After reading the article I didn’t pick up what any of the advantages are of 28hr days other than being able to communicate with other regions of the world on certain days. I suppose that could be a very important factor for some people who do work in a geographically dispersed area. A few things I would be concerned with are:
1) your SO is not on the same schedule and really for what isn’t a solid reason. I could see this becoming a source of resentment at some point.
2) you have to cut people out of your life vs explaining the schedule when they don’t understand why. I understand that the lectures would likely get tiresome at some point, but it seems a bit selfish to switch to this schedule when it could become problematic for friends and family members.
3) I think cardio and total health should be measured and monitored as part of the experiment. It is entirely possible that this schedule can have real benefits for health or at the least not negatively affect your health. You mention that you are able to workout more often and effectively, so it may also be interesting to track your fitness level on the schedule vs 24 hr days. It would just be anecdotal but it would at least be some data.
I guess the only other things I would want to know is what factors pushed most to switching schedules? How long do you plan to stay on the schedule? How does your employer handle this schedule change? Or are you self employed/running a business? What do you think the biggest challenges are during the switch aside from being tired at hour 10-11? What does your SO really think about this schedule? The more I think about this, the more questions I have :)
The greatest benefit is that you can stay up until you're absolutely dog-tired every day, and not have to worry about all the rituals of "sleep hygiene", like limiting screen time, dimming lights, no coffee, etc.
On a >24 hour sleep schedule, you _will_ be tired when it's time to sleep. Guaranteed. Not only that, you can sleep longer and will always feel well-rested.
Meeting people all around the world, when they're collectively hanging out online, is also fantastic. Social platforms that involve more one-on-one contact, like X, Group chats, and similar, have completely different things going on at different hours. You start to make even more friends spread out across the world, and prevent getting stuck into ruts.
There's also the benefit that conversations and the environment online is always fresh. You're always cycling into new time blocks that you haven't been active in for a few days.
And, not just online. There's something to be said about experiencing (while fully awake) all of the different times of day where you live. You get to see sunrises and sunsets. Busy morning chatter of cars, and the world buzzing to life. The beyond-wee hours of the morning, when the city is so quiet you can hear a pin drop.
Really though, the main benefit is the first one in this comment. You can live your life to the maximum extent, without scheduling in the extra time to manage getting to sleep, and feeling tired when you don't.
I'm not the OP, but I've considered doing this (have personally tried tri-phasic sleep in the past as an alternative) so I'm assuming the motivation might be the same: I just don't have a 24hr circadian rhythm. I'd guess mine is more like 26hr, not 28hr, but same idea applies. If I wake up after getting 8 hours of sleep, after 16 hours I am just... not sleepy. I can go to bed and not use screens and take melatonin and whatever else but I'm just not tired. So I end up staying later and getting less than 8 hours of sleep. Since many studies seem to show that getting a solid amount of sleep is good, my actual patterns seem bad. Much better then (maybe) to switch your cycle to be however many hours you need to get a solid night (~8hr) of sleep and feel tired at the end of the day, like the author is doing.
EDIT: just read the original post[1] from the author and indeed this is the reason. He maybe explains it better than me so give a read.
> After reading the article I didn’t pick up what any of the advantages are of 28hr days
Showing my age here but...
I and some of my friends/classmates used to do the 6day 28hr cycle, to ensure we had access to the computer lab where "normal people" were asleep during the week, but were still mostly "in phase" with everybody else on weekends for socialising.
For those of you who don't understand the term "computer lab", those were the days where my Comp Sci class involved writing/running Pascal code on a shared VAX-11/780 which (from memory here) shared 64MB of memory across all users of the 100 or so terminals attached to it. During the day, especially close to assignment deadlines, there were often long wait times to get one of the terminals. If you were there (and awake) at 10pm or 4am, there was usually only a handful of other people using it, with no waiting queues and with noticeably faster performance.
(When I started 2nd year, the first year class behind me still learned Pascal, but got to use the new Macintosh lab. That kinda made the 28hr phase shifting unnecessary, but a bunch of us persisted anyway. By 3rd year, the VAX was under-utilised enough that they added a bunch of modems, and I could connect from home via a 1200/75 baud modem from the Osbourne1 Z80/CPM machine I had at home.)
Decades ago I did a free-running sleep schedule for a few months while working a fairly intensive software project that required almost no interaction with others. I didn’t have a schedule, I just slept when I felt like it, and did resistance training throughout the day when I felt like it (I had a bunch of gym equipment in the same room as computers). Empirically, this turned into 26 hour days, so my hours came into phase with “normal” hours roughly every two weeks. It was a pretty comfortable lifestyle, felt pretty healthy, and I put on some muscle.
The main challenges were two-fold. First, there is a significant part of the time where it doesn’t line up with store and restaurant hours that well, which is inconvenient. Second, there are few days every couple weeks where your schedule is completely out-of-phase with normal people which makes socializing nigh impossible on those days e.g. waking up at 8pm and going to bed at 2pm. However, since those days were predictable, I’d simply not schedule anything on those days.
I don’t think this really works for a global business though. Many people around the world are really fussy about rigid schedules, and you will only overlap those a third of the time.
All that said, I think for >24 hour days to be practical, it would be best in a synthetic environment where everyone is on the same clock with limited access to natural sunlight. I could totally imagine it being viable for something like a submarine.
