It’s either too late or too early to post this, but as a result of Kathryn Schulz’s NYMag review, I may have to buy a copy of Till Roenneberg’s book Internal Time:Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired…
Among species, we humans are to time what Polish villagers have long been to place: unhappy subjects of multiple competing regimes. The first regime is internal time: the schedule established by our bodies. The second is sun time: the schedule established by light and darkness. These two we share with houseplants and virtually every other living being. But we are also governed by a third regime: social time. That sounds benign enough, like afternoon tea with a friend. But don’t be fooled. Social time is the villain in this drama, out to turn you against health, happiness, nature, sanity, even your own inner self…
Ultimately, though, Roenneberg is more interested in what he calls “social jet lag”: the exhaustion produced by the gap between internal and social time. You can, should you choose, quantify your social jet lag. Simply calculate the difference between the midpoint of your average night’s sleep on a workday and a day off. Say on workdays you fall asleep at eleven and wake up at six: Your midpoint is 2:30 a.m. On weekends, you fall asleep at one and wake up at nine: Your midpoint is 4:30—and you’ve got two hours of social jet lag. You might as well fly from New York to Utah.
Social jet lag, unlike real jet lag, is chronic. Its chief symptom is sleep deprivation, and sleep deprivation is—surely I do not need to tell you this—ghastly. It leaves you with the equilibrium of a despot, the attention span of a toddler, and the working memory of a fire hydrant. It’s one of the few human conditions that can make the characteristics of the tomb—dark, quiet, horizontal—seem unbelievably desirable. Not for nothing are torturers so fond of it…
Adults, too, rapidly lose their equilibrium in the face of even short-term sleep loss. Long-term, it’s associated with depression, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular problems, and cancer. Your odds of being a smoker rise significantly for every hour of social jet lag you suffer. The World Health Organization recently classified “shift work that involves circadian disruption” as a potential carcinogen. The physiological, in other words, bears out the phenomenological. Sleep deprivation makes us sick, sad, and dumb….
Read the whole review, it’s as amusing as it is depressing. For the last few years, I’ve been unemployed (thank goddess and the Spousal Unit it’s been possible for me to survive without working for a paycheck), so I’ve mostly been able to keep my body’s preferred schedule of sleeping from approximately 6am to 2pm. It’s been my impression that us Non-Standard Circadians are overrepresented among bloggers (as among geeks of all persuasions), but maybe that’s just the fatigue poisons talking…
Apart from me making everyone who didn’t get enough rest (even more) cranky, what’s on the agenda for the start of another week?
low-tech cyclist
Maybe it’s my late fiftysomething age bracket, but it’s a big deal when I sleep 45 minutes later on a weekend than the alarm would wake me up on a weekday. (Often I wake up earlier on weekends than on weekdays, which drives me nuts.) My wife and I don’t tend to stay up later on weekends either, so I’m guessing that if I have a social jet lag at all, it’s probably on the order of 15 minutes.
I’d say the answer to social jet lag is: once you hit middle age, don’t have a social life that involves staying up a lot later on Friday and Saturday nights. When you’re young, your body can handle that shit. There comes a point when it has a harder time with it.
Phylllis
Back to work after a terrific weekend in Savannah. I’m an early to bed, early to rise type, and always have been. I might be able to sleep until 6-ish or so on a weekend, but usually I’m awake between 5 & 5:30 most every day.
Phylllis
@low-tech cyclist: Same for me regarding up earlier on the weekends. My husband seems to be able to turn off his internal alarm clock on Saturday and Sunday, but not me. Lingering affects of a farm childhood I suppose, where the day was considered wasted if you didn’t have your chores done by eight a.m.
Bnut
My sister just got a sweet job at a non-profit environmental protection group. I got offered a job to go on the road with Eric Church (big country star) to assist his merchandising director. Good opportunities for both of us, but it means putting our food truck biz on hold. I have been drinking on it tonight and I still can’t come to a decision. Leave our dream behind before it gets its legs, or take the guaranteed good money and live on a bus for 6 months. I guess options are a good thing?
abo gato
Right now I am an early morning person. Get up at 3:45, read blogs for a bit and then go to the gym when it opens at 5:00. But to do that, I have to go to sleep at 8:30 or no later than 9:00 to feel effective the next day. Weekends are great if I can sleep till 7:30. As another late 50ish reader, I am faced with a forced early retirement (details to be disclosed to us later this month) and I am hoping when I get to that point in my life to rearrange my sleeping and waking cycles so that I can become a night owl and not the early bird. Mr Gato would appreciate that, since he’s always been the night owl in the family.
