Why we should be watching the sun, not the clock
January 22, 2019 7:03 AM   Subscribe

 
I really need to stop staying up til 3am and sleeping until noon on weekends... I know, I know.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 7:23 AM on January 22, 2019 [2 favorites]


this has been my pet theory for years, not just about time zones but also the fact that we have the same schedule despite the fact that the length of days change with the seasons. I've always wondered if we could study it, but I am so disappointed that I've missed my chance to become a chronobiologist. Seriously that is among the most badass job titles in this future dystopia.
posted by Jon_Evil at 7:38 AM on January 22, 2019 [13 favorites]


One way of achieving this would be to allow greater flexibility in people’s working hours, so that owls could start work later and therefore get the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep each night. If he were an employer, Roenneberg says, he would ban the use of alarm clocks and instruct employees to start work only once they had had adequate sleep.

I know some companies are actually this reasonable. But as someone currently looking to change jobs, it seems like finding a needle in a haystack.
posted by joeyjoejoejr at 7:51 AM on January 22, 2019 [4 favorites]


I blame the Eastern Time Zone. TV shows and sporting events all come on at the same time, but if you live out East you have to wait until like 8 for Monday night football or until 9:20 pm for the college basketball national championship game. And don’t get me started on the World Series or the slow-ass Red Sox and Yankees. And then you’re supposed to be at work at 8.

If you live on Central time, all that stuff is an hour earlier for you, but you go to work at the same time. Your local news is on at 10. It’s all-around a more civilized way to live.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:56 AM on January 22, 2019 [9 favorites]


If he were an employer, Roenneberg says, he would ban the use of alarm clocks and instruct employees to start work only once they had had adequate sleep.


This is a great idea, and as someone who until very recently had problems with sleep apena, very appealing. But I also work in a field where that isn't possible; when your job involves providing services and support to other human beings who may be vulnerable or have needs that need to be addressed in a timely fashion, you have to show up when you say you are going to. A lot of health and human service roles are like that. So we have to figure out other ways to address this.
posted by nubs at 8:14 AM on January 22, 2019 [8 favorites]


In my quest to be the change in the world I'd like to see, I've slowly shown up later and later to work to see if anyone notices or cares and staying later. I'm at 8:45am versus 8am right now. Some insane people even show up at 7:30am I hear but of course cannot verify.

My ideal life is probably 12/12:30am - 8:30/9am sleeping, roughly.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:20 AM on January 22, 2019 [6 favorites]


It’s a quote from the article but I think it’s also US versus UK usage, daylight savings sounds weird to me.
posted by ellieBOA at 8:32 AM on January 22, 2019


In the American colloquial, it's best explained as "time" modified by "daylight savings" which might be akin to "seasons greetings." Daylight savings is the ill-conceived scheme, and DST is the time that daylight savings is in effect.

Not saying it makes total sense, but it makes more sense than DST itself.
posted by explosion at 8:55 AM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


god i would slaughter untold millions for the ability to sleep more than 5-6h in a row
posted by poffin boffin at 9:13 AM on January 22, 2019 [7 favorites]


I assumed it’s because it’s got the same cadence to it as “[Such-and-Such] Savings Bank” (savings banks used to be more of a thing in the US), and because a governmentally imposes time scheme and a bank both have a sort of “institutional” flavor to them, we don’t really think to hard about what words mean and get them confused
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:15 AM on January 22, 2019


In California we recently voted on Proposition 7 to authorize the legislature to either end DST (like Arizona) or extend it year-round (though this would also require federal permission). It was an odd thing to vote on, since there were two roughly opposite possible outcomes and the legislature hasn't shown much interest in any case. But I was surprised by the passion some of my acquaintances worked up about the proposition, both for and against, and some of it from people who didn't even know what else was on the ballot.

Given how varied our internal clocks and outside obligations are, I don't give much credence to universalizing arguments about the "right" way to set the clocks (though starting school later for teenagers does seem like a well-supported idea). It's not that the health and comfort concerns aren't valid, it's just that changes to clock time seem pretty zero-sum; it would do more good to accommodate variation among people. (The quote above about letting people come to work after they wake naturally is an example that's nice to imagine, but a lot of workplaces where that wouldn't be possible could still accommodate a bit more variation in start times.)
posted by aws17576 at 9:16 AM on January 22, 2019 [3 favorites]


Picking a particular time zone (all DST or never DST) probably matters a lot less than just not changing the fucking thing twice a year.