I don't follow such a program, but I sleep when needed, so if I'm sleepy, I go to sleep, and I wake up at wathever hour, no alarms. This means that sometimes I have long sleep nights, other times I only have naps, most of the time it is a mix between both. Lately I go to sleep around 3-6 in the morning, wake up around 8-11 and sometimes have naps during the day. (same principle for eating)
I do this at least from 10 years without bad effects, the positive effects are that I'm more awake and feel fresh longer, in control of my mental power.
It is quite easy to do it while having normal life obligations, I can wake up sooner if something needs to be done, and then, after the task, I can continue to do my day until sleepy, at which point I can sleep again. So, if I have many meeting on a day, I can stay up all day without issues, maybe I'll sleep more in the evening or following day.
I think the quantity of sleep I require depends on the tasks I'm doing. If some task is particularly mentally exhausting I'll automatically do more naps during the day, this in turn makes me more efficient at solving difficult problems.
It is extremely comfortable to solve hard problems in this way, when you work too long on it, you get sleepy, and as you wake up, you are again fully focused and with fresh perspectives.
I think its more of a lifestyle preference rather than 28h is better than 24h for everyone kinda rule. I, for instance, hate sleeping. I want to maximise my awake hours and sleep when only when I get tired. So this article speaks to me. The only thing I am worried about is long term health problems that might arise doing this stunt.
Also if people cant respect or don't like your lifestyle, I don't see a point in being with them. If they cant move things around or if we cant find time for something, move on. Life is too short to deal with people problems that can be solved just by doing nothing.
It doesn’t have to mean cutting people out of your life, but you’d have to be more organised in scheduling events. You’d also be unable to regularly attend recurring meetups.
I knew of a sysadmin who followed this schedule so he could monitor the system at different times of day. There’s probably the same upside for people who manage certain 24-7 operations (though the downsides outweigh them in most cases).
Biologically I have low melatonin and low cortisol. This means I have trouble falling asleep and then I have trouble waking up.
Countless times in my life I have lived 26-28 hour cycles and otherwise I am in a never ending struggle to live a 24 hour cycle. Once I hit retirement I will definitely try this 28 hour cycle and might even switch to it permanently.
Yeah there are obvious downsides having to do with SO, friends, etc. Having a husband with this same biological quirk would be ideal, but again once I no longer have to go into the office it will be really hard not to fall into a > 24 hour pattern.
I’ve been fascinated with alternative sleep schedules since I was very young. My initial interest turned to a fascination when I realized the only positive long-term reports were usually from people trying to sell something: Their book, a sleep plan, or just using their sleep cycle as a social hook to impress others (influencers, basically). All of the forum reports started out optimistic and then ended in disappointment with basically nobody enjoying them after a long time.
One of the common themes was that people would think their lives were better at first. A sort of placebo effect. They’d push through the adaptation phase, which was miserable, and when they adapted they felt slightly better. Often this improvement (relative to the miserable adaptation period) was mistake for an absolute improvement because it had been so long since they had a normal sleep schedule.
What was really interesting was that most people reported some variation of the same thing: They didn’t realize how much they disliked the alternative sleep schedule until after they stopped it. Some people stuck with it for a long time until life forced them to change (job, marriage, etc). It wasn’t until they went back to normal that they realized how much better it was to just not fight the sunlight and night time that drives us.
It would be interesting to see how this person feels at some point in the future if they go back to a normal sleep schedule.
Fight the sunlight? What the hell do you even mean?! I don't have a 24-hour sleeping schedule naturally. I can force myself into it, but I'll feel miserable because I have to fight my own body to not "fight the sunlight". Some people start naturally getting drowsy in the evening every day, yes, sure. Good for them. I'm not one of those people.
So I'm very much with the author here and I might actually try 28-hour days because what I have for the last 10 years is a mess.
For the few weeks that I'm required to go back to a "normal" sleep schedule, I long every day to go back to my 28h schedule.
I might at some point in the future try moving back to 24h for a longer period of time, but I'm planning to stick to the 28h schedule for at least a couple more years before I do this, and I'll keep doing the yearly updates to document things.
I did one of the more extreme sleep schedules for a little over a year. Generally I was happy I did it, and there are tons of times that I wish I could again, but external pressure prevent me from doing it again.
I always try to dissuade people from it. It's difficult to get into, and difficult to maintain. It plays hell with a social schedule where people expect you to be awake at certain times.
No one is selling anything. There are many of us who benefit remarkably from what you're calling an "alternative sleep schedule" (I'm not specifically talking about 28-hour day entrainment like the blog author, but whatever works for each individual based on their own idiosyncratic circadian rhythm)
Many of us have periods where we have to go back to 24-hour schedules due to external factors, and sleep quality and duration suffer as a result. For myself, in the winter when my schedule is a little >27 hours, when I enforced waking up at 8 AM Monday-Friday for a 9-5, my schedule might go something like this:
> Sunday night: Sleep 7-8 hours starting at midnight.
> Monday night: Sleep 5 hours starting ~3 AM Tuesday.
> Tuesday night: Sleep 2-3 hours starting at ~5 AM Wednesday. Sometimes with exhaustion I may then be able to fall asleep at 5-6 PM (Wednesday) but often would stay up til closer to midnight-2AM. Regardless, when I fall asleep I likely will wake up in 1 or 2 hours and be unable to go back to sleep, as my body doesn't believe it's in the sleep phase.
