6 ms·

As 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

by dtien 8y ago

As 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 'normal' hours: Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. Then the kicker at the end, "The term “chronotype diversity” is starting to find traction, as business managers explore concepts like team energetic asynchrony". At this point, I stopped and looked up at the URL to make sure I wasn't on a parody site. But all joking aside, it would be interesting to explore what societal as well as productivity improvements could be had if people's sleep patterns were viewed as varied rather than forcing everyone on the same schedule.

wpietri 8y ago
Yeah, I'm suspicious of putting people into big buckets based on an easily observable characteristic. I think it erases useful complexity. Personally, I shifted from being a night owl to an early riser years ago. I think it had a lot to do with a complex series of changes I made in my life. Trying to force it by just changing my wake time wouldn't have done anything good, but improving other things eventually resulted in a mode of life I like more that happens to be early rising.
- egjerlow 8y ago
  Is that complex series something you'd care to elaborate on? I'm sure I'm not alone in trying to understand what really makes us sleep the way we do, and every data point helps!
  - wpietri 8y ago
    It was a bunch of stuff. One strand was about me recognizing that my baseline level of stress and anxiety was too high and working to lower that. Another was about improving sleep quality, so I was sharper during the day. A third was recognizing that I was an irresponsible electric light user; I automated my home lights to follow a consistent day-night cycle. [1] And a fourth was around physical exercise; over a few years I went from the stereotypical hates-exercise guy to somebody who regularly runs races. And possibly related, of course, was that I got older during this period. [1] https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise
- kyteland 8y ago
  I shifted to being an early riser around 30. All it really took was for me to move into a place with unobstructed east-facing windows. Within a matter of months I was waking up at sunrise and bedtime had shifted from 2am to 10pm without any effort on my part. Honestly, the only difference in my day to day has been when I do stuff. I'm still sleeping the exact same amount. I'm not more/less rested or alert during the day. I just do the same stuff in the morning that I'd have done in the evening previously. The only benefit is that I no longer use an alarm. Work has flex hours and I don't have to be in until 10am, so I just wake up whenever I wake up and don't worry about it because there's plenty of time.
bena 8y ago
I also get a little eye-rolly when they went into the whole "we see things differently" bit. The whole "I'm so special and unique thing" just grates after a while. If you're like roughly 30% of the population, that whole "seeing things differently" means you see things like 30% of the population. Which ain't too shabby.
- lev99 8y ago
  Being in a 30% doesn't make you an oddball, maverick, or outsider. (Words used to describe 'nightowls' in this article)
  - bena 8y ago
    That was the point I was trying to make.
    - lev99 8y ago
      I was agreeing with you.
krapsna 8y ago
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, or maybe my mother would start vacuuming my room at 8 AM frustrated that I wasn't already up. All through my school years, from elementary to HS I was barely functional. I was often late or missed the bus because I was a walking zombie, struggling to get dressed and out of the house without falling asleep. Keep in mind that I'm 45, none of this was due to too much TV time or smart phone use. (One TV in the house, no such thing as notebooks, ipads, or smart phones back then). No matter how much I struggled through the day to just stay awake, and how much I was looking forward to going to bed that night, at 9 PM I would be fully awake. I laid in bed night after night watching the click tick by as I tried to unsuccessfully "just go to sleep". Then, when my alarm went off I'd be exhausted again and struggle to get up and out the door. I was a terrible student to say the least. You're told for years that you're lazy, unmotivated, a slacker, etc. During my High School summers, I would get into a pattern of going to sleep at between 3 and 6 AM, waking at noon. I was a fully functioning human being. I had the most creative and productive days (evenings) of my life as an artist. I was naturally alert and creative Ispent the wee hours of the morning drawing, painting, reading. Then I'd be plunged back into misery when the school year began. I once again drove my teachers crazy. I got in trouble for falling asleep in class. I was told again that I was a lazy slacker. I don't know how many times I was spoken to by faculty about not living up to my potential. When you're told your whole life that you're only problem is that you're lazy, and you can't figure out why you can't find the motivation to do the things you want to do, you start to believe it. After HS, I had a few menial jobs, stumbling into one where I worked from 8 PM to 4 AM. It was great, except for the fact that my mother still harassed my by trying to wake me up at 9 AM because... I don't know. I guess she just didn't want some lazy slacker sleeping the day away? Later I worked my way into tech and had jobs requiring normal office hours. I was self medicating by drinking most nights, trying to get to sleep to maintain a normal-ish schedule. It didn't work all that well. I was working at a company as a technical lead that I'd help get up and running with a couple of friends from school, and even though we were supposed to be "flex" hours, not surprisingly the morning people kept setting up 8 AM meetings that I was almost always late for and sometimes missed. Out of frustration I spoke to my Dr about it, and he sent me to a a medical sleep center. I had a couple of sleep studies done, electrodes glued to my head and all that. The Dr told me I had DSPS, something I'd never heard of, nor sought a diagnosis of. This was roughly 20 years ago. I looked it up, and found that it was a real thing. So, I told my friends that I'd started that company with what was up... I had thing thing called "DSPS" and what it was, how it worked and all that. And I'll never forget how my best friend looked me square in the eye and told me he basically had lost all respect for me, for coming to them with some kind of bullshit made up medical diagnosis, trying to excuse my inability to keep the same schedule as everybody else. The relationship between the two of us quickly went down hill. I spent some time after that out of tech, working jobs that were more amenable to later hours. For the last 6 I've been back in it, and it's still a frustrating struggle to stay on "normal" hours. In an effort to go to sleep when I should, I take benadryl and melatonin almost every night. Sometimes it works, sometimes it seems to have no effect. I know that I'm not as effective at my job as I could be, my mind is often in a fog during the day. And again... I spend the whole day looking forward to climbing into bed at 9 PM to get a good night's rest, only to have my brain begin firing on all cylinders that night. I get tremendously motivated to do all of the things I was too tired to accomplish all day, and I have to try to shut it down by taking that benadryl and melatonin cocktail so I don't stay up all night. Then I get into bed and toss and turn, unable to sleep usually until 1 or 2 AM. My paternal grandmother had it. I have it. One of my four children has it. The article linked to here says that genetic mutations have been found that are linked to it. And still, you make a comment illustrating society's skeptical attitude toward DSPS. You obviously don't believe that it's real. That's what we deal with, and I don't expect that it will change any time soon.
collyw 8y ago
"what societal as well as productivity improvements" In my experience it is likely to give some sort of decrease. I have worked in places with very flexible working hours and my team leader was always in later than me (officially we were supposed to be in by 10 am, but 11 am was more normal for him. I on the other hand got woken up by my girlfriend for her job, so i started at 9 like most other people). Basically if I had something to ask him in those two hours I had to wait, which ended up being a bit of a pain in the arse overall.

