18 ms·

If I could pick one of the things to optimize all of society around, it would be sleep. I believe that many of society's ills can be traced back to people being

If I could pick one of the things to optimize all of society around, it would be sleep. I believe that many of society's ills can be traced back to people being sleep deprived on average. Modern society both ignorantly and through sheer foolishness undervalues sleep. I understand the emotional motivation for a statement like, "you can sleep when you're dead," but I do despise this prevelant sentiment which has become a culutre.

thisisnico 7y ago
Our society is so focused on productivity that we forget that the foundation for improved productivity is sleep, exercise and diet. Mind & Body, one system.
- anbotero 7y ago
  I enjoy my sleep thoroughly and I sleep 7-8 hours a day. Still, I think it’s a waste of time, and I don’t mean work productivity, but life. You sleep, wake up, and surprise, a third of the day has just gone by and you didn’t even notice. I recognize the need to sleep, but I personally just wished we could develop a way to keep going with your day without sleeping. If that were physically possible, I’d just meditate some few hours daily instead of sleeping 7-8 hours.
  - dylan604 7y ago
    >If that were physically possible, If. But it's not. Sleep is not an 'include' but a 'require' statement.
    - matwood 7y ago
      Sure, but I think how much is required has become a source of confusion, groupthink, and stress for many people.
  - zoomablemind 7y ago
    If you factor in that during sleep your body is actively restoring your organs, and mind is flushing/filing the info collected during the wake hours. How many hours needed for that is an intriguing question. But hardly this time is wasted, unless your sleep is ... restless. I recently watched an episode of "Nova" on the subject of sleep (Mysteries of Sleep), very convincing , even to some toddlers fussy about the sleep as usual :)
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Still, it's upkeep. It's necessary, but I wish it wasn't, because it's expensive.
      - anbotero 7y ago
        Exactly my point
  - IntemerateApe 7y ago
    Have you read up on polyphasic sleep? I haven't tried it, but it does seem it is physically possible to sleep much less than 7-8 hours per 24 hour cycle.
  - croo 7y ago
    Think about it the other way. The optimal, very best way for any living organism to live the most healthy and longest life possible is to only sleep and never wake up. That is the ideal state for your body and mind. I recognize the need to eat, detoxicate and reproduce, but wish we could develop a way to keep sleeping while doing it :)
    - collyw 7y ago
      I find that hard to believe, you are going to need to eat and drink, which as far as I am aware you need to be awake for.
- fortpoint 7y ago
  It's difficult for some managers to measure the productivity of knowledge workers and unfortunately they resort to tracking the number of hours there are "butts in seats". If your organization is like this you'll see people who are at work to be seen being at work, even if they're not being productive. Japanese salarymen are the pathological example of this but I'm sure it manifests everywhere.
  - scirocco 7y ago
    Absolutely, unfortunately taylorism did follow suit into the world of knowledge workers. In some hostile work environments like banking this is everywhere. Don't leave before your manager, eat lunch at your desk, look busy and stay in the office as long as you can
- sjtindell 7y ago
  Personally being a tech worker in Silicon Valley, I’ve found the big barrier to this now to be cultural and personal. All my companies (large and small) have had incredibly relaxed policies around when to arrive, leave, remote work, time off, bereavement. Even in what have been SRE or Software Eng roles with on-call. I get the sense that if I’m doing my work, I could do whatever I want. But I still feel some pressure, some voice in the back of my head that thinks other people will look down on me or I won’t be deserving my high salary. Like anytime I have downtime I feel guilty, and I see others behave the same way.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    Personally I think a fair amount of the worst decisions people make tend to be motivated by an irrational sense of guilt.
    - derefr 7y ago
      I've always wondered why, with all the other emotional dispositions that people accuse pharma companies of "medicalizing" in order to sell them a drug treatment for, we've never seen any attempt to medicalize the Puritan work ethic. Maybe it's because it'd mean that pretty much every medical doctor would themselves be technically (or not-so-technically) considered mentally-ill? (Gosh, imagine a world where all the doctors got treatment for their floating guilt, and then suddenly woke up to their severe overwork, and so did a 180 on their previous push to the medical-bar to lower acceptance to increase wages, instead pushing to increase acceptance and lower wages in an attempt to increase the number of doctors a hospital can employ on a given budget, and therefore decrease hours worked per doctor?)
      - AmericanChopper 7y ago
        I don’t think a puritanical work ethic necessarily is unhealthy, but in your example I would consider the guilt aspect to be. In your example puritanical work ethic + (irrational imo) guilt = you exceed your contractual requirements to deliver work to your employer. Keep the work ethic but take the guilt out and perhaps instead you’d meet but not exceed your contractual obligations to your employer, and then organise the rest of your time around industriously working on something else that you’re personally passionate about. The second example could be unhealthy depending on how you approached it, but I wouldn’t say that it necessarily is, and I would say that it’s a big improvement over the first example.
- Hokusai 7y ago
  > Our society is so focused on productivity that we forget that the foundation for improved productivity is sleep, exercise and diet. I have seen more focus on getting people busy than actual productivity. The video games industry is a good example where the lack of planning and quite often personal maturity of the company leadership cause crunch time and a lack of personal well-being. > Mind & Body, one system. Exactly this. If , e.g., we run our planes like we run our bodies, they will just fall from the skies.