> "Wednesday night?": There isn't really a Wednesday night except on the occasion where I managed to sleep more than 2 hours. Sometimes I'm up all night with no nap; more than half the time I can't sleep more than 3 hours. Occasionally I'm actually able to stay asleep during what my body thinks is a nap to pay off sleep debt.
> "Thursday night?": Exhausted from having slept no more than 9 hours in the last 48 hours, and usually closer to 3-4 hours, I'll collapse around 5-7 PM from exhaustion and sleep until midnight-5AM.
> "Friday night?": Often I'm ready for sleep by 5-8 PM and will sleep 8-9 hours. But I'll also occasionally try to sleep less and push myself to go out at 9-10 PM if there's an event happening. After being more active and if I slept less than 4 hours I can usually pick up another 1-3.5 hours of sleep after 4 or 5 AM.
> Saturday night: If I got a full night's sleep, or went out Friday but slept a little bit after, I may be more energized, so this is the more consistent day for weekend plans. If sleep was poor I'll try to sleep an hour or two early in the evening before going out and then sleep 3 AM to 9 AM or so. If I didn't have Saturday plans I may go to sleep at 8 PM and sleep til 5 AM.
> Sunday night: Usually fall asleep somewhere around midnight but who knows? I could be up til 3 AM depending on how the weekend went.
All told I would probably get an average of ~5.5 to 6 hour of sleep per 24-hour day, but with significant periods running on very little sleep.
Now that I work from home and have few meetings, my schedule may look more like the following:
> Sunday night: Sleep from midnight to 7 or 8 AM
> Monday night: Sleep from 3 AM (Tuesday) to 10 AM (in time for my 10 AM Tuesday meeting).
> "...": Sleep Wednesday from 6 AM to 1 or 2 PM (Wednesday)
> "...": Sleep Thursday from 9 AM to 4 or 5 PM. Stay awake for my 10 AM meeting Friday.
> "...": Friday I have a meeting from 10-11, then often coordinate with coworkers til noon, but as late as 2 PM (rarely later). So I sleep after and wake up any time friday from 7 PM to 9 PM, go out feeling relatively well-rested.
> "...": Saturday if I have plans I take a nap then go out and fall asleep around 3 AM until 10 AM.
Sunday I probably won't be able to sleep at midnight. Tuesday my 10 AM meeting this week will probably interrupt my sleep phase, but I can usually go right back to sleep after.
All in all on this schedule I get longer periods of uninterrupted sleep, get an average closer to 6.5 hours of sleep per 24-hour period, and never have periods of 48 hours where I only sleep 2 hours, so my overall energy and focus over the week is much better.
I find it amusing how the OP has the need to label meals within the day and gripes about how they don’t match when talking to others on a regular 24-hour schedule. They are just meals. You’re hungry, so you eat. It’s a meal.
Only one note: OP sounds like a younger person, probably in their 20s. My body was able to take some serious abuse when it came to sleep schedule back then. I had a job that kept alternating between 2-3 day shifts, then 2-3 night shifts, then 2-3 days off. Sometimes I’d not go to sleep for 24+ hours.
I’m twice the age now, and I’m still paying for it. My sleep is not great. I have to be very responsible with sticking to my schedule, and waking up anytime after 3 a.m. results in an inability to fall asleep and a day-long headache.
When I was young, I could stay up for 26 - 30 hours regularly without any issues, even on multiple consecutive days. I would be fine no matter how I slept.
No more. If my sleep schedule gets disrupted in any way, too short or too long, my body will immediately go into "things are not right" mode.
This flies in the face of circadean rhythm research. I know the human body is extremely adaptable, but imagine making every single day a jet-lagged day. My younger self may have been able to tolerate it well enough, but there's no way I'd come out unscathed now.
You must not be aware of the research on Non-24[1] (or "Non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder") which OP seems to have (though perhaps they also aren't aware this is a thing).
Not saying non-24 is good for you, but for people unable to follow a 24-hour schedule, free-running sleep (which is what OP is doing) is vastly better than constantly pushing through sleep deprivation, when one's schedule allows for it.
Speaking as someone with non-24 myself (which is much more severe in the winter)
edit: after reading more closely, it appears OP has entrained to a 28-hour day rather than doing free-running sleep; 28-hour days are convenient in that the week gets sliced into 6 days and allows for a consistent weekly schedule. However, I suspect OP actually naturally gravitates towards a shorter day like 26 or 27 hours based on their napping patterns. I also wonder if they might even have more success with 24-hour days and regular exercise, as from their description it almost seems like the daily exercise practice which they started after the 28-hour day might be regulating their circadian rhythm to be closer to a natural day.
> imagine making every single day a jet-lagged day.
That's exactly what this pattern is trying to avoid. For people whose sleep cycle is longer than 24h, a "normal" rhythm makes every single day a jet-lagged day, and in the "wrong" direction (it's easier to travel west/stay awake longer rather than travel east/go to bed earlier for most people).