I mean, the time change literally kills people. There's a statistically appreciable increase in car crashes as a result of it. (Though a significant number of fatal crashes could be prevented if we retained DST year-round; having daylight in the evenings is more important for safety than in the mornings. So if you do want to pick sides there, that's the side to be on.)

And we keep doing it because... tradition, basically. There's exactly zero chance that such a scheme would be implemented today, but we keep it around because basically as a society we can't agree on anything.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:34 AM on January 22, 2019 [16 favorites]


Though a significant number of fatal crashes could be prevented if we retained DST year-round; having daylight in the evenings is more important for safety than in the mornings.

Think of the lives that could be saved with a four hour workday.
posted by Uncle Ira at 9:46 AM on January 22, 2019 [20 favorites]


If he were an employer, Roenneberg says, he would ban the use of alarm clocks and instruct employees to start work only once they had had adequate sleep.

That makes a huge difference. I worked in an office setting for decades and always struggled to be there by 8 a.m. because I am an owl. And it's even worse in the winter because as a former insomniac, by brain says, "If you wake up and it's dark, go back to sleep." I was finally, through seniority and strong performance, able to convince my bosses that I do better showing up between 9 and 10 in the winter, after I have done a round of email at home.

Now I work the same job off-site. My job is 85% email so it doesn't matter if I'm not on email until 9 a.m. nor if I am rubbing sleep from my eyes and still in my robe and slippers. I get better sleep because I can catch the extra sleep my body craves in the winter.

" But I also work in a field where that isn't possible; when your job involves providing services and support to other human beings who may be vulnerable or have needs that need to be addressed in a timely fashion, . . ."

In my previous human service office, staggered start times worked out fine for that. All the Larks would be at work by 7 a.m. and gone by 3:30 p.m. We Owls were the staff in the office from 9:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. We have an office culture of dealing with problems/needs in a very timely manner but also the understanding in the field that because our staff traveled 1-2 weeks a month, timely could mean within a day, with delay notice provided by an out-of-office voice and email auto-reply.

For office jobs in particular, that scheduling can work.
posted by ITravelMontana at 9:59 AM on January 22, 2019 [4 favorites]


I recently switched from a 7am start to a 10am start and omg, even when I got more than 8 hours of sleep, I was never as awake and rested as I am now. Even though I’m spending the same amount of time at work and asleep etc it feels like I’ve gained an extra 2-3 hours a day because I’m not a shambling undead anymore.
posted by rodlymight at 10:12 AM on January 22, 2019 [6 favorites]


I thought I was an owl until I got a teaching job, as it turns out being forced out of the house by 6:20am each weekday is enough to change your preferences and I am now a Morning Person(TM).

Getting to sleep at around the same time each day, and getting up at around the same time each day, is good sleep hygiene right? Regardless of what those times happen to be.

In an office job where it doesn't particularly matter what time you get to work, getting to work by 9am each day was indeed a struggle; and as others said it doesn't mesh well with EST and staying up later for awards shows, sport events, Netflix, etc. Farmers rose before the dawn, but they also didn't stay up late watching Sports Center.

Older people also need less sleep in general, so an early start suits me in my 30s more than a 9am office job suited me in my 20s.
posted by subdee at 10:12 AM on January 22, 2019 [4 favorites]


One way of achieving this would be to allow greater flexibility in people’s working hours, so that owls could start work later and therefore get the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep each night. If he were an employer, Roenneberg says, he would ban the use of alarm clocks and instruct employees to start work only once they had had adequate sleep. “The majority of employees would still be in the office by 10am or 11am, but this would increase productivity, sick days would go down, and I would get your best time as an employer,” he says. “It’s a win-win situation.”

This still presumes that the purpose of my days is to be efficient at work for my employer.

It's not my actual priority. I'm always going to short-change my sleep so that I can do rest-of-my-life things when my workday is over.
posted by desuetude at 10:27 AM on January 22, 2019 [7 favorites]


I'm proudly pedantic about it being daylight saving time, not the later drift into "daylight savings time." The intended grammar of the phrase would be clearer if we were to hyphenate it: Daylight-saving time.
posted by desuetude at 10:30 AM on January 22, 2019 [2 favorites]


4 day work week! 6 hour work day! the boss needs you, you don't need him! death to the oppressors
posted by poffin boffin at 10:39 AM on January 22, 2019 [25 favorites]


For the last seven (going on eight) years, I have had to get up at 5:30 a.m. during the week to get out of the house around 6:40 to be at work by 7:50. Which means I have to be in bed by 10:00 p.m. to have any chance at a decent amount of sleep. Even after all this time, I still loathe getting up at 5:30 and even though I am at my desk before 8:00 as required, I am not much use to anybody for a good hour and a half. If I could shift my bed/wake times by about an hour and shrink my commute time, I feel like I would be much more productive during my actual work hours.
posted by briank at 10:43 AM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


Older people also need less sleep in general, so an early start suits me in my 30s more than a 9am office job suited me in my 20s.