- brikelly 7y ago
  This is why practices like Sustainable Development (see https://sustainabledev.org/ https://sustainabledev.org/) are so important.
koheripbal 7y ago
It's actually somewhat surprising that mire people do not experiment more with their sleep cycles. I recently had a lot of trouble sleeping due to stress and found a solution whereby I began listening to old TV shows while I sleep with earphones in bed. It was miraculous. But one odd side effect is that I don't really dream anymore - at least not in the same way. Since the shows are playing, it's almost like they are dreaming for me. If the phone stops playing the shows for some reason, I'll have dreams again - and often wake up due to some annoying thoughts about work. I haven't noticed any negative effects. Certainly there was a massive positive benefit of just being able to sleep when I couldn't before. ... but these sorts of things should be avenues of research.
- didericis 7y ago
  I’m pretty sure dreams correlate with deep sleep and REM, and that being exposed to stimulus with dialogue like TV (ie, not things like constant fan noise, wind, ocean sounds, etc) will keep you from reaching that deep sleep. I’d be cautious about doing what you’re doing long term. I think you’d be better off learning to let go of stressful thoughts before bed, and to make your bedroom a very calm, peaceful, non work related place where all you do is rest and relax. Watching old tv shows before bed, or while on a timer that will turn off when you’re asleep, sounds like a good way to get you relaxed, but I don’t think it’s great to have that type of stimulation continue during sleep. I’ve done the same thing you’re describing during high stress periods with podcasts, and while it’s better than letting worries keep you up, I find myself feeling more “shallow” and less insightful/less rested if they stay on throughout the night. When I allow myself to relax and drift off without distraction, I find myself feeling much more “full” and “together” in the mornings, particularly if I take the time to go over and record my dreams.
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    I am still hitting deep/REM sleep - that isn't changing. If I weren't, I'd feel terrible. It has been about 6 months of doing this all night, every night. So far, I feel myself. The key is to use old familiar programs. Things you can visualize even though you're just listening to them. It's that familiarity that allows your brain to have a sense of comfort, while not really being stimulated. In any case, the experiment continues...
steve_adams_86 7y ago
Sleep is so good for the mind and body that unlike almost any medicine, it can not only make you feel better but heal you in ways you otherwise couldn't be. It's pure elixir for humans. It really is crazy how much some cultures (including mine) neglect it. I love to sleep and always have, but I've been shamed for it (in the weird way that is North Americans do that sometimes) and felt like I needed to optimise my schedule or sleep less or whatever. It's all crazy. Just sleep! It's nice, it's free, soak it up. Unless of course you can't. Man, I feel for people with insomnia.
- hnick 7y ago
  Example of that first point, I woke up one day with extremely dry eyes to the point where it felt like I had a grain of sand in one eye. It was painful every time I blinked. I taped my eye shut to stop blinking which only helped a bit. I asked if anything could be done other than eye drops which was about 5 seconds of relief but starting to irritate the skin around my eye due to the chemicals. Optometrist said a full night of sleep. Nothing else will fix it. And he was right.
- chillfox 7y ago
  yeah, I like getting in a good 11-12 hours on the weekends, so natually some people thing something must be wrong with me.
apple4ever 7y ago
I absolutely agree. I naturally wake up at 9:30am. And go to sleep at 1:30am. That does not work for a normal 8-5 type job. I know I perform so much better with sleep. If I was CEO, I would absolutely organized working hours around sleep.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  You can't do that because everyone has different times. The only options are to allow people to come in whenever is best or to work remote.
  - kohtatsu 7y ago
    I think they're saying they'd accommodate for whatever schedules. Edit: Might be hard with a schedule like mine though https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESVjUr2UUAAFf_p?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESVjUr2UUAAFf_p?format=jpg&name=...
    - apple4ever 7y ago
      Exactly this. Some people come in early and some people come in late. Meetings are for the middle of the day when every body is there. Mornings and evenings are good for work with minimal interruption.
  - rococode 7y ago
    Maybe (assuming 8 hour work days) Morning people: 7:30-3:30 Night owls: 10:30-6:30 In between: standard 9-5 Only 4 hours worth of meetings allowed per day, 11-3. Bonus side effect of limiting useless meetings and helping morning and night folks avoid heavy traffic.
    - apple4ever 7y ago
      I love that!! If I worked 10:30 to 6:30 I’d be SUPER productive. And the meeting schedule is great (though probably not always 100% realistic).
hnick 7y ago