I have tried on occasion to work night shift. It is OK for a few weeks but within months I reach extreme exhaustion falling asleep while operating dangerous machinery, despite sleeping during the day. I experienced a similar phenomenon working on a fishing boat where I simply never adapted to sea sickness and after weeks of throwing up almost all food and fluids it took months to crawl back to activity and recover including the pneumonia induced from my immune system and homeostasis being beat down.
Human body can be really bad at adapting to unworldly environments to the point you totally break down.
Actually it's pretty in-line with it. Natural circadian rhythm is ~25hrs, with some individual variance, and it's easier to extend a circadian rhythm than shorten it. Jet lag research finds that flying west (lengthening), you can adapt at a rate of ~1hr per day. It's not crazy to think that someone might naturally be at 26-27hrs, then stretch it an hour each day no problem.
I did 36-hour days (awake for 24, asleep for 12) for a long time and it was fine. I'm unable to do so now, due to other obligations, but I still think it worked better for me than a 24-hour day. Even today I inevitably stay up all night, getting at most 1-4 hours of sleep, 2-3 times per week.
I don't see anything problematic with TFA's 28-hour days.
I doubt your assertion about circadian rhythm research, largely because of the cave experiments that show that people naturally assume non-24 hour days when removed from sunlight and social cues.
What wasn't entirely clear to me was the why - I'm by no means against alternative sleep schedules, but this seems far more bother than it is worth. I've struggled with termination insomnia most of my life, waking up extremely early and not being able to go back to sleep - and in recent years have managed to make that work for my full schedule by basically sleeping ~4 hours, awake for 8, sleeping 4, awake 8, etc.
So a typical schedule could look like:
10pm-2am - sleep
2am-10am - awake
10am-2pm - sleep
2pm-10pm - awake
I've experimented with this a lot - for whatever reason, I don't know why, this split schedule allows me to feel much more alert and attentive during my waking hours, and isn't as stressful as trying to sleep a full 7-8 per night which a lot of times feels impossible for me.
Sometimes I'll do 5-6 hours sleep on 1 cycle instead of 4, so it can shift around, but otherwise stays pretty consistent. Technically I am getting just as many sleep cycles as a "normal" schedule (One part of this was a sleep study to figure out what my natural full rem cycle is, for me, it's about 2 hours long).
I've been doing this for about 2 years and wouldn't do anything else, and it's really not difficult to fit it into a "normal" routine. My close friends have remarked that it makes it seem like I never sleep (due to being available at hours all around the clock), that's about all that anyone has remarked about it.
Most of the benefits are things that you could just be more intentional about in a 24h cycle. Glad it works for him on 28h and I don't think he's endorsing this for others necessarily, but my goodness quite a lot of disruption to accomplish what others should be able to accomplish in a standard 24h day.
I once changed my schedule for a month to sleeping 4 hours, waking for 4, sleeping 4, and then waking for 12. I would work in the day, come home, sleep 4, wake 4, and then sleep 4 more, then off to work again. On weekends I switched to a normal 16/8 schedule.
I got plenty of rest and got all my domestic stuff done overnight - 24h grocery store, laundromat, etc. I was never unusually tired.
The down side is that it mostly killed my social life. So I quit; the advantages didn’t outweigh the disadvantage of being on a different schedule than everyone else.
Also this was in the late 80s/early 90s before cell phones and the internet.
There's a very active historical debate about whether a schedule like this, often called "biphasic sleep", was more common in pre-industrial societies. There's a historian called Roger Ekirch who thinks it was, starting in his 2004 book "At Day's Close - Night in Times Past". There's a bunch of criticism of it, since the sources are a bit ambiguous, or if he's generalizing from Medieval England (his main focus).
My brother had a friend try this in university while studying for exams and, according to my brother, it basically made the guy lose his mind. Seems like a roll of the dice on whether it works for people or not.
> I once changed my schedule for a month to sleeping 4 hours, waking for 4, sleeping 4, and then waking for 12.
That's pretty common for crew on yachts. I'd do that when racing or cruising ocean going sailboats. The crew gets split into 3rds, and everybody gets to do a 4 hour night watch. (For racing for me, that'd usually be only for a few days or a week tops. I twice spent ~6weeks on that schedule cruising the Great Barrier Reef.)
I maintained such a schedule for over a year when I was in the Air Force --- the schedule was 9 days on, 3 swings, followed by 3 mids, followed by 3 day shifts, then 3 days off --- extending one's sleep cycle to a longer "day" allowed one to make things fit together w/o too much disruption.
That said, avoiding having to do that again was a big motivation in getting out.
> Those 2 months were hard, [...] but also with the SO complaining that I wasn’t available to reply to messages sometimes (because I was sleeping when she was awake), which was no encouragement to keep going.
I hope it's not too personal to ask, but I'm wondering how that is working out with the SO.
My own experience thus far, as someone whose body by default seems to want to do 25-26 hour days (and can do much longer when I choose), is that an SO is one reason to force myself to stay on a 24-hour cycle.
If you're both doing grad school, hospital shifts, startups, trying to make partner, traveling a lot for work, etc., then having your schedules not always overlap might come with the territory, and you both can adapt. But if they find they're often wanting to spend meaningful time with you after their work, and you're sleeping during normal-person waking hours, they might be wondering whether this is the right long-term relationship.