This is actually not true. Older people still need the same amount of sleep--they just often have trouble getting it because of chronic pain or other medical conditions.
posted by Automocar at 10:44 AM on January 22, 2019 [7 favorites]


@Automocar You seem to be right, thanks for the correction:

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-topics/aging-and-sleep

Though it does seem to be true that adults need less sleep than children, including adolescent children.
posted by subdee at 10:51 AM on January 22, 2019 [2 favorites]


I try to reduce the amount of sleeping I do and have settled on a routine of going to bed at 4 to wake up at 8/830/845 depending if I care to be at work on time or not. The way I see it, the sleep I do on work nights is basically unpaid labor and I'd like to not do very much unpaid labor, nor do I feel any particular benefit from being alert and energized all day. Being sleepy at work can actually make it go by faster if I doze off or zone out throughout the day, or during nice weather take a nap at lunch break. Plus midnight to 4 am is the best time of any day, with the least probability of running into other awakened ones. The oppressive sun has hid it's shame, and the folks you do run into are interesting. I've also never had issues sleeping, outside of weird moments of anxiety or panic or whatever, but have never felt the need to not eat, drink coffee, or mess with lights before bed.

Still, time switchery is nonsense and as a civilization we really should do without it. At the same time, I'd hate for it to be done for the sake of capitalist productivity.
posted by GoblinHoney at 11:00 AM on January 22, 2019 [2 favorites]


Given how varied our internal clocks and outside obligations are,

Several years ago, I took a few vacation days and, being introverted, stayed home and talked to no one and did exactly what I wanted. Which included going to sleep when I was tired, and waking up when I had enough rest.

Every night, I found myself going to bed later and later, and waking up later and later. (The overnight classic movie marathon helped matters.) By the last day, I was going to bed at 6 in the morning.

I have since concluded that because my body is not on a 24-hour clock, I must not be from this planet, which would explain a lot of things.
posted by Melismata at 11:13 AM on January 22, 2019 [21 favorites]


As a night owl, I count one of the great good fortunes of my life to be that I’ve lucked into a job where people are relaxed about office hours and nobody minds if I roll in at 10.30am and work accordingly later. As well as suiting my body clock, my commute is sooo much more civilised. I usually share my bus with half a dozen pensioners going shopping, instead of 50 bleary-eyed office workers.
posted by penguin pie at 11:24 AM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


My work starts late and ends late which would be great for a shifted sleep schedule but I still have to wake up early to get my kids ready and take them to school. So instead I'm just sleep deprived.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:17 PM on January 22, 2019 [2 favorites]


Every night, I found myself going to bed later and later, and waking up later and later. (The overnight classic movie marathon helped matters.) By the last day, I was going to bed at 6 in the morning.

I recall reading that this is completely normal and that most humans, without outside cues of natural light or clocks, will migrate around the clock like that. Yes it's here - there an amazing number of sleep studies done in antarctica, I suppose it's something you can study there in winter and lord knows you have the equipment. Anyway, "During a five-day period of acclimation that included social interactions, meals at normal times, and temporal cues (radio, TV), the subjects arose and went to sleep at the usual times and maintained a 24-hour sleep-wake rhythm. After removing these cues, however, the subjects awakened later each day, and the cycle of sleep and wakefulness gradually lengthened to about 28 hours instead of the normal 24. When the volunteers were returned to a normal environment, the 24-hour cycle was rapidly restored."

This is interesting because it reveals how much of sleep is cultural, not solely biological (species or individual). There was some interesting historical research out a few years ago revealing how in pre-industrial times, people used to wake up in the middle of the night and spend hours reading and puttering, considering it normal to sleep overnight in two long naps rather than straight through. Preindustrial cultures also offered a lot more sleep/rest during the winter than the summer, something we like to pretend there is no need for and no longer adjust our culture to observe because we have made ourselves into machines.
posted by Miko at 12:23 PM on January 22, 2019 [15 favorites]


There was some interesting historical research out a few years ago revealing how in pre-industrial times, people used to wake up in the middle of the night and spend hours reading and puttering, considering it normal to sleep overnight in two long naps rather than straight through.

My spouse does this now.
Goes to bed at the kids bedtime, around 8pm, and often wakes up at 1 or 2am, does a little light activity (making lunch for the next day, paying bills, what have you) then goes back to bed for another few hours.

