[necovek]

How about — instead of making sleep more "efficient" — we engineer our lives to provide decent amount of sleep and not stress over having more and more of the waking hours to do stuff.

After all, we live in the age of abundance.

(Though I admit I might not be the best person to ask for this as I am on the lower end of how much sleep I need)

[ozozozd]

We could be sleeping less to do more fun stuff, no?

[djtango]

Don't know why you got downvoted for this. My whole life I have been shaving my sleep time to try to cram more of what I want to do into my day. I used to wake up an extra couple of hours before school so I could squeeze in extra gaming time. On holiday I regularly sacrifice sleep to extreme levels to do more.

This isn't some kind of box ticking behaviour with its roots originating from toxic hustle culture, simply the adverse effects of sleep deprivation don't outweigh my enjoyment of things. And when my sleep debt finally catches up with me, I sleep my heart's delight.

From experience, I have friends who share in my world view and threshold for sacrificing sleep for pleasure and I have met people who think are mortified by this behaviour. My immediate family are all willing to sacrifice sleep on the drop of the hat notably - waking up at the crack of dawn to send/accompany someone to the airport is simply modus operandi. My wife is very keen to protect her sleep on the flipside and so when we travel together our decision frameworks need to accommodate both MOs

Ironically sometimes I'm most protective of my sleep during the weekly grind (and also training for fitness) because then my performance matters. If my only short term downside is discomfort from fatigue, I'll regularly trade that for more "uptime"

[necovek]

I hear you, but the thing is, what do you achieve by "cramming" more "doing" in? Do you also switch to those nutrient rich powder meals to save an extra hour or two prepping and eating food too?

Are not all of those things that could be optimized away an opportunity to let yourself feel, relax and simply be?

The examples you bring up (like waking early to do something for someone you care about) has nothing to do with the topic of engineering for consistently reduced sleep, imho.

[necovek]

I never said we couldn't and I did not refer only to work: it's still the wrong goal in my mind.

"Fun" is usually defined as something providing instant gratification (through hormonal response), though there is fun in retrospect too ("I was scared like shit, that was fun"). And while it's nothing to sneeze at and we should always have some, you can achieve the similar with different medications or narcotics (if the goal is "have more fun").

But I wouldn't optimize for that: we can achieve plenty in our lives, including having plenty of fun, by just being ourselves.

As in, get the sleep you need. Do the work you must and the work you enjoy. Have the fun you want.

While our lifetimes are short, they are not that short. Even if we got 10% more of the waking hours, that won't be the thing that makes your life worthwhile or not. If you spent the other 90% making it worthwhile, that'll do.

But if you must, go for it!

[pimlottc]

These two types of fun have been sometimes categorized as “type 1” and “type 2” fun:

https://medium.com/@yinonweiss/the-four-types-of-fun-a745ec5...

[yMEyUyNE1]

How about engineering the society/civilization(?)/world so that "all can" work hard (8hrs), rest hard (8hrs), live hard (8hrs) and die hard when the eventuality arrives?

[alfiedotwtf]

Not sure why almostlit’s reply is grey and dead (sorry I can’t even ote to resurrect it).