wake up feeling horrible.

If I have light to anchor my circadian rhythm, I’m happiest waking up around 5:30-6:00 and going straight through, starting to wind down at 8:30.

If I sleep later, I’ll end up shifting more towards naturally waking up around 10:30, going to bed at 11:30 PM and generally feeling not terrible but not great and slightly tired during the entire day.

Luckily the light can be artificial that wakes me up — I use smart bulbs as an alarm.

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#52

Post by wongarsu »

skrebbel wrote: post #11
stereolambda wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd buy your meals in diners instead of buying food to cook, if you were someone non-wealthy working in a factory or an office. You probably wouldn't be buying that much outside of this: for cigarettes, newspapers etc. there were newstands you could shop at while running to work. For big purchases, I imagine you would get a day off. Buying a fridge would be a major event, for example. But also one I'd expect people…

Good thing the servants didn't need food or fridges.

If you weren't that wealthy, you might have part-time servants. If you were wealthy, your servants would eat in their own little dining room in your manor, and shop for food for you and the servants in the same shopping trip

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#53

Post by vidarh »

frereubu wrote: post #43
niobe wrote: post #4

I think you, the breadwinner, did NOT go to the shops. Your wife did. I don't know when 9-5 started, but it kinds of smacks of the British being that regimented. By contrast, my observation is that MOST of the world's population still works from about an hour after dawn until early afternoon, or sometimes until dusk, depending on their age, job, station in life and the general level of resources they have versus what…

Not a historian of work, but my understanding is that one point where 9-5 started was Henry Ford when he realised that longer working days led to a higher turnover of workers in a tight labour market. There's an interesting podcast that touches on it here: https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/where-are-we-going%3F-the-...

The push for the 8 hour working day started many decades before Ford. He was the first major employer to argue it benefited employers too, but many smaller employers had accepted it before that.

May 1st as an international day for Labour demonstrations, for example, started in 1889 after a proposal from what is now the AFL-CIO to resume the fight for the 8 hour day in commemmoration of the Chicago Haymarket massacre.

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#54

Post by metalman »

"norms", ha! anyone who thinks there are norms, isn't normal.

in groups of people who share very specific life styles, where the givens are different than other groups indivuals will adapt or suffer, farmers, long haul truckers, commercial pilots, emergency doctors/staff, shift worker(which shift?, split shift) et fucking cetera.

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#55

Post by frereubu »

vidarh wrote: post #53
frereubu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a historian of work, but my understanding is that one point where 9-5 started was Henry Ford when he realised that longer working days led to a higher turnover of workers in a tight labour market. There's an interesting podcast that touches on it here: https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/where-are-we-going%3F-the-...

The push for the 8 hour working day started many decades before Ford. He was the first major employer to argue it benefited employers too, but many smaller employers had accepted it before that. May 1st as an international day for Labour demonstrations, for example, started in 1889 after a proposal from what is now the AFL-CIO to resume the fight for the 8 hour day in commemmoration of the Chicago Haymarket massacre.

Like I say, not a historian, so thanks for the pointer.

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#56

Post by broken-kebab »

junga wrote: post #41
amunozo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the true South European spirit! So many problems in life would become easier reducing the working hours .

In Germany it's a common prejudice that people in southern Europe work less. Data shows otherwise: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...

This particular data doesn't show this. Just in case: I'm neither German nor Southern European, and I declare my neutrality.

For starters, it shows time spent at work. Meanwhile employees can do varying amount of work in the same amount of time. And I suppose that's what those Germans you referring to mean.

Second as the document notes: "The results are affected by the varying proportions of part-time workers across countries, in addition to differences in legal frameworks and in country-specific usual length of the workweek".

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#57

Post by frereubu »

swiftcoder wrote: post #48
frereubu wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a huge difference between summer temperatures in, say, Galicia and Andalucía. Siestas make some sense in somewhere like Sevilla when temperatures top 40 degrees and it's hard to do anything anywhere that's not air conditioned, and particularly manual labour outside, but in Coruña when it's high 20s to mid 30s at most it's just not the same. (Although climate change is dragging both of those top temperatures up,…

Ourense's ~40 C summer temps would like a word. North to south even just within Galicia makes quite a difference

True, depends very much on where you are. The humidity in Ourense can be a killer - at least in Sevilla it's generally a dry heat.

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#58

Post by zokier »

The article is ignoring the effects of latitude completely. Solar days are very different in southern europe like greece or spain compared to e.g. nordics (norway/sweden/finland).

Of course one could argue that living in such high latitudes is unnatural and unhealthy but that would be much bigger topic

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#59

Post by andai »

broken-kebab wrote: post #56
junga wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany it's a common prejudice that people in southern Europe work less. Data shows otherwise: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...

This particular data doesn't show this. Just in case: I'm neither German nor Southern European, and I declare my neutrality. For starters, it shows time spent at work. Meanwhile employees can do varying amount of work in the same amount of time. And I suppose that's what those Germans you referring to mean. Second as the document notes: "The results are affected by the varying proportions of part-time workers across…

I read an article many years ago, by a man who was working 80 hour weeks. He analyzed his work and tried to optimize it.

Eventually he cut his working hours in half, while actually doubling his output, because the shorter work hours required him to actually focus.

He was, of course, self-employed, and could design his work week how he liked.

I guess that's important for another reason: if someone else had been paying him by the hour, he would have experienced a 50% pay cut. Instead, his income doubled, because it was based on the actual results.

Re: Solar-based sleep patterns compared to modern norms

#60

Post by notahacker »

ljf wrote: post #22
p2detar wrote: post #8

> unbroken and uninterrupted eight hour sleep schedule didn't exist and is in fact, a totally modern invention and a consequence of the rigid 9-5 work schedule > An unbroken eight hours of sleep did not always fit with the cycles of the sky above and sleep was therefore rhythmically polyphasic. I tend to disagree. There is serious literature suggesting this, but to my knowledge no concrete evidence confirms it. In fa…

Apparently it was common in pre industrial Britain https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medie...

But that's pretty much exactly what the OP mentioned. An academic was intrigued by the idea that some texts mentioned the idea of "second sleep" in passing and devised a theory of everybody's sleep every night being neatly broken into two halves with an hour of wakefulness in the middle because people go to bed up early and get up late in the absence of artificial light.

But all the evidence from cultures which have little or no access to artificial light even today contradicts the idea of that being a natural, universal response to lack of daylight, and it arguably makes even less sense as a universal approach to daylight patterns in the relatively northern UK, where darkness ranges from 6 hours in the summer to 16 in the winter. The textual evidence is congruent with sleeping patterns being not much different to the modern day, where people also often wake in the middle of the night and go back to sleep (sometimes even getting up to make a drink and twiddle their phone in between) but just don't refer to them as numbered "sleeps" very often

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