Citizen_X
Good to hear sleep deprivation referred to, not as some part of “enhanced interrogation,” but as a component of torture.
Ugh. That’s my schedule, and I work nights–not voluntarily. I hate it.
Punchy
Made it thru 2 tornado warnings last nite. True to form, the wife was in the basement with dogs and kid, while Im on the driveway trying to see the damn thing. Never saw the damn thing. Dammit.
Raven
So much to do, there’s plenty on the farm
I’ll sleep when I’m dead
Saturday night I like to raise a little harm
I’ll sleep when I’m dead
I’m drinking heartbreak motor oil and Bombay gin
I’ll sleep when I’m dead
Straight from the bottle, twisted again
I’ll sleep when I’m dead
Well, I take this medicine as prescribed
I’ll sleep when I’m dead
It don’t matter if I get a little tired
I’ll sleep when I’m dead
I’ve got a .38 special up on the shelf
I’ll sleep when I’m dead
If I start acting stupid
I’ll shoot myself
I’ll sleep when I’m dead
So much to do, there’s plenty on the farm
I’ll sleep when I’m dead
Saturday night I like to raise a little harm
I’ll sleep when I’m dead
geg6
I am a natural night owl, but my work schedule and my John’s early bird predilictions make keeping my natural sleep schedule out of the question. Meh. I’ve never been a big sleeper. It’s a big deal if I get six or seven hours and I have to be stoned out my mind or exhausted to get eight. Being over 50 has changed none of that, unless you count the numbers of times I wake up during the night with hot flashes.
Anyway, last week was finals week and graduation. NO STUDENTS THIS WEEK! YAY! Maybe I can get some of my work done that I can never get done when the students are on campus. That would be nice.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
Anne you and I have the same body clock, kind of. I tend to sleep drift: I’ll stay awake for 18ish hours, then sleep for 10, then stay up for 12 hours, take a nap, stay up for 12 more, sleep for 8, and so on randomly if I have no work schedule to keep. Generally I go to bed when the sun comes up and, in the winter time, sometimes get up when it goes down. Unfortunately, my commute has my alarm going off at 6-7 am most days. So what usually ends up happening is I get about five hours of sleep a night during the week (because getting to sleep before midnight is just a fucking impossibility, 1 or 2 am is the best I can usually do) and then sleep it all off on the weekends, for 9 to 12 hours each of those two nights.
Eating tends to operate the same way. I rarely eat more than one large meal a day, and have one or two relatively smaller, kinda snack size ones at other times.
The 3 meal a day, 8 hour workday, get up at the same time everyday routine doesn’t work for me. It makes me just as tired and cranky as going to work on 3 hours of sleep does. When I’m on vacation I sleep when I’m tired, until I want to get out of bed. And I eat when I’m genuinely hungry, not before then. And I’m a lot happier.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I can go you one better. Like a lot of people with Asperger’s, my internal clock doesn’t run on a 24-hour cycle. It’s closer to 26. Left to my own devices without ever having to be anywhere, I’d go to sleep about two hours later each day than I did the day before.
Unfortunately, even being unemployed doesn’t prevent me from having things on my schedule on a regular basis. My therapist isn’t really keen on scheduling appointments for 2am instead of 2pm, for instance. So I can’t follow my natural inclination. It means that I end up all over the place, never happy with any schedule. Tonight I’m going to bed at 6am. This coming weekend, I have stuff to do at 10am, so I’m going to have to wrench my sleep time around by then.
kdaug
Got a little-ish German Shepherd (65 lbs) who likes to wake me up at ~3:30 AM. Licks my eyelids and lips. Leaves the wife alone.
Originally I think she got into the habit because she wanted to go potty.
Now she does it out of sheer cruelty – jumps up on the bed, wakes me up, and then goes back to sleep on the couch.
So I sleep from ~11:00 to ~3:30, then up for 5 or 6 hours, then a good, solid nap at midday.
bill
When I was in the Air Force way back when, I worked closely with air traffic controllers. They had rotating shifts: three weeks on days, three weeks on swings, three weeks on mids; lather, rinse, repeat. I never knew how they did it, changing their sleep patterns so radically every three weeks. But the accident/incident rate was always low, so maybe there’s a secret.
Kirbster
Once you’ve read the review, why would you need to read the book? The premise sounds like a five-page magazine article crammed into a 300-page book with lots and lots of padding.