> you can sleep when you're dead Joke's on you, I already feel dead from not sleeping :( I also don't identify with that statement at all. As someone who doesn't sleep enough, I'd rather quality over quantity - less hours awake but make them more enjoyable. It is so easy to get stuck in a rut where you barely have the energy to execute your daily loop of necessities and end up making no progress towards longer term goals. In Australia, stores are typically still open 9am-5pm which is a relic of a time when housewives dropped the kids off and went shopping. Now that many of us have jobs this should be the first and easiest thing to change. Even 10am-6pm would be a massive improvement for both the workers and customers.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  In Poland, chain and franchised grocery stores were smart enough to go into two-shift mode, and are generally open from 6am to 10pm. However, most other stores - and more importantly, services sector, banks and government offices - were not. They work 8 hours a day, smack in the middle of everyone else's workday. It's no surprise so many people in their 20s-40s want to do everything on-line, because it's either that, or taking days off at work for errands (and while you can do some things on Saturdays, banks and government offices don't work over weekends). This is IMO stupid, and I'm increasingly of the opinion that the society should be run in mandatory shifts. I can't understand why the market won't fix that itself? Why leave all that money on the table? There is huge demand for services open outside regular office working hours. For instance, personally, I chose dentists by their opening hours - most of the money I spent on dental was with a place where I could come at 8pm. In pre-Internet banking era, I would've picked the bank that had branches open past 5pm, if any existed. I don't shop at places open 9-5, because I only have time earlier than that, or later than that. Etc. </rant>
  - yetihehe 7y ago
    > I can't understand why the market won't fix that itself? They are more interested in making LED signs showing temperature and how to squize more money from customers. I call this "PRL" mentality, they want to get money directly, not indirectly by making themselves better for clients. They don't care about clients, because their performance is measured with money and opening for more hours will cost money in short term.
mc3 7y ago
"You can sleep when you are dead, and luckily due to lack of sleep that will happen sooner"
hammock 7y ago
>If I could pick one of the things to optimize all of society around, it would be sleep. Could this be why God's first act of creation was creating light and separating day from night?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
azernik 7y ago
Honestly, primary care doctors seem to put way too much emphasis on weight and way too little on sleep. Imagine if your doctor bugged you to go to sleep as much as they bugged you to cut down on carbs.
- tazedsoul 7y ago
  This would be magnificent.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
m463 7y ago
I think a lot of sleep problems are being resolved via CPAP devices. I know one relative who I'm pretty certain died in her sleep because of unresolved sleep apnea. When you stop breathing while sleeping, your body adjusts by taking you out of deep sleep towards wakefulness, while your blood pressure rises towards 300. When you finally take a breath -- if the high blood pressure didn't set off a heart attack or stroke -- your restful sleep is ruined. Sleep anpea also causes other problems. when your throat closes and you try to breath, it's likely you will suck stomach acid out of your stomach into your throat and possibly lungs. If you snore (not a requirement), wake up during the night with heartburn, or die of a heart attack or stroke in your sleep, you should investigate a cpap.
- bittersourspicy 7y ago
  I have diagnosed OSA but an older unit I tried (Respironics REMstar Pro w/ humidifier) about 15 years ago, I couldn't keep from ripping the mask off. :'( Also, my insurance is awful so they won't send me to specialist to get a proper CPAP. And I have high-blood pressure, tachycardia, depression, anxiety, and sleep like sh!t. Anyhow before I whine anymore about personal problems, how's your day?
  - m463 7y ago
    I think insurance is uniformly horrible when it comes to CPAP machines (or any other long-term medical devices). You might want to try a "boil and bite" mouthguard to see if that helps with your sleep apena instead of cpap. If you decide to go back to a cpap, try a "nasal pillows" mask. Also the cpap devices have gotten much more sophisticated.
- Ghjklov 7y ago
  I don't think I'll need to investigate any longer after dying of heart attack or stroke. Those worries are far behind me.
forgotmypw16 7y ago
Society demands a sleep schedule, yet the very idea of sleeping on a schedule is newly invented for industrial society. Having done several years of experimenting on myself, I've come to the conclusion that our sleep needs vary greatly from day to day, circumstance to circumstance, and to sleep the same schedule every day is forcing one's body into a square bowl. For example, if I am coming down with flu or cold, I may want to sleep as much as 24 hours in a day, maybe 16 if I feel a need to get things done. This allows my body to spend all its energy on mobilizing the immune system, and allows me for a quicker recovery. If the weather is rainy or gray, I may want to sleep more. If I'm doing something exciting, like attending a festival or conference, coding, or traveling, I may not want to sleep at all, or get by on a few several-hour naps. Having adopted a flexible sleeping unschedule, I feel much better than I used to on the office cycle.
- sgt101 7y ago
  >Society demands a sleep schedule, yet the very idea of sleeping on a schedule is newly invented for industrial society. Umm--- pre-industrial society everything stopped when it went dark. Humans have very poor night vision, we can't function in the dark and so basically everyone went to sleep when the sun went down.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - forgotmypw16 7y ago
    That's not true, people used to wake up for several hours a night. There were also those up through the night tending fire and looking for predators. And darkness does not rule out sleeping during the day. https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-used-to-sleep-in-two-shifts-maybe-we-should-again https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-used-to-sleep-in-two-shi...
brainzap 7y ago
sleep would save humanity, it would reduce the errors, the amount of calories burnt, the amount of calories intake the next day etc etc
rb808 7y ago
Sounds like you dont have children. I'm pretty sure for the whole of human history people were crammed in small houses with babies waking everyone up every few hours.
- ses1984 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure the entire whole of human history encompasses millions of years of our proto-human ancestors NOT crammed in small houses.
xkcd-sucks 7y ago
> "you can sleep when you're dead," Its counterpart: "Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed." (Arthur Schopenhauer )