I've found that biphasic sleep seems to fill a similar role for me. When I'm able I don't set alarms or make any preparations toward going to bed. I just sleep when I'm tired and wake up naturally. That leads to me often falling asleep around dark and waking up about 2.5-3.5 hours later. Then I'm up for a few hours, and asleep again a little bit before the sun comes up for a few more hours.
Now when I'm not able to just sleep and wake up completely naturally it always sucks following a more normal schedule of going to bed around midnight waking up around 7.
So I try to prioritize the biphasic sleep with the idea that the stages are variable. As in sometimes I sleep through all 3 stages, sometimes I stay up after the first time I wake up, or sometimes I don't initially fall asleep until the last stage.
I find that my days don't fit a 24 hours schedule either, but I don't feel like they fit the same set amount of hours each day at all.My motivational and energy levels are just different depending on the day and have a wake / rest cycle that can fit with that is beneficial.
Interesting. I have a similar problem that I haven't had any obligations to follow the "normal people schedule" ever since I graduated the university (and even then, I got like 4 hours of sleep and slept on the subway on my way there and felt like a zombie for a few hours in the morning anyway). I'm constantly out of sync with the rest of the society and this sometimes gets rather frustrating, but I can't seem to do much about it. I can try to strong-arm myself into it but that only works for so long, my schedule still slips eventually. The longest I was able to maintain a "normal person schedule" was around 2 months. Not sure at this point whether this is a blessing or a curse.
I seem to be stuck in a loop of sleeping 9h and sleeping 6h (which I hate) because I reliably wake up at about the same time, but can't reliably fall asleep exactly 7.5h before it (I guess). Does that suggest my circadian rhythm is just out of whack w/ 24h?
For about 3 years, I did 12 hour days (4 hour sleep sessions) and inverted days (go to sleep at 7am, wake up at 3pm). The benefits outlined in the article were definitely there - Life felt less busy, and I had a new perspective on everything - But I got sick often, and doing a hard reversal to accommodate visiting family or friends on weekends was brutal (I fell asleep multiple times at houses when I was supposed to be "hanging out").
Overall - I don't regret it, and if you're someone who likes to try different life experiences, give it a shot! But I'm not going back anytime soon :)
This article would really benefit from stating how old (roughly) the author is… a good portion of people in my bubble report changes to sleep habits (and needs) in their early to mid 30ies.
It makes me happy that OP posted https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/ in October of 2023, and somehow lasted 4 months before learning about https://xkcd.com/320/. It's interesting that OP decided to try to align to a daytime schedule on the weekend, instead of during the workweek as in the comic.
Yet lines like this just seem really tongue-in-cheek:
> In fact, I avoid talking about the schedule at all with others.
> The internal benefits more than make up for the slightly trickier external interactions.
> I don’t keep track of this in any scientific way, only mental notes that I make along the way
> There might be some longer-term changes, mostly associated with my health, but if these exist, they’ll likely start showing up in the next few years. We’ll see what the future holds.
I hiked the PCT last year over 85 days and slept on average 5-6 hours a night (except days off) and hiked 30+ miles a day over 16+ hours a day. It's weird the things your body can do if you push yourself beyond the expected norms.
Of course, the surest way to experiment with an alternative sleep schedule is to simply take care of a newborn, something humans have gotten pretty good at over the millennia.
Yep, I remember reading about these as a youth and thinking, wow what a random bit of biology. Then I had a kid and was like, oh, I see why this is in there.
S_A_P|1 year ago
I guess the only other things I would want to know is what factors pushed most to switching schedules? How long do you plan to stay on the schedule? How does your employer handle this schedule change? Or are you self employed/running a business? What do you think the biggest challenges are during the switch aside from being tired at hour 10-11? What does your SO really think about this schedule? The more I think about this, the more questions I have :)
spoaceman7777|1 year ago
On a >24 hour sleep schedule, you _will_ be tired when it's time to sleep. Guaranteed. Not only that, you can sleep longer and will always feel well-rested.
Meeting people all around the world, when they're collectively hanging out online, is also fantastic. Social platforms that involve more one-on-one contact, like X, Group chats, and similar, have completely different things going on at different hours. You start to make even more friends spread out across the world, and prevent getting stuck into ruts.
There's also the benefit that conversations and the environment online is always fresh. You're always cycling into new time blocks that you haven't been active in for a few days.
And, not just online. There's something to be said about experiencing (while fully awake) all of the different times of day where you live. You get to see sunrises and sunsets. Busy morning chatter of cars, and the world buzzing to life. The beyond-wee hours of the morning, when the city is so quiet you can hear a pin drop.
Really though, the main benefit is the first one in this comment. You can live your life to the maximum extent, without scheduling in the extra time to manage getting to sleep, and feeling tired when you don't.
fastball|1 year ago
EDIT: just read the original post[1] from the author and indeed this is the reason. He maybe explains it better than me so give a read.
[1] https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/
bigiain|1 year ago
Showing my age here but...
I and some of my friends/classmates used to do the 6day 28hr cycle, to ensure we had access to the computer lab where "normal people" were asleep during the week, but were still mostly "in phase" with everybody else on weekends for socialising.
For those of you who don't understand the term "computer lab", those were the days where my Comp Sci class involved writing/running Pascal code on a shared VAX-11/780 which (from memory here) shared 64MB of memory across all users of the 100 or so terminals attached to it. During the day, especially close to assignment deadlines, there were often long wait times to get one of the terminals. If you were there (and awake) at 10pm or 4am, there was usually only a handful of other people using it, with no waiting queues and with noticeably faster performance.