PeakVT
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I run on a 26 hour cycle, too, when I can. Keeping to a regular schedule leaves me tired, which means I’m tired a lot of the time.
Darkrose
Hmm…I wonder if the 26 hour cycle thing is part of my problem. Of course, it could also be med-related, or just me staying up too damn late. But if my weekends are any indication 5 am-2 pm is my ideal sleep schedule.
cmorenc
Another of the cycle/sleep disruptors is the excessive artificial light contemporary urban/suburban living bathe us in, banishing the natural dark of night. All that light pollution that prevents us from seeing the stars at night also represents profligately wasted energy usage (and indirectly, needless carbon emissions). We’d all sleep better at night with more efficient, properly shielded and more judicious use of light at night instead of being bathed in glare.
jeffreyw
Doggie pr0n.
rikyrah
um, WHITE WOMEN are counted as a MINORITY….HENCE, them being the biggest beneficiaries of AFFIRMATIVE ACTION.
……………………………..
MA GOP Calls For Harvard Investigation Of Warren’s Minority Status
The Chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party Bob Maginn sent a letter to the president of Harvard asking for an investigation into Elizabeth Warren’s minority status at the university. The MA GOP and Scott Brown’s campaign have been attacking Warren for being listed as a minority because her great, great, great grandmother was Cherokee. The letter alleges “academic fraud” on Warren’s part by Harvard’s own standards of “academic honesty in the law school’s statement of community principles.” At the end, the letter touches on whether Warren received any special treatment or “advantages” because of her minority status.
The letter concludes: “Harvard must investigate Ms. Warren’s false claims to be a minority; how it came to pass that Harvard accepted these claims; and the extent to which Ms. Warren’s alleged minority status afforded her advantages to which she would not otherwise have been entitled.”
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/ma-gop-calls-for-harvard-investigation-of-warrens
jeffreyw
IPad or Transformer Prime?
Maude
@rikyrah:
They must stay up late at night thinking this stuff up.
kdaug
@Maude:
Particularly if they have an insomniac dog.
danielx
On the agenda today – hopefully getting through the day without any disruptions, since I had to take the Spousal Unit to the hospital Friday evening with chest pains after a stress test last Wednesday. They let her out yesterday, but cardiac cath and stent are on the agenda for this coming Wednesday. Joy.
I told her she is not allowed to stay sick, as next weekend is senior prom and it is not my job to get the daughterspawn ready for prom, a sentiment with which the daughter in question wholeheartedly agrees. Fathers – let’s just go ahead and say males – are an inadequate substitute for some tasks and situations.
Joey Maloney, when he should be working
I think your math is wrong in your example, though it doesn’t affect your point. If you fall asleep at 1 and get up at 9, your midpoint is 5, not 4:30.
I can’t sleep through the night any more, and I’m not that old. I find myself consistently waking up after 4 to 5 hours – either noise from the cat or pressure on the bladder or both – and then I have trouble falling back asleep after peeing or killing the cat or both. But if I don’t manage to sleep for at least another 2 hours and preferably 3 or 4 I’m useless the next day.
Joey Maloney
Crap. Try to be clever, wind up in moderation.
the Conster
Sleeping in a very dark quiet place is one of the best things you can do for your overall health and well-being because the importance of melatonin production cannot be overstated. That little pineal gland that sits right in the middle of your brain lobes that no one ever thinks about or even really cares about (really, who’s ever heard of pineal gland cancer) is where all the action is as we come into this phase of human evolution. It’s our third eye, and the more quality sleep you get, the more it sees.
Maude
@danielx:
Glad she’s home and she’ll get through those tests fine. Hang in there.
You have prom night hysterics to get through.
gene108
I’m an insomniac. Sleep is for the weak.
Whatever social clock I have has been shot to hell for a bit over 10 years.
The Bearded Blogger
Hollande… in Europe, it’s gotten to the point where ideology is electorally irrelevant: preside over a crisis (caused bny you or not), get the boot, preside over good times, get reelected… plus there is no real challenge to neoliberal orthodoxy… politics is weird, and creepy
The Bearded Blogger
For me, good sleep is very strongly related to eating well. My shift ends at 9pm, and I’m real hungry afterwards, but I try to eat just a salad
gaz
I ditched my job last week. I’ve still got my business, but no more IT for me in the short term.
I’ve made a resolution. Ditch the job, ditch the drugs (as the two had become hopelessly intertwined), and focus on things far more important to me.