thisisnico 7y ago

Our society is so focused on productivity that we forget that the foundation for improved productivity is sleep, exercise and diet. Mind & Body, one system.

anbotero 7y ago
I enjoy my sleep thoroughly and I sleep 7-8 hours a day. Still, I think it’s a waste of time, and I don’t mean work productivity, but life. You sleep, wake up, and surprise, a third of the day has just gone by and you didn’t even notice. I recognize the need to sleep, but I personally just wished we could develop a way to keep going with your day without sleeping. If that were physically possible, I’d just meditate some few hours daily instead of sleeping 7-8 hours.
- dylan604 7y ago
  >If that were physically possible, If. But it's not. Sleep is not an 'include' but a 'require' statement.
  - matwood 7y ago
    Sure, but I think how much is required has become a source of confusion, groupthink, and stress for many people.
- zoomablemind 7y ago
  If you factor in that during sleep your body is actively restoring your organs, and mind is flushing/filing the info collected during the wake hours. How many hours needed for that is an intriguing question. But hardly this time is wasted, unless your sleep is ... restless. I recently watched an episode of "Nova" on the subject of sleep (Mysteries of Sleep), very convincing , even to some toddlers fussy about the sleep as usual :)
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Still, it's upkeep. It's necessary, but I wish it wasn't, because it's expensive.
    - anbotero 7y ago
      Exactly my point
- IntemerateApe 7y ago
  Have you read up on polyphasic sleep? I haven't tried it, but it does seem it is physically possible to sleep much less than 7-8 hours per 24 hour cycle.
- croo 7y ago
  Think about it the other way. The optimal, very best way for any living organism to live the most healthy and longest life possible is to only sleep and never wake up. That is the ideal state for your body and mind. I recognize the need to eat, detoxicate and reproduce, but wish we could develop a way to keep sleeping while doing it :)
  - collyw 7y ago
    I find that hard to believe, you are going to need to eat and drink, which as far as I am aware you need to be awake for.
fortpoint 7y ago
It's difficult for some managers to measure the productivity of knowledge workers and unfortunately they resort to tracking the number of hours there are "butts in seats". If your organization is like this you'll see people who are at work to be seen being at work, even if they're not being productive. Japanese salarymen are the pathological example of this but I'm sure it manifests everywhere.
- scirocco 7y ago
  Absolutely, unfortunately taylorism did follow suit into the world of knowledge workers. In some hostile work environments like banking this is everywhere. Don't leave before your manager, eat lunch at your desk, look busy and stay in the office as long as you can
sjtindell 7y ago
Personally being a tech worker in Silicon Valley, I’ve found the big barrier to this now to be cultural and personal. All my companies (large and small) have had incredibly relaxed policies around when to arrive, leave, remote work, time off, bereavement. Even in what have been SRE or Software Eng roles with on-call. I get the sense that if I’m doing my work, I could do whatever I want. But I still feel some pressure, some voice in the back of my head that thinks other people will look down on me or I won’t be deserving my high salary. Like anytime I have downtime I feel guilty, and I see others behave the same way.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  Personally I think a fair amount of the worst decisions people make tend to be motivated by an irrational sense of guilt.
  - derefr 7y ago
    I've always wondered why, with all the other emotional dispositions that people accuse pharma companies of "medicalizing" in order to sell them a drug treatment for, we've never seen any attempt to medicalize the Puritan work ethic. Maybe it's because it'd mean that pretty much every medical doctor would themselves be technically (or not-so-technically) considered mentally-ill? (Gosh, imagine a world where all the doctors got treatment for their floating guilt, and then suddenly woke up to their severe overwork, and so did a 180 on their previous push to the medical-bar to lower acceptance to increase wages, instead pushing to increase acceptance and lower wages in an attempt to increase the number of doctors a hospital can employ on a given budget, and therefore decrease hours worked per doctor?)
