28 hour days - doable?

[ctj]

[ QUOTE ]
i took a seminar on this in college and spent a year working to isolate circadian rhythm genes in med school.

internal clock runs at around 25 hours if you're in a cave with no time cues.

clock trains to 24 hours with time cues. of those most effective is bright light >2500 lumens, which means natural sunlight.

shifting continuously like your proposed 28-hour day is a bad idea. google circadian rhythms and shift work. it's especially bad if you tend towards bipolar disease.

[/ QUOTE ]

I once worked a shift schedule that was:
3 days of swing shift (4pm - midnight); 24 hrs off;
3 days of night shift (midnight - 8am); 24 hrs off;
3 days of day shift (8am -4pm); 72 hrs off;
--- rinse and repeat (for about a year) --

It was brutal.

[kevin017]

[ QUOTE ]
But sleep cycles slip, at a much faster pace than a standard solar day.

It probably has a lot to do with the fact individual humans are moving at faster relative speeds (although not much) to the rotation periods of Terra/Sol.

And, yes, if you don't keep to a standard, healthy routine, it messes with your head. And remodulating the flows is insanely difficult. Creative bleed-offs are necessary.

Considering this in my situation, there are times I move at several factors of c so I find it useful to reset my circadian rhythms once or twice every couple weeks. That means a lot of night as opposed to day. Especially in summer, because sunlight is really something you shouldn't need in full strength all year.

As it is, it may be that some people are more comfortable with more hours in nocturnal periods than daylight periods. If you're Norwegian, for example, you'd certainly not feel comfortable in the Caribbean, and there's an adjustment period.

And so on. It may be individual sleep/wake cycles are emerging as unique as DNA. If you jack a copy of your DNA into cyberspace and accelerate it with a good set of references and you know what you're looking for, and you get some pings/matches, maybe there shouldn't be a set criteria for time spent sleeping/waking.

As the Tao saying goes, sleep when you're tired, eat when you're hungry, piss when you need to. And if you want to push yourself to extremes (refer to Sufi experiments) always make sure you have backup and are in supervised situations. Psychotic breaks do happen.

[/ QUOTE ]

what in the holy hell

[kevin017]

and, it is maybe maybe doable, but you need to stay disciplined. your body really wants you to be closer to 24-25 hour days. you might feel funny, be tired/not be able to sleep, or whatever, and its not as good for you as normal regular sleep.

but its harmless to try it out for a while and if it works for you then cool stuff. tr in a week plz.

[diddyeinstein]

Yea, I've always heard our biorhythms are more attuned to a 25 hour day. The only problem is you pretty much have to live in a vacuum if you want to succeed at it though because eventually your 'day' is going to be from like 10p-8a.

One of the original workers on chaos theory did the 25/25 hour day for a while and eventually had to stop for the above mentioned reason that he couldn't get anything done during the 'day' because everything was closed.

[billygrippo]

for a time i would goto sleep 2-3 hours later each night. not sure what that works out to but it was weird times and i dont recomend it

[rakemeplz]

25 hour days are what im doing right now, just because they are "easier" than 24 hr days (why I'm awake right now in fact lol). Of course having a job/life etc. influences this. Anyways 28 hour days would probably f*** you up, I'd be interested to see how it goes if you do it. I'd guess 26 hour days would obviously be doable if most people do 24, and you could probably extend it a bit more than that. Just my opinion. It's just staying awake when you probably need want sleep. Doing 20 hour days would be really unusual.

Edit: with regards to Matt's post about time cues I usually have my eyes covered while sleeping so that definitely can impact the length of your day I guess.

[onesandzeros]

It is only doable if you do not have an agent to report to...

I wake up whenever I wake up, and go to bed whenever I can't stay awake. Guess thats why Ive always been self employed or unemployed give or take the here and there.

[Dale Dough]

Yeah so it's been a week, figured I owe you guys a trip report.

You were right. Most of you, at least. I tried it for a few days, but just couldn't keep up with it. I lasted maybe four 'days', depending on how you count. At first I was able to put in a few poker sessions, but I just got more and more tired, even if I had more or less the amount of sleep that I had planned on. Technically, I got enough hours of sleep, but it seemed like I had no sleep at all.

Throughout the day, every 3 hours, sometimes 90 minutes, I would randomly feel ridiculously tired. Like sleep before your head hits the pillow tired. Then there were times when I was tired, but just couldn't fall asleep if I wanted to. I'd fight through a whole day of wanting to sleep, but then still ended up staring at the ceiling for 30 minutes.

I noticed a deterioration in my energy level, alertness and attention span. At some point, I couldn't even get myself to watch a movie because I thought I'd fall asleep. I couldn't read anything with long paragraphs. Seriously - I was reading 2+2 to stay awake and skipping the long posts. I would randomly browse the net, find an interesting article, read like 3 lines, skim the rest and bookmark it, because I couldn't read the whole thing. I tried, but I just couldn't.

I did not go to the gym. I did not go to the casino - I thought I was going to fall asleep at the table, if not during the cab or subway ride there. I only played poker during the first day or two. Pretty much anything at all that I did seemed to take a lot of effort. Either I had no energy for it or I felt I'd be too prone to falling asleep. Needless to say this did not affect the quality time with the gf in a positive manner.

I used to think I'm pretty good at the fighting through sleepiness/tiredness part. Now, I realize that other times, it was because I had an immediate need to pull it off. I had little choice in the matter, so I put up with it, knowing I'd catch up later. I never thought to stop and think how tired I really was, because there was no point. This time, it was painfully obvious. By day four, all I was thinking about was 'how many more hours, and how the hell am I going to stay awake'. All the aforementioned problems only got worse and worse, and I accomplished pretty much nothing.

Bottom line: if you want to experience the all nighter from hell, try this.

[br.bm]

my rythm is this:
Mo to Th: 6am to 10pm
Fr: going to uni, stay up till late night
Sa: stand up late afternoon (like 17pm) and stay up till sunday approx. 16pm

this way I loose the whole sunday. I just wait until I can go to bed. Neither poker nor learning is possible. But I can stay awake at night in the weekend and get my rythm back for the week.

The best thing would be 6am to 10pm everyday though.

[SmokeyRidesAgain]

Getting up while it's getting/after dark will definitely make you feel like [censored] and question what the hell you are doing, unless you have a crazy party to go to or something.

Maybe if you live somewhere where there is more of a 24hr culture going on it wouldn't be so bad but my cycles are [censored] and I don't care except for when I wake up and everyone else is just going to bed. It's fun the first few times for the child like appeal but it gets really bad and lonely like, especially if you are just sat infront of the pc playing poker. Sometimes I feel like the last human alive at about 3-4am. On the plus side I feel hugely productive at this time.

Also after those nights I end up not sleeping after sunrise and instead going out to catch up on sunlight and life in general which [censored] the cycle up even more. Unless you seal yourself in a box or really hate the world there is no way you'll go to bed after a night like that, with the sun coming up and a "real" day just beginning.