I’m pursuing HRT for the 2nd time, which means I get to suffer the effects of puberty for the 3rd time. My spouse will hopefully survive the endeavor.
Depression sucks, GID sucks, mix in an IT job and I can handle it for only so long at a time. Time for a change. Time for a little of what the Buddhists refer to as “beginner’s mind”.
And on the sleep front, I haven’t been able to sleep well since I was 30. Now I’ve accepted getting 4 or so hours a night, and crashing about once a week. I thought about undergoing a sleep study, but despite the doom and gloom in the above piece, I’ve more important things to busy myself with at the moment. There’s plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead.
gaz
@danielx: I wish you and your wife well.
You normals and your gender role hang ups. =)
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to restrain my wife in order to apply makeup to her. She’s terrified of the eyelash curler. Any time we must attend some sort of formal event, it’s my job to take her shopping, pick out something appropriate, apply the makeup, choose the jewelry, etc. Left to her own devices my wife is hopeless in that regard. We have no daughters, but if we did, I doubt she’d let my wife near her before her prom. heh.
gaz
@gene108: co-signed.
schrodinger's cat
My orange kitteh has not been letting me sleep. She misses my husband, usually she wakes him up at night, since he is not there she has been waking me up in the middle of the night by sitting on my pillow and tickling me with her whiskers, and if that fails licking my eyelashes.
gaz
@schrodinger’s cat: my maine coon meows right in my ear at the crack of dawn every morning.
We can’t install a cat-door because there are too many ferals about. meh.
best of luck with your kitteh. =)
Librarian
Miles Monroe: “Look, you gotta be kidding. I wanna go back to sleep! If I don’t get at least 600 years, I’m grouchy all day.”-Woody Allen, Sleeper
Ruckus
In college lo these many years ago, I had a biology prof who warned us about taking classes against our sleep patterns. If you are a morning person, go to sleep early, up the same way, and so take classes accordingly. And it worked, I did much better following that maxim. Of course now that I’m without paycheck I wake 1-2 hrs earlier and go to sleep about 3-4 hrs earlier. Maybe stress is part of the problem.
I have been for at least the last 25 yrs a night person, going to bed at 1-3 in the morning, getting up at 8ish. In the last 2 weeks that has almost completely gone away.
RalfW
There is always lots of mention of how much the stress of the Presidency ages it’s occupant. No doubt it’s super-stressful. But I think the lack of sleep (for all but GWB, who reportedly got plenty) that makes prezs go grey/age really really fast.
dcdl
@jeffreyw: Depends on what ios you like. I have a Transformer T201, the one before Prime. I love it. My mom has a Ipad and is reasonably happy with it. The main thing she has issues with is that is Apple and she has always had Microsoft. She got her Ipad for free so doesn’t complain to much. Only when something seems intuitive to her and isn’t on the Ipad. I would suggest going to Amazon and reading the reviews and comments on the reviews. Then going to a store that has them and checking them out. The nice thing about the Transformer is having the keyboard that has the extra battery, usb ports, and such. Yes, you can get a keyboard for the Ipad, but it doesn’t have all the extras. Also, with the Ipad you need to get adapters. For instance, if you want to connect it to the TV you can’t just buy an HDMI cable you have to buy an adapter for the Ipad so it will connect.
I’m naturally a late night, late riser person, but since having kids it’s early riser at what I would call the butt-crack of dawn, 6am. Most people consider that normal getting up time. Needless to say coffee has become a close personal friend. The kids know not to bug mommy until she has her first cup.
Yutsano
@Bnut: GO!! You’re young, you have lots of time yet to settle down plus it will give you a chance to do any reforms to your business model. The truck will wait for you.
Mnemosyne
@Bnut:
I guess it depends on how well you feel the food truck is going. Six months isn’t that long, so maybe taking a break and then being able to put that nice cash infusion towards some improvements would be a good thing? But then I’m sure spring/summer are really the big months for food trucks, depending on where you are. Here in Los Angeles, they’re year-round, but in areas that have seasons, it’s probably more of a seasonal business.
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
Seems I just read something that stated that pre-industrial folks tended to sleep a few hours, wake up in the night and putter or whatever for a couple, then sleep the rest of their “sleep shift.”
Generally, I’ve been the type to get to sleep around 1:00 a.m.-ish, then up around 8:00. But there may be something to that article I’d read, because recently I’ve been napping in the early evening and then once I’m up from that, stay up till 2:00 a.m. or past, and yet get myself to work before 9:00 the next morning without feeling any grungier than usual, maybe even less so.