I think the key to this behaviour is being able to go to sleep pretty quickly.
Go to bed at 8, asleep by 8:15, go back to bed at 2, asleep by 2:10.
You can't be a tosser and turner or you'll lose precious sleep time.
posted by madajb at 12:50 PM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


We Owls were the staff in the office from 9:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m.

This almost rubs it in how unfair this whole "time" thing has always seemed to me, because if they let me choose what was actually easiest I'd be rolling in around noon.
posted by atoxyl at 2:14 PM on January 22, 2019 [2 favorites]


Yeah, in my 20s I worked at a startup where I knew myself to be fairly unreplaceable, and I showed up around 3pm (and left by around 11-midnight). Now I wake up 10-11 which is about as early as I'm able to do (without feeling exhausted 100% of the time).

If "Owls" are comfortable being in the office by 9:30 then I'm... something thats up much later than an owl.
posted by thefoxgod at 2:46 PM on January 22, 2019 [4 favorites]


“If you are forcing an evening person to show up at 7am, all you have is a grumpy employee who sits there and drinks coffee, procrastinating until 9am because he simply can’t focus,” says Stefan Volk, a management researcher at the University of Sydney Business School.
SHUT UP, YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD.
posted by fedward at 8:01 PM on January 22, 2019 [4 favorites]


Speaking as someone barely human at 8am, my last office job allowed me to go in at 10am, and I loved them for it.
posted by thivaia at 8:27 PM on January 22, 2019


When I worked an office job, I was scolded if I wasn’t prepared to work by exactly 8:30 AM at the very latest. I did not last long there.

The one upside of working retail is that I start at 11 AM. It’s better, but still kind of hard to get myself there on time. Plus it kills a lot of your social life.

I think I’d probably be good with a 1 PM start.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 8:35 PM on January 22, 2019


I am just so sick of having to live on a lark schedule. Hell, in my business we have 8-10 a.m. meetings (very frequently, I have 3 out of 4 days of them this week) and the only "flex time" is for the extreme early birds, which is most of the office, who wake up at 3 a.m. for fun and are chomping at the bit to start work at 6:30 but aren't permitted to until 7.

Also, even if I did manage to get a full 8 hours of sleep the night before, I am still tired and wanting to yawn (a no-no) in a 2-hour long starting at 8 a.m. meeting where all I do for 90% of it is Sit Still and Pay Attention and do nothing. It pisses me off that I will never be able to sleep in until I am so old that I genuinely will wake up early no matter what. What good is it then?
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:24 PM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


I highly recommend Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker to anyone in this thread! It came out about a year ago and is fascinating - tons of the latest sleep research (how caffeine and alcohol affect sleep, and then in turn how sleep intersects with so many other aspects of our health).
posted by estlin at 10:45 PM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


I hate daylight saving time - it means I drive directly into the sun four times a year rather than two.
posted by lab.beetle at 7:11 AM on January 23, 2019 [3 favorites]


Estlin, serious question: will reading that book make me feel helpless and depressed? As an owl who completely identifies with jenfullmoon— I will never be on the schedule that is optimal for my body because of my job and that fills me with despair.

Reading about how important sleep is to our health and how to get better sleep never seems applicable if you’re someone who has been underemployed their entire adult life and is now hanging on to their job with all they have, which means never sleeping in as much as you would ideally and using caffeine to wake up for meetings because there really isn’t a choice if you want to stay employed.

I work from home (and am grateful I don’t have to commute so I get more sleep) but it’s contract work for an east coast company. Everyone I work with (clients or other contract designers) constantly forgets that I’m on the west coast even though I’m going on six years with most of the same people. And even if they remember, there’s an implication that I’m lazy for signing on at 11am their time. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that I’m the reason they have someone working for them late into the evening on their time and how often that’s saved them when they needed last minute changes to a project. There are plenty of people I work with who cover the morning hours and there’s only me who covers the evening, but they would prefer I sign on at 6am my time or earlier and often schedule meetings that early even when there’s no reason for me to be in them.

I am so bitter right now I could cry, but I have to get to work.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 8:23 AM on January 23, 2019 [3 favorites]


Every night, I found myself going to bed later and later, and waking up later and later.

I've heard that's true for owls -- our natural cycle is a bit longer than 24 hours. Larks tend to be shorter than 24 hours. I've observed this in my spouse. He tries to go to bed at the same time every night, with me. But once or twice a week he will just keel over in exhaustion and go to bed 1-2 hours before bedtime.
posted by Margalo Epps at 5:42 PM on February 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


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