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      I don’t think a puritanical work ethic necessarily is unhealthy, but in your example I would consider the guilt aspect to be. In your example puritanical work ethic + (irrational imo) guilt = you exceed your contractual requirements to deliver work to your employer. Keep the work ethic but take the guilt out and perhaps instead you’d meet but not exceed your contractual obligations to your employer, and then organise the rest of your time around industriously working on something else that you’re personally passionate about. The second example could be unhealthy depending on how you approached it, but I wouldn’t say that it necessarily is, and I would say that it’s a big improvement over the first example.
Hokusai 7y ago
> Our society is so focused on productivity that we forget that the foundation for improved productivity is sleep, exercise and diet. I have seen more focus on getting people busy than actual productivity. The video games industry is a good example where the lack of planning and quite often personal maturity of the company leadership cause crunch time and a lack of personal well-being. > Mind & Body, one system. Exactly this. If , e.g., we run our planes like we run our bodies, they will just fall from the skies.
brikelly 7y ago
This is why practices like Sustainable Development (see https://sustainabledev.org/ https://sustainabledev.org/) are so important.

koheripbal 7y ago

It's actually somewhat surprising that mire people do not experiment more with their sleep cycles. I recently had a lot of trouble sleeping due to stress and found a solution whereby I began listening to old TV shows while I sleep with earphones in bed. It was miraculous. But one odd side effect is that I don't really dream anymore - at least not in the same way. Since the shows are playing, it's almost like they are dreaming for me. If the phone stops playing the shows for some reason, I'll have dreams again - and often wake up due to some annoying thoughts about work. I haven't noticed any negative effects. Certainly there was a massive positive benefit of just being able to sleep when I couldn't before. ... but these sorts of things should be avenues of research.

didericis 7y ago
I’m pretty sure dreams correlate with deep sleep and REM, and that being exposed to stimulus with dialogue like TV (ie, not things like constant fan noise, wind, ocean sounds, etc) will keep you from reaching that deep sleep. I’d be cautious about doing what you’re doing long term. I think you’d be better off learning to let go of stressful thoughts before bed, and to make your bedroom a very calm, peaceful, non work related place where all you do is rest and relax. Watching old tv shows before bed, or while on a timer that will turn off when you’re asleep, sounds like a good way to get you relaxed, but I don’t think it’s great to have that type of stimulation continue during sleep. I’ve done the same thing you’re describing during high stress periods with podcasts, and while it’s better than letting worries keep you up, I find myself feeling more “shallow” and less insightful/less rested if they stay on throughout the night. When I allow myself to relax and drift off without distraction, I find myself feeling much more “full” and “together” in the mornings, particularly if I take the time to go over and record my dreams.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  I am still hitting deep/REM sleep - that isn't changing. If I weren't, I'd feel terrible. It has been about 6 months of doing this all night, every night. So far, I feel myself. The key is to use old familiar programs. Things you can visualize even though you're just listening to them. It's that familiarity that allows your brain to have a sense of comfort, while not really being stimulated. In any case, the experiment continues...