(When I started 2nd year, the first year class behind me still learned Pascal, but got to use the new Macintosh lab. That kinda made the 28hr phase shifting unnecessary, but a bunch of us persisted anyway. By 3rd year, the VAX was under-utilised enough that they added a bunch of modems, and I could connect from home via a 1200/75 baud modem from the Osbourne1 Z80/CPM machine I had at home.)
jandrewrogers|1 year ago
The main challenges were two-fold. First, there is a significant part of the time where it doesn’t line up with store and restaurant hours that well, which is inconvenient. Second, there are few days every couple weeks where your schedule is completely out-of-phase with normal people which makes socializing nigh impossible on those days e.g. waking up at 8pm and going to bed at 2pm. However, since those days were predictable, I’d simply not schedule anything on those days.
I don’t think this really works for a global business though. Many people around the world are really fussy about rigid schedules, and you will only overlap those a third of the time.
All that said, I think for >24 hour days to be practical, it would be best in a synthetic environment where everyone is on the same clock with limited access to natural sunlight. I could totally imagine it being viable for something like a submarine.
somethingsome|1 year ago
I do this at least from 10 years without bad effects, the positive effects are that I'm more awake and feel fresh longer, in control of my mental power.
It is quite easy to do it while having normal life obligations, I can wake up sooner if something needs to be done, and then, after the task, I can continue to do my day until sleepy, at which point I can sleep again. So, if I have many meeting on a day, I can stay up all day without issues, maybe I'll sleep more in the evening or following day.
I think the quantity of sleep I require depends on the tasks I'm doing. If some task is particularly mentally exhausting I'll automatically do more naps during the day, this in turn makes me more efficient at solving difficult problems.
It is extremely comfortable to solve hard problems in this way, when you work too long on it, you get sleepy, and as you wake up, you are again fully focused and with fresh perspectives.
notcrazylol|1 year ago
Also if people cant respect or don't like your lifestyle, I don't see a point in being with them. If they cant move things around or if we cant find time for something, move on. Life is too short to deal with people problems that can be solved just by doing nothing.
aaarrm|1 year ago
mmahemoff|1 year ago
I knew of a sysadmin who followed this schedule so he could monitor the system at different times of day. There’s probably the same upside for people who manage certain 24-7 operations (though the downsides outweigh them in most cases).
MrsPeaches|1 year ago
This was just the 1 year update.
Idea is that you go to be when you feel tired.
r0ze-at-hn|1 year ago
Countless times in my life I have lived 26-28 hour cycles and otherwise I am in a never ending struggle to live a 24 hour cycle. Once I hit retirement I will definitely try this 28 hour cycle and might even switch to it permanently.
Yeah there are obvious downsides having to do with SO, friends, etc. Having a husband with this same biological quirk would be ideal, but again once I no longer have to go into the office it will be really hard not to fall into a > 24 hour pattern.
throwawayk7h|1 year ago
Aurornis|1 year ago
One of the common themes was that people would think their lives were better at first. A sort of placebo effect. They’d push through the adaptation phase, which was miserable, and when they adapted they felt slightly better. Often this improvement (relative to the miserable adaptation period) was mistake for an absolute improvement because it had been so long since they had a normal sleep schedule.
What was really interesting was that most people reported some variation of the same thing: They didn’t realize how much they disliked the alternative sleep schedule until after they stopped it. Some people stuck with it for a long time until life forced them to change (job, marriage, etc). It wasn’t until they went back to normal that they realized how much better it was to just not fight the sunlight and night time that drives us.
It would be interesting to see how this person feels at some point in the future if they go back to a normal sleep schedule.
grishka|1 year ago
So I'm very much with the author here and I might actually try 28-hour days because what I have for the last 10 years is a mess.
niz4ts|1 year ago
For the few weeks that I'm required to go back to a "normal" sleep schedule, I long every day to go back to my 28h schedule.
I might at some point in the future try moving back to 24h for a longer period of time, but I'm planning to stick to the 28h schedule for at least a couple more years before I do this, and I'll keep doing the yearly updates to document things.
shaftway|1 year ago
I always try to dissuade people from it. It's difficult to get into, and difficult to maintain. It plays hell with a social schedule where people expect you to be awake at certain times.
pcthrowaway|1 year ago
No one is selling anything. There are many of us who benefit remarkably from what you're calling an "alternative sleep schedule" (I'm not specifically talking about 28-hour day entrainment like the blog author, but whatever works for each individual based on their own idiosyncratic circadian rhythm)
Many of us have periods where we have to go back to 24-hour schedules due to external factors, and sleep quality and duration suffer as a result. For myself, in the winter when my schedule is a little >27 hours, when I enforced waking up at 8 AM Monday-Friday for a 9-5, my schedule might go something like this:
> Sunday night: Sleep 7-8 hours starting at midnight.
> Monday night: Sleep 5 hours starting ~3 AM Tuesday.
