28h Days: year 1 update
110 comments
·January 8, 2025S_A_P
spoaceman7777
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.
pcthrowaway
You're making some assumptions here that I don't think hold.
OP is likely able to do this because they have a longer circadian cycle (though I think it's still less than 28 hours)
A person who might naturally have a 24.4 hour cycle without external stimuli (which is the average sleep researchers found) will likely have problems trying to adjust to a 26 hour cycle or longer, because even if they push themselves to stay up beyond the beginning of the sleep phase of their cycle on a regular basis, there is a good chance they'll wake up closer to the end of their sleep phase, and therefore might not get enough sleep.
It's better to follow a sleep cycle tailored to your own circadian rhythm, which for most people conveniently aligns pretty well with the natural day.
I say this as someone with non-24 who often does free-running sleep (where I've found my own cycle to be a little over 26 hours in winters, and closer to 24 hours in the summer)
euroderf
Data point: I found mine to be between 25 and 26 hours.
Probably a contributing factor to difficulty in getting to sleep "at a good hour".
OTOH mild sleep deprivation has been shown to counter depression, so there's that.
pskfyi
Do you have any recommended books or links on this topic?
bix6
How do you figure out your cycle time?
Aurornis
> 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.
Definitely not guaranteed at all. Many people’s circadian rhythms are intensely driven by daylight cycles. Trying to sleep and wake out of sync with those cycles will be very difficult.
In the past I had to do some work overnight which resulted in some very long days. I would have to be very careful to avoid seeing the sunrise because doing so would make it very hard to sleep even if I’d been up for a long time.
> Really though, the main benefit is the first one in this comment. You can live your life to the maximum extent
If your life involves a lot of solitary, indoor activities then maybe.
For the rest of us who like to socialize and do outdoor daytime activities, having your sleep schedule cut through daylight hours would be a big step backward.
I think people greatly overestimate the benefits of alternative sleep cycles (unless you have a naturally extended circadian cycle that can’t be otherwise managed)
gopalv
> 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 did this for a year when I was caring for my dad and working at the same time, but remember that this process makes you almost completely alone because your breaks do not line up with the world around you.
I would wake up at 7 AM on a monday, to attend the weekly planning meetings & keep slipping by about 1 hour every day of the week, so by Thu I am waking up after noon & I tended to just work through the night on Fri to sleep near dawn on Saturday.
The problem was that Fri nights and weekends are when people are mostly ready to socialize or relax, I would literally sleep through the day on Saturday and wake up close to 4 AM on Sunday.
Then go to sleep around 7 PM on Sunday, because I woke up so early and then monday I wake up with 12hours of sleep.
Lost weight from skipping meals by sleeping.
This felt completely awesome from a personal standpoint & also from the friends I had on IRC, but from an IRL standpoint it was very odd.
I definitely looked like a shut-in, even I grew my hair out simply because I did not have the time to go get it cut during business hours.
Then my dad died, which ended that chapter in an unexpected way.
I remembered those days when I had my first kid, the experience was shockingly similar when it comes to perturbed sleep schedules.
WD-42
After reading the article it kinda sounds like he just takes a lot more naps. Feels like cheating.
nefrix
He said he would take an hour nap when tired , which means he will have another 6 hours sleep per week, which adds him another full night of sleep every week.
hinkley
I've never seen one of these alternative sleep cycle people put forward a sensible cognitive study to go along with it. Like the people who sleep 5 hours a day but all spread out.
The thing with taking a similar test every day is that you should get better at it. So if the test you are abusing shows that your cognitive function is holding steady day by day, week by week, that is likely not a very good sign. It just means you aren't unraveling at an alarming rate. Better to be evaluated by professionals at the beginning and end, and maybe for some people who already know you to chime in on how unhinged you have or have not become.
somethingsome
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.
fastball
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.
Centigonal
From the linked post:
>Some time ago, I found myself with zero obligations to follow the usual daily routine: wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night (the “normal people schedule”). During my time awake, I was either working on side-projects or playing with my hobbies, and I’d go to sleep whenever I felt sleepy, wake up naturally (no alarms), and repeat. This led me to observe that without sticking to a daily routine, my sleep schedule would drift every day compared to the previous one. I also noticed that on most days I’d sleep a bit longer than 8h, sometimes 9h or even 10h.
>An example of the sleep schedule drift: if on day X I went to sleep at 10:00 and woke up at 18:00, on day X+1 I’d go to bed at a time later than 10:00, and wake up later than 18:00. I almost never went to sleep at the same time on two consecutive days.