steve_adams_86 7y ago

Sleep is so good for the mind and body that unlike almost any medicine, it can not only make you feel better but heal you in ways you otherwise couldn't be. It's pure elixir for humans. It really is crazy how much some cultures (including mine) neglect it. I love to sleep and always have, but I've been shamed for it (in the weird way that is North Americans do that sometimes) and felt like I needed to optimise my schedule or sleep less or whatever. It's all crazy. Just sleep! It's nice, it's free, soak it up. Unless of course you can't. Man, I feel for people with insomnia.

hnick 7y ago
Example of that first point, I woke up one day with extremely dry eyes to the point where it felt like I had a grain of sand in one eye. It was painful every time I blinked. I taped my eye shut to stop blinking which only helped a bit. I asked if anything could be done other than eye drops which was about 5 seconds of relief but starting to irritate the skin around my eye due to the chemicals. Optometrist said a full night of sleep. Nothing else will fix it. And he was right.
chillfox 7y ago
yeah, I like getting in a good 11-12 hours on the weekends, so natually some people thing something must be wrong with me.

apple4ever 7y ago

I absolutely agree. I naturally wake up at 9:30am. And go to sleep at 1:30am. That does not work for a normal 8-5 type job. I know I perform so much better with sleep. If I was CEO, I would absolutely organized working hours around sleep.

Polylactic_acid 7y ago
You can't do that because everyone has different times. The only options are to allow people to come in whenever is best or to work remote.
- kohtatsu 7y ago
  I think they're saying they'd accommodate for whatever schedules. Edit: Might be hard with a schedule like mine though https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESVjUr2UUAAFf_p?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESVjUr2UUAAFf_p?format=jpg&name=...
  - apple4ever 7y ago
    Exactly this. Some people come in early and some people come in late. Meetings are for the middle of the day when every body is there. Mornings and evenings are good for work with minimal interruption.
- rococode 7y ago
  Maybe (assuming 8 hour work days) Morning people: 7:30-3:30 Night owls: 10:30-6:30 In between: standard 9-5 Only 4 hours worth of meetings allowed per day, 11-3. Bonus side effect of limiting useless meetings and helping morning and night folks avoid heavy traffic.
  - apple4ever 7y ago
    I love that!! If I worked 10:30 to 6:30 I’d be SUPER productive. And the meeting schedule is great (though probably not always 100% realistic).

hnick 7y ago

> you can sleep when you're dead Joke's on you, I already feel dead from not sleeping :( I also don't identify with that statement at all. As someone who doesn't sleep enough, I'd rather quality over quantity - less hours awake but make them more enjoyable. It is so easy to get stuck in a rut where you barely have the energy to execute your daily loop of necessities and end up making no progress towards longer term goals. In Australia, stores are typically still open 9am-5pm which is a relic of a time when housewives dropped the kids off and went shopping. Now that many of us have jobs this should be the first and easiest thing to change. Even 10am-6pm would be a massive improvement for both the workers and customers.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
In Poland, chain and franchised grocery stores were smart enough to go into two-shift mode, and are generally open from 6am to 10pm. However, most other stores - and more importantly, services sector, banks and government offices - were not. They work 8 hours a day, smack in the middle of everyone else's workday. It's no surprise so many people in their 20s-40s want to do everything on-line, because it's either that, or taking days off at work for errands (and while you can do some things on Saturdays, banks and government offices don't work over weekends). This is IMO stupid, and I'm increasingly of the opinion that the society should be run in mandatory shifts. I can't understand why the market won't fix that itself? Why leave all that money on the table? There is huge demand for services open outside regular office working hours. For instance, personally, I chose dentists by their opening hours - most of the money I spent on dental was with a place where I could come at 8pm. In pre-Internet banking era, I would've picked the bank that had branches open past 5pm, if any existed. I don't shop at places open 9-5, because I only have time earlier than that, or later than that. Etc. </rant>
- yetihehe 7y ago
  > I can't understand why the market won't fix that itself? They are more interested in making LED signs showing temperature and how to squize more money from customers. I call this "PRL" mentality, they want to get money directly, not indirectly by making themselves better for clients. They don't care about clients, because their performance is measured with money and opening for more hours will cost money in short term.