> Tuesday night: Sleep 2-3 hours starting at ~5 AM Wednesday. Sometimes with exhaustion I may then be able to fall asleep at 5-6 PM (Wednesday) but often would stay up til closer to midnight-2AM. Regardless, when I fall asleep I likely will wake up in 1 or 2 hours and be unable to go back to sleep, as my body doesn't believe it's in the sleep phase.
> "Wednesday night?": There isn't really a Wednesday night except on the occasion where I managed to sleep more than 2 hours. Sometimes I'm up all night with no nap; more than half the time I can't sleep more than 3 hours. Occasionally I'm actually able to stay asleep during what my body thinks is a nap to pay off sleep debt.
> "Thursday night?": Exhausted from having slept no more than 9 hours in the last 48 hours, and usually closer to 3-4 hours, I'll collapse around 5-7 PM from exhaustion and sleep until midnight-5AM.
> "Friday night?": Often I'm ready for sleep by 5-8 PM and will sleep 8-9 hours. But I'll also occasionally try to sleep less and push myself to go out at 9-10 PM if there's an event happening. After being more active and if I slept less than 4 hours I can usually pick up another 1-3.5 hours of sleep after 4 or 5 AM.
> Saturday night: If I got a full night's sleep, or went out Friday but slept a little bit after, I may be more energized, so this is the more consistent day for weekend plans. If sleep was poor I'll try to sleep an hour or two early in the evening before going out and then sleep 3 AM to 9 AM or so. If I didn't have Saturday plans I may go to sleep at 8 PM and sleep til 5 AM.
> Sunday night: Usually fall asleep somewhere around midnight but who knows? I could be up til 3 AM depending on how the weekend went.
All told I would probably get an average of ~5.5 to 6 hour of sleep per 24-hour day, but with significant periods running on very little sleep.
Now that I work from home and have few meetings, my schedule may look more like the following:
> Sunday night: Sleep from midnight to 7 or 8 AM
> Monday night: Sleep from 3 AM (Tuesday) to 10 AM (in time for my 10 AM Tuesday meeting).
> "...": Sleep Wednesday from 6 AM to 1 or 2 PM (Wednesday)
> "...": Sleep Thursday from 9 AM to 4 or 5 PM. Stay awake for my 10 AM meeting Friday.
> "...": Friday I have a meeting from 10-11, then often coordinate with coworkers til noon, but as late as 2 PM (rarely later). So I sleep after and wake up any time friday from 7 PM to 9 PM, go out feeling relatively well-rested.
> "...": Saturday if I have plans I take a nap then go out and fall asleep around 3 AM until 10 AM.
Sunday I probably won't be able to sleep at midnight. Tuesday my 10 AM meeting this week will probably interrupt my sleep phase, but I can usually go right back to sleep after.
All in all on this schedule I get longer periods of uninterrupted sleep, get an average closer to 6.5 hours of sleep per 24-hour period, and never have periods of 48 hours where I only sleep 2 hours, so my overall energy and focus over the week is much better.
404mm|1 year ago
Only one note: OP sounds like a younger person, probably in their 20s. My body was able to take some serious abuse when it came to sleep schedule back then. I had a job that kept alternating between 2-3 day shifts, then 2-3 night shifts, then 2-3 days off. Sometimes I’d not go to sleep for 24+ hours.
I’m twice the age now, and I’m still paying for it. My sleep is not great. I have to be very responsible with sticking to my schedule, and waking up anytime after 3 a.m. results in an inability to fall asleep and a day-long headache.
gorbachev|1 year ago
When I was young, I could stay up for 26 - 30 hours regularly without any issues, even on multiple consecutive days. I would be fine no matter how I slept.
No more. If my sleep schedule gets disrupted in any way, too short or too long, my body will immediately go into "things are not right" mode.
yard2010|1 year ago
xedrac|1 year ago
pcthrowaway|1 year ago
Not saying non-24 is good for you, but for people unable to follow a 24-hour schedule, free-running sleep (which is what OP is doing) is vastly better than constantly pushing through sleep deprivation, when one's schedule allows for it.
Speaking as someone with non-24 myself (which is much more severe in the winter)
edit: after reading more closely, it appears OP has entrained to a 28-hour day rather than doing free-running sleep; 28-hour days are convenient in that the week gets sliced into 6 days and allows for a consistent weekly schedule. However, I suspect OP actually naturally gravitates towards a shorter day like 26 or 27 hours based on their napping patterns. I also wonder if they might even have more success with 24-hour days and regular exercise, as from their description it almost seems like the daily exercise practice which they started after the 28-hour day might be regulating their circadian rhythm to be closer to a natural day.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake...
tgsovlerkhgsel|1 year ago
That's exactly what this pattern is trying to avoid. For people whose sleep cycle is longer than 24h, a "normal" rhythm makes every single day a jet-lagged day, and in the "wrong" direction (it's easier to travel west/stay awake longer rather than travel east/go to bed earlier for most people).
ty6853|1 year ago
Human body can be really bad at adapting to unworldly environments to the point you totally break down.
levocardia|1 year ago
xyzzy_plugh|1 year ago
I don't see anything problematic with TFA's 28-hour days.
readthenotes1|1 year ago
JohnMakin|1 year ago
So a typical schedule could look like:
10pm-2am - sleep
2am-10am - awake
10am-2pm - sleep
2pm-10pm - awake
I've experimented with this a lot - for whatever reason, I don't know why, this split schedule allows me to feel much more alert and attentive during my waking hours, and isn't as stressful as trying to sleep a full 7-8 per night which a lot of times feels impossible for me.
