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Yeah suggestions about what to do, sans anything helpful about how to do it, are just annoying, especially when the thing is hard to do. That said, there’s a v
by dahart 3y ago
Yeah suggestions about what to do, sans anything helpful about how to do it, are just annoying, especially when the thing is hard to do.
That said, there’s a very big difference between doesn’t work and can’t work. Humans are pretty adaptable given the right circumstances, so I’d wager we’re talking mostly about the doesn’t category. Your comment totally reminds me of many conversations I’ve heard and read about weight loss where someone says “just consume fewer calories”, as if it’s somehow simple. Other person, annoyed, says “I’ve tried that, it doesn’t work for me” or “studies have shown that doesn’t work for most people”. It’s true that it generally doesn’t work for most people, I believe the failure rates are even higher than 50%, and yet it’s guaranteed that it can work, it’s physics. It’s not because people actually eat fewer calories and it fails, it’s because people generally aren’t able to reduce their calorie intake permanently, they revert. And trying to will yourself to overcome hunger tends to backfire, just like trying to will yourself to ‘just get up early’ tends to backfire. It doesn’t work because they don’t really know how to change their habits; habits are really hard to break, behavior is really hard to change. A lot of people fail to appreciate how hard it is, especially when some people do seem to be able to do it.
I’ve gone through long periods where I was unable to be a morning person and, maybe like you, I could have bopped someone lightly on the nose for saying to me ‘just get up early’. But changes in my life have made it easier; my job changed, my kids turned into teenagers, my exercise changed, my outlook on life has change, my evening activities have changed. I also have a better idea of how to wake up early, and it doesn’t need to involve setting alarms and trying to force myself, it’s much more about how to spend the time, much more about what I want to get done, and much less about when.
- MrDrMcCoy 3y agoI think the point may have been more that many people have chronotypes [1] that negate the benefits of changing a sleep schedule to something that fits your waking schedule. Doing this may allow for better time allocations, but comes at the cost of the effectiveness of your forced circadian rhythm. [1] https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/chronotypes https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/chronotypes
- dahart 3y agoOh no I might have accidentally stepped on a small land mine. Circadian rhythms aren’t permanent. If they were, international travel would be impossible for humans. Circadian rhythms are defined as entrainable, meaning adjustments to the environment must change the rhythm. I might have to walk this back some day, but right now that site you linked gives me vibes of homeopathy. There’s a non-zero amount of irony in asking if individual humans identify with different animal species, isn’t there? The idea that an animal species as a whole sleeps at a given time undermines the very idea that each human is a unique snowflake, and suggests that the variation in humans that we’re talking about is not fixed, but is a product of environment, habits, behaviors, situational preferences, etc., doesn’t it? I mean we have lots and lots and lots of evidence that humans can change sleep schedule when they have to, and that preferences largely come from what we’re used to, no?
- MrDrMcCoy 3y agoI may have some terminology off. The point of chronotypes is to sort out the what, who, and why of "morning people", "night owls" and various states between. I don't care for the animal metaphors either, and they can easily be omitted with no loss of value. As a "night owl" myself, I have anecdotally found that while I can certainly force myself to function early in the morning on a regular basis, my body never stops hating that even after years of doing so. The best times for me to get up and go to sleep are closer to 10 am and 2 am, respectively. The chronotypes system proposed here was useful in helping contextualize all that.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago> Circadian rhythms aren’t permanent. If they were, international travel would be impossible for humans. Circadian rhythms are defined as entrainable, meaning adjustments to the environment must change the rhythm. Sure. That's why I'm a night owl in every timezone. You seem to be assuming that circadian rhythms are driven by some stable 24h/cycle oscillator, with an offset that can be changed with some effort, whether self-directed or in response to environment changes. But if that was the case, international travel would be a chore - you'd probably be back home before you finished adjusting. The way I see it, circadian rhythms are more like the oscillator with a floating reference point, constantly adapting to environmental cues, and a stable offset that's near-impossible to change (probably genetically fixed). Under this model, international travel is easy - the body will quickly adjust the reference point to the new timezone, based on environmental cues, but the offset remains fixed. And this is what I observe - I'm a night owl in every timezone.