mc3 7y ago

"You can sleep when you are dead, and luckily due to lack of sleep that will happen sooner"

hammock 7y ago

>If I could pick one of the things to optimize all of society around, it would be sleep. Could this be why God's first act of creation was creating light and separating day from night?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

azernik 7y ago

Honestly, primary care doctors seem to put way too much emphasis on weight and way too little on sleep. Imagine if your doctor bugged you to go to sleep as much as they bugged you to cut down on carbs.

tazedsoul 7y ago
This would be magnificent.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

m463 7y ago

I think a lot of sleep problems are being resolved via CPAP devices. I know one relative who I'm pretty certain died in her sleep because of unresolved sleep apnea. When you stop breathing while sleeping, your body adjusts by taking you out of deep sleep towards wakefulness, while your blood pressure rises towards 300. When you finally take a breath -- if the high blood pressure didn't set off a heart attack or stroke -- your restful sleep is ruined. Sleep anpea also causes other problems. when your throat closes and you try to breath, it's likely you will suck stomach acid out of your stomach into your throat and possibly lungs. If you snore (not a requirement), wake up during the night with heartburn, or die of a heart attack or stroke in your sleep, you should investigate a cpap.

bittersourspicy 7y ago
I have diagnosed OSA but an older unit I tried (Respironics REMstar Pro w/ humidifier) about 15 years ago, I couldn't keep from ripping the mask off. :'( Also, my insurance is awful so they won't send me to specialist to get a proper CPAP. And I have high-blood pressure, tachycardia, depression, anxiety, and sleep like sh!t. Anyhow before I whine anymore about personal problems, how's your day?
- m463 7y ago
  I think insurance is uniformly horrible when it comes to CPAP machines (or any other long-term medical devices). You might want to try a "boil and bite" mouthguard to see if that helps with your sleep apena instead of cpap. If you decide to go back to a cpap, try a "nasal pillows" mask. Also the cpap devices have gotten much more sophisticated.
Ghjklov 7y ago
I don't think I'll need to investigate any longer after dying of heart attack or stroke. Those worries are far behind me.

forgotmypw16 7y ago

Society demands a sleep schedule, yet the very idea of sleeping on a schedule is newly invented for industrial society. Having done several years of experimenting on myself, I've come to the conclusion that our sleep needs vary greatly from day to day, circumstance to circumstance, and to sleep the same schedule every day is forcing one's body into a square bowl. For example, if I am coming down with flu or cold, I may want to sleep as much as 24 hours in a day, maybe 16 if I feel a need to get things done. This allows my body to spend all its energy on mobilizing the immune system, and allows me for a quicker recovery. If the weather is rainy or gray, I may want to sleep more. If I'm doing something exciting, like attending a festival or conference, coding, or traveling, I may not want to sleep at all, or get by on a few several-hour naps. Having adopted a flexible sleeping unschedule, I feel much better than I used to on the office cycle.

sgt101 7y ago
>Society demands a sleep schedule, yet the very idea of sleeping on a schedule is newly invented for industrial society. Umm--- pre-industrial society everything stopped when it went dark. Humans have very poor night vision, we can't function in the dark and so basically everyone went to sleep when the sun went down.
- deleted 7y ago
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- forgotmypw16 7y ago
  That's not true, people used to wake up for several hours a night. There were also those up through the night tending fire and looking for predators. And darkness does not rule out sleeping during the day. https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-used-to-sleep-in-two-shifts-maybe-we-should-again https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-used-to-sleep-in-two-shi...

brainzap 7y ago

sleep would save humanity, it would reduce the errors, the amount of calories burnt, the amount of calories intake the next day etc etc

rb808 7y ago

Sounds like you dont have children. I'm pretty sure for the whole of human history people were crammed in small houses with babies waking everyone up every few hours.

ses1984 7y ago
I'm pretty sure the entire whole of human history encompasses millions of years of our proto-human ancestors NOT crammed in small houses.

xkcd-sucks 7y ago

> "you can sleep when you're dead," Its counterpart: "Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed." (Arthur Schopenhauer )