Comment by noduerme
2 years ago
I wonder how this translates if the irregularity is by choice. I can certainly see why people working back to back night and day shifts, or otherwise frequently being at a sleep debt that was compensated for later, would die younger.
But as a freelancer, my sleep schedule is more or less my own. I go to sleep when I'm tired and usually try to sleep as long as I want to. Sometimes that's 11pm-10am, sometimes 6am-11am. It can oscillate throughout the week, but I try to average 16 hours of sleep in any given 48 hour period.
Maybe this is incredibly unhealthy, but I've believed for a long time that it's kept me younger and healthier than being forced into a sleep rhythm that isn't what my body wants.
As someone whose natural sleep cycle seems to be closer to 26-28 hours, and whose preferred sleeping hours in a 24-hour cycle are 6am to 2-3pm... I commend you.
Sincerely, someone forced into a "normal" schedule by kids school start times and, well, everything else too, I suppose.
Hah. I've often thought that my actual rhythm is for a 25-26 hour day. I was going to write that but it seemed like too much to explain. As I go to bed later and later, eventually I find myself awake past sunrise, which is usually the day when I'll intentionally have a short sleep and snap back to an early bedtime that night.
Kids would definitely screw up this aspect of my lifestyle lol. But kids give you immortality, and here I am just wondering if I'm gaining or losing a couple years.
Just as a secondary data point. Without medication I have about a 32:12 hour cycle. Up for at least 30 hours and sleeping for about 12. I can function on 5 but I'm grumpy about it for a while. Always been that way. Completely inverted as well. Up all night and my body tries to convince me to sleep during the day but I'm just not able to for another twelve hours.
I got fired from several jobs because of it. My folks weren't understanding so I genuinely believed that I was willingly staying up and well... Needless to say I have no professional network and most of my friends thought I was a massive flake and those connections fell apart, too. I wouldn't wish this on anyone. Even diagnosed with insomnia I still feel massive guilt about not being able to sleep like a normal person. I just ruin everyone's plans around me. If I need to be up I have to hope my medication works (when employed) and if it does I need an hour to wake up enough to feel safe doing anything major like cooking or driving.
Sorry for the ramble. Appropriately I've been up for like 34 hours and am hoping these OTC meds kick in.
Hope y'all have a great weekend.
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Experiments where people aren't told what time it is end up with them gravitating towards a 25-26 hour day. So you're totally normal.
Wikipedia [0] criticises these experiments and says they didn't account for electric light, which apparently lengthens the cycle. So to rephrase, people with any access whatsoever to electric light favour a 25-26 hour day. You're still totally normal, but it explains you may have better outcomes with annoying interventions like "no artificial light in the last few hours of the evening".
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm
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Many years ago, at college, I stayed in town for a summer rather than going back home or elsewhere. I had a coding job with no fixed hours (and working in a windowless basement), and no friends in town. So I tried the “sleep when I want” experiment. IIRC I settled into about a 26-hour cycle.
I used to do this as well sort of, my schedule would shift by a few hours every day. I found that it had a significant impact on my mental health when I was sleeping through the day though, and it made it difficult to participate in various aspects of society like work, education and in person social things. I was eventually able to “fix” it by taking melatonin as a supplement to fix a short term schedule and being super anal about not letting people pressure me into playing games late or staying out late. I basically reframed sleeping hygiene as a primary health concern and that worked for me.
Anyway if your schedule doesn’t impact you in a negative way then go for it
> I've often thought that my actual rhythm is for a 25-26 hour day
To be fair, we're all like this. The average length of Circadian Cycle is closer to 25h than 24h when isolated: https://www.circadiansleepdisorders.org/info/cycle_length.ph...
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I really hoped I’d grow out of wanting to sleep ~3-11am but it’s just never happened. No matter how tired I am during the day, I get a second wind around 8pm and have to force myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour during the work week because I won’t get sleepy, even if I stay away from screens.
Unfortunately I really enjoy night time, so I regularly completely fail at that task. I can’t remember the last time I woke up feeling rested, and yet here I am on Hacker News at 1:48am. At least I can sleep in tomorrow.
Getting up at 11 sounds workable though. I have a colleague that regularly starts at 11, may be having sleep issues (they mentioned something but I don't know if that's always the reason), nobody seems to mind. My problem is that, during holidays, 13:37 seems to somehow be a very common time for me to get out of bed (suspiciously often around that minute, making me think it's a bias rather than coincidence)... so more like going to bed when the sun and birds would otherwise get annoying to fall asleep with
People speak of teenagers having a different sleep cycle but I'm now suspecting that, rather than that you'd grow out of your body's schedule, it's just that you don't complain to your toddler and expect them to understand and shift your job of entertaining them to later in the day. Same story at work; also a factor most teenagers don't have in the same way. So you suck it up and fall into a new rhythm that kinda works too
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I think everyone gets a second wind in the late hours.
I used to have a schedule where I would start nodding off at 8PM and had to sleep, then wake up within 10 minutes of 4AM the next morning. My whole day was on such a routine, I never had to check the time. I could tell by temperature, sun, what I was doing, how I felt (hungry, tired) what time it was. I would be at my highest energy for the first hours after waking up. Then my energy would plunge during midday. Then it would build back up leading into the evening until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. Maybe 4 to 8PM I would be at good energy until I hit the abrupt cliff. I guess I was sort of a morning AND night person. I had to train my body to get on this schedule.
If you're going 3-11, that's 8 hrs...
I'm the king of getting a second wind, but it's usually alcohol-driven. Curtailing food and booze about 3 hrs before sleep, watching a little Mentour Pilot or reading a book, I'll conk out before I planned to. Avoiding the second wind is a discussion in itself.
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Methods that work for me, a lifelong “natural” (lol, nope) night owl:
1) No nighttime lighting brighter than a single-digit count of candles. No glowing screens after dark, either. Within a couple days I was no longer a “night owl”. Go figure, it was all fake, all those years.
2) A few mg of THC edible 90 minutes before I want to be asleep.
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Do you drink any caffeine?
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I’ve been in this situation and the problem is basically that the various internal clocks aren’t getting good quality information to keep them in sync. Light, food, and exercise and the timing of them have a big impact.
After I quit my day job and started freelancing, I actually saw my sleep schedule worsen. It partly had to do with the initial lack of projects and clients, and other challenges of freelancing itself, but what I observed was that my day job's grind or regular schedule also helped my sleep schedule.
However, I eventually overcame those challenges and created my own schedule to work with, and my sleep cycle became better then onwards.
How did you fill your schedules despite your initial lack of projects?