by dtien 8y ago

wpietri 8y ago

Yeah, I'm suspicious of putting people into big buckets based on an easily observable characteristic. I think it erases useful complexity. Personally, I shifted from being a night owl to an early riser years ago. I think it had a lot to do with a complex series of changes I made in my life. Trying to force it by just changing my wake time wouldn't have done anything good, but improving other things eventually resulted in a mode of life I like more that happens to be early rising.

egjerlow 8y ago
Is that complex series something you'd care to elaborate on? I'm sure I'm not alone in trying to understand what really makes us sleep the way we do, and every data point helps!
- wpietri 8y ago
  It was a bunch of stuff. One strand was about me recognizing that my baseline level of stress and anxiety was too high and working to lower that. Another was about improving sleep quality, so I was sharper during the day. A third was recognizing that I was an irresponsible electric light user; I automated my home lights to follow a consistent day-night cycle. [1] And a fourth was around physical exercise; over a few years I went from the stereotypical hates-exercise guy to somebody who regularly runs races. And possibly related, of course, was that I got older during this period. [1] https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise
kyteland 8y ago
I shifted to being an early riser around 30. All it really took was for me to move into a place with unobstructed east-facing windows. Within a matter of months I was waking up at sunrise and bedtime had shifted from 2am to 10pm without any effort on my part. Honestly, the only difference in my day to day has been when I do stuff. I'm still sleeping the exact same amount. I'm not more/less rested or alert during the day. I just do the same stuff in the morning that I'd have done in the evening previously. The only benefit is that I no longer use an alarm. Work has flex hours and I don't have to be in until 10am, so I just wake up whenever I wake up and don't worry about it because there's plenty of time.

bena 8y ago

I also get a little eye-rolly when they went into the whole "we see things differently" bit. The whole "I'm so special and unique thing" just grates after a while. If you're like roughly 30% of the population, that whole "seeing things differently" means you see things like 30% of the population. Which ain't too shabby.