>I realised that this was happening because it took me longer to feel tired than the “normal people schedule” assumed. If I followed it, sleeping would tend towards napping until the tiredness built up, at which point I’d need to sleep more. In fact, for most of my adult life (especially when I had a full-time job), I’d always have to force myself to go to bed during weekdays, and naturally this drift would occur, and then I’d “reset” during the weekend (often 10h+ of sleep), thus going back to forcing myself to sleep on weekdays to stick to the routine.
jandrewrogers
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.
m463
I'll bet a lot of people did that experiment at the beginning of covid.
bigiain
> 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.)
aaarrm
He literally points out multiple upsides throughout the entire very short blog post.
mmahemoff
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).
r0ze-at-hn
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.
Aurornis
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.
grishka
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.
dahart
> Fight the sunlight? What the hell do you even mean?!
Are you not getting much sunlight? I can understand the reaction to being told something that doesn’t match your experience. But. The link between sunlight and sleep for most life on earth is pretty well established science, and has a name: Circadian Rhythm.
Have you ever tried camping for a week? My sleep tends to drift when I’m working indoors a lot, up late at night a lot, during winter, etc. But if I spend multiple days outside, it starts to align with sunrise almost immediately.
Both of these links say that Circadian Rhythms tend to drift and be longer than a day on average in the absence of sunlight.
ericyd
I think they mean that light exposure has been causally linked to wakefulness, which I'm sure is a statistical thing and not an absolute thing, meaning your experience is still valid even though it's different. Your indignation made me chuckle though, I appreciate the tone.
niz4ts
(I'm the post author)
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.
pcthrowaway
Please familiarize yourself with the community of https://www.reddit.com/r/N24
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
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.
gorbachev
My experience is very similar.
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
Reminds me of my trip to south america, in which I had no meal plans, just munchies plans
xedrac
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.
pcthrowaway
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.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake...
niz4ts
I did free-running sleep for a while (I mention this in the original 28h day post), but decided on 28h days to weekly match other people's schedules.
I exercised regularly before 28h days, and my sleep was still chaotic with that. I didn't exercise daily though, it was hard to fit everything I wanted to do on a 24h day. Having longer days means I can fit more things, which I think is one of the reasons why I increased the amount of exercise after moving to 28h.
I also haven't read any research on this, I just did what felt more natural and logical to me.
scrollaway
I miss being able to do free-running sleep.
I remember so many people in my life being skeptical about my claim that I naturally have longer days than 24h. Then ~6 years ago I actually tested it; my watch recorded my sleep, and it became obvious:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/rTh2vkEMPEiJXx5Y7 [time-asleep graphed on a daily 24h chart]
And only then did I learn what a non-24 was.
tgsovlerkhgsel
> 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).
ty6853
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.
xyzzy_plugh
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.
bcrl
I lived on 36 hour days for a good year or so as well. It made being social very difficult, and was not the greatest thing for me overall, although I did get a lot of code written.
A few months ago I finally got a CPAP machine after getting a sleep study due to abnormal blood pressure patterns (my blood pressure wasn't dropping overnight on a 24 hour monitor). I can now wake up feeling alert and ready to go after 6 hours of sleep (even though I could use a little bit more); I haven't felt rested this way in the morning since more than 15 years ago in my 20s. I'm not particularly overweight, nor do I snore, so it's worth checking into if your sleep patterns tend towards abnormal.
sethammons
I have slept 12+ hours less than a dozen times in my 40 years, and nearly every time was due to being sick. How did you manage to sleep so long?
BenjiWiebe
Not who you are asking, but for me if there's no noise or activity in the house, I usually just keep on sleeping. 10 hours would be more common for me but I've done 12 hours pretty easily too.
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levocardia
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.
readthenotes1
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.
wbl
The melatonin response to sunlight shortens the cycle so the oscillator runs long without it. It wouldn't work well the other way.
energy123
> I doubt your assertion about circadian rhythm research
You seem oblivious to the decades of research into chronobiology and studies into shift work, jet lag, etc.
Your loss.
silversmith
So, in other words, get more sunlight?
aaron695
[dead]
eqvinox
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.
neilv
> 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.
gadders
Anyone else remember when Steve Pavlina trialled polyphasic (30 minute nap every 4 hours) sleep for a year or two? https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/
I just checked the dates and it was 20 years ago. Soooooo old....
hattmall
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.
tiiiij
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.
whatever1
We don’t approve. You are only productive if your butt is on your office seat 9-5.
edoardo-schnell
Isn't this basically a curious way to stay away from people a bit more?
efitz
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.
aomurphy
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).
bigiain
> 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.)
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beezlebroxxxxxx
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.
batiudrami
This seems like the biggest disadvantage to me too. I see friends four or five nights a week so I would have to give a lot of that up.
Which is a shame because longer days would probably significantly improve my sleep.
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 :)