Sometimes I'll do 5-6 hours sleep on 1 cycle instead of 4, so it can shift around, but otherwise stays pretty consistent. Technically I am getting just as many sleep cycles as a "normal" schedule (One part of this was a sleep study to figure out what my natural full rem cycle is, for me, it's about 2 hours long).
I've been doing this for about 2 years and wouldn't do anything else, and it's really not difficult to fit it into a "normal" routine. My close friends have remarked that it makes it seem like I never sleep (due to being available at hours all around the clock), that's about all that anyone has remarked about it.
tiiiij|1 year ago
efitz|1 year ago
I got plenty of rest and got all my domestic stuff done overnight - 24h grocery store, laundromat, etc. I was never unusually tired.
The down side is that it mostly killed my social life. So I quit; the advantages didn’t outweigh the disadvantage of being on a different schedule than everyone else.
Also this was in the late 80s/early 90s before cell phones and the internet.
aomurphy|1 year ago
beezlebroxxxxxx|1 year ago
bigiain|1 year ago
That's pretty common for crew on yachts. I'd do that when racing or cruising ocean going sailboats. The crew gets split into 3rds, and everybody gets to do a 4 hour night watch. (For racing for me, that'd usually be only for a few days or a week tops. I twice spent ~6weeks on that schedule cruising the Great Barrier Reef.)
unknown|1 year ago
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batiudrami|1 year ago
Which is a shame because longer days would probably significantly improve my sleep.
WillAdams|1 year ago
That said, avoiding having to do that again was a big motivation in getting out.
neilv|1 year ago
I hope it's not too personal to ask, but I'm wondering how that is working out with the SO.
My own experience thus far, as someone whose body by default seems to want to do 25-26 hour days (and can do much longer when I choose), is that an SO is one reason to force myself to stay on a 24-hour cycle.
If you're both doing grad school, hospital shifts, startups, trying to make partner, traveling a lot for work, etc., then having your schedules not always overlap might come with the territory, and you both can adapt. But if they find they're often wanting to spend meaningful time with you after their work, and you're sleeping during normal-person waking hours, they might be wondering whether this is the right long-term relationship.
readthenotes1|1 year ago
They were much more natural to me than a 24 hours day length.
If I ever win the lottery, I just may sail endlessly west to east...
eru|1 year ago
whatever1|1 year ago
edoardo-schnell|1 year ago
fuzzfactor|1 year ago
santoshalper|1 year ago
henry2023|1 year ago
hattmall|1 year ago
Now when I'm not able to just sleep and wake up completely naturally it always sucks following a more normal schedule of going to bed around midnight waking up around 7.
So I try to prioritize the biphasic sleep with the idea that the stages are variable. As in sometimes I sleep through all 3 stages, sometimes I stay up after the first time I wake up, or sometimes I don't initially fall asleep until the last stage.
I find that my days don't fit a 24 hours schedule either, but I don't feel like they fit the same set amount of hours each day at all.My motivational and energy levels are just different depending on the day and have a wake / rest cycle that can fit with that is beneficial.
grishka|1 year ago
So, I might actually try this.
Glyptodon|1 year ago
pcthrowaway|1 year ago
If you are, then you're likely adjusted to the 24 natural cycle and something else is going on. The closest thing I'm aware of is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregular_sleep%E2%80%93wake_r...
daft_pink|1 year ago
fastball|1 year ago
[1] https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/
OsrsNeedsf2P|1 year ago
Overall - I don't regret it, and if you're someone who likes to try different life experiences, give it a shot! But I'm not going back anytime soon :)
johnclema|1 year ago
tyzoid|1 year ago
eqvinox|1 year ago
timerol|1 year ago
Starlevel004|1 year ago
gadders|1 year ago
I just checked the dates and it was 20 years ago. Soooooo old....
zblevins|1 year ago
jeremyjh|1 year ago
Yet lines like this just seem really tongue-in-cheek:
> In fact, I avoid talking about the schedule at all with others.
> The internal benefits more than make up for the slightly trickier external interactions.
> I don’t keep track of this in any scientific way, only mental notes that I make along the way
> There might be some longer-term changes, mostly associated with my health, but if these exist, they’ll likely start showing up in the next few years. We’ll see what the future holds.
JeremyBarbosa|1 year ago
Neurobehavioral Performance in Young Adults Living on a 28-h Day for 6 Weeks
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2706904/
janderson215|1 year ago
memhole|1 year ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep
I never actually tried it from what I remember. Cool to read someone’s experience with it.
ArlenBales|1 year ago
4fterd4rk|1 year ago
dinkumthinkum|1 year ago
uint8_t|1 year ago
Uberman's sleep schedule - every 4 hours, sleep 20 minutes.
https://everything2.com/title/Uberman%2527s+Sleep+Schedule
Everyman sleep schedule - per above, with an additional 3-hour nap each 24 hours.
https://everything2.com/title/Everyman+Sleep+Schedule
Of course, the surest way to experiment with an alternative sleep schedule is to simply take care of a newborn, something humans have gotten pretty good at over the millennia.
collinmcnulty|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
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asah|1 year ago
avidphantasm|1 year ago
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