lev99 8y ago
Being in a 30% doesn't make you an oddball, maverick, or outsider. (Words used to describe 'nightowls' in this article)
- bena 8y ago
  That was the point I was trying to make.
  - lev99 8y ago
    I was agreeing with you.

krapsna 8y ago

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, or maybe my mother would start vacuuming my room at 8 AM frustrated that I wasn't already up. All through my school years, from elementary to HS I was barely functional. I was often late or missed the bus because I was a walking zombie, struggling to get dressed and out of the house without falling asleep. Keep in mind that I'm 45, none of this was due to too much TV time or smart phone use. (One TV in the house, no such thing as notebooks, ipads, or smart phones back then). No matter how much I struggled through the day to just stay awake, and how much I was looking forward to going to bed that night, at 9 PM I would be fully awake. I laid in bed night after night watching the click tick by as I tried to unsuccessfully "just go to sleep". Then, when my alarm went off I'd be exhausted again and struggle to get up and out the door. I was a terrible student to say the least. You're told for years that you're lazy, unmotivated, a slacker, etc. During my High School summers, I would get into a pattern of going to sleep at between 3 and 6 AM, waking at noon. I was a fully functioning human being. I had the most creative and productive days (evenings) of my life as an artist. I was naturally alert and creative Ispent the wee hours of the morning drawing, painting, reading. Then I'd be plunged back into misery when the school year began. I once again drove my teachers crazy. I got in trouble for falling asleep in class. I was told again that I was a lazy slacker. I don't know how many times I was spoken to by faculty about not living up to my potential. When you're told your whole life that you're only problem is that you're lazy, and you can't figure out why you can't find the motivation to do the things you want to do, you start to believe it. After HS, I had a few menial jobs, stumbling into one where I worked from 8 PM to 4 AM. It was great, except for the fact that my mother still harassed my by trying to wake me up at 9 AM because... I don't know. I guess she just didn't want some lazy slacker sleeping the day away? Later I worked my way into tech and had jobs requiring normal office hours. I was self medicating by drinking most nights, trying to get to sleep to maintain a normal-ish schedule. It didn't work all that well. I was working at a company as a technical lead that I'd help get up and running with a couple of friends from school, and even though we were supposed to be "flex" hours, not surprisingly the morning people kept setting up 8 AM meetings that I was almost always late for and sometimes missed. Out of frustration I spoke to my Dr about it, and he sent me to a a medical sleep center. I had a couple of sleep studies done, electrodes glued to my head and all that. The Dr told me I had DSPS, something I'd never heard of, nor sought a diagnosis of. This was roughly 20 years ago. I looked it up, and found that it was a real thing. So, I told my friends that I'd started that company with what was up... I had thing thing called "DSPS" and what it was, how it worked and all that. And I'll never forget how my best friend looked me square in the eye and told me he basically had lost all respect for me, for coming to them with some kind of bullshit made up medical diagnosis, trying to excuse my inability to keep the same schedule as everybody else. The relationship between the two of us quickly went down hill. I spent some time after that out of tech, working jobs that were more amenable to later hours. For the last 6 I've been back in it, and it's still a frustrating struggle to stay on "normal" hours. In an effort to go to sleep when I should, I take benadryl and melatonin almost every night. Sometimes it works, sometimes it seems to have no effect. I know that I'm not as effective at my job as I could be, my mind is often in a fog during the day. And again... I spend the whole day looking forward to climbing into bed at 9 PM to get a good night's rest, only to have my brain begin firing on all cylinders that night. I get tremendously motivated to do all of the things I was too tired to accomplish all day, and I have to try to shut it down by taking that benadryl and melatonin cocktail so I don't stay up all night. Then I get into bed and toss and turn, unable to sleep usually until 1 or 2 AM. My paternal grandmother had it. I have it. One of my four children has it. The article linked to here says that genetic mutations have been found that are linked to it. And still, you make a comment illustrating society's skeptical attitude toward DSPS. You obviously don't believe that it's real. That's what we deal with, and I don't expect that it will change any time soon.

collyw 8y ago

"what societal as well as productivity improvements" In my experience it is likely to give some sort of decrease. I have worked in places with very flexible working hours and my team leader was always in later than me (officially we were supposed to be in by 10 am, but 11 am was more normal for him. I on the other hand got woken up by my girlfriend for her job, so i started at 9 like most other people). Basically if I had something to ask him in those two hours I had to wait, which ended up being a bit of a pain in the arse overall.