[S_A_P]

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 :)

[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.

[zemvpferreira]

Likewise but I've found small melatonin doses (plus reducing caffeine to once per day) to really help me conform to a 24 hour day. Worth trying if you haven't.

[euroderf]

I tried melatonin. It gave me nightmares. Weird, but it was repeatable. So, my 0,02€.

[bemmu]

This happens if I take too much melatonin. The dosage in US-sold melatonin is unnecessarily high. Finnish tablets are typically 1.9mg, while US ones can have 10mg in just one.

[hunter-gatherer]

There's this stuff at GNC called "Tri-Sleep". Imagine meletonin tablet effects x5. I don't get nightmares, but my dreams definitely get incredibly weird and more lucid. To be honest though, I definitely think I sleep deeper and longer when I take it amd feel more recovered. Again, anecedotal.

[sensanaty]

Anecdotally, me too. If not nightmares, very bizzare dreams that leave me feeling a bit weird for the day and I don't really feel nearly as rested as regular sleep, even if I sleep for longer.

[zemvpferreira]

I get those on valerian root myself.

[pskfyi]

Do you have any recommended books or links on this topic?

[photonthug]

I’d never suggest that people shouldn’t read books or consult experts but.. sleep is probably like diets in that you can read whatever advice you’re looking to find somewhere.

Even after we accept that a dichotomy like typical vs atypical (or night owl vs morning lark; omnivore vs vegetarian) is way too simple.. the more we look the more we keep finding new “types” (like all the flavors of non-24; vegans, paleo, etc). So even reading stuff that’s trying to be rigorous may ultimately just tell you about fads and fashions that might be working for others. Natural variation in people seems to outpace or defy our ability to categorize stuff. To me this hints that there’s really no substitute for experimenting and listening to your body.

The hard part is just that this does require some time and space in your life to accomplish, because if you’re going back to basics about stuff like food or sleep then inevitably it’s going to be disruptive until you figure out what works best.

[pcthrowaway]

I haven't read any books on the topic and don't recall any specific articles though I'm sure I've read many.

There are some good references in the wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake...), and I've been following https://reddit.com/r/N24 for a while also.

[bix6]

How do you figure out your cycle time?

[pcthrowaway]

If you are able to make relatively few commitments for a month, go to sleep when you feel tired. Sleep as much as feels good. Track it in a spreadsheet.

Some people with non-24 have very regular sleep/wake cycles. I'm not as fortunate, but in the winter will tend towards 24-29 hour days, with an average just over 27 (perhaps this winter has even been a little under 27 as I've been more physically active)

In the summer it's close enough to 24 hours that I can stick to a 24-hour schedule most of the time.

[bix6]

Interesting I’ll have to track it a bit. I’ve always adjusted a bit in winter but never thought to measure / optimize it.

[iambateman]

This isnt scientific but I’ve found that I “feel like” going to bed about 24.5 hours after I went to bed the day before.

Without external stimuli, it’s very hard to avoid drifting into staying up very late at night for me.

[binary132]

This sounds suspiciously like “I tend to stay up later and later every night unless I force myself to go to bed on time” — which I suspect is pretty common, it certainly is for me. I’ll start staying up till 3, 4, 5, or later if I’m not on a schedule. Having kids helps.

[s1artibartfast]

It is suspiciously similar because they are the same exact thing. The whole premise is how many hours is a comfortable wake-sleep cycle.

[euroderf]

Yup, a kid is a driver for regularity in sleep cycles.

[lloeki]

> How

You need a significant period of time without any time-bound obligation (or even any obligation at all). Any need for an alarm or anything that you'd possibly materialise in a calendar needs to be removed.

You need a room which is pitch black at night (e.g blocks street lights, no leds), yet still allows a tiny bit of sunlight (rationale: without cues the circadian cycle extends up to 48h, there was an experiment about that)

Then, once you have that, start freewheeling, just when you feel tired go rest and when you wake up get up. It'll be a mess at first, for two reasons.

First you may be unable to properly recognise the "I need to take some rest" signal: we're trained by life to largely ignore it.

Second, you need to pay off any debt, sleep, physical, mind, that would play a role in altering your base cycle. Have fun, work out, meditate, go see a therapist even. In a nutshell, find your balance.

Once you have recovered from everything, once all biasing sources have been removed, then sleep will converge to some rhythm, which carries some error margin, so you can only observe it statistically over time. There's your baseline.

It could take months, which more often than not isn't practical to have, so from the above ideal scenario one could devise a protocol that would try to stick as close as possible to it.

Source: first principles+anecdata, sample size of 1, double-non-blind protocol; a.k.a myself digging out of a hole.

Protocol: 3 week sick leave for burnout x anxiety depression, coincidental breakup (so no SO), went from office to remote working, workout plan, 6 month therapy, statistically reliable sleep/health/performance tracking via watch allowing for outlier identification/retrospective deviation root cause analysis.

Result: 0130-0930~30min sleep, 7h45min~5min sleep duration made of two ~4h-ish blocks, 25h~30min cycle. When bound to 24h rhythm, occasional sleepless night leading to 48h day and three aforementioned blocks of sleep (~11h-ish total).

From the data it became painfully obvious that I experience delayed sleep phase disorder, took me 6 months to figure the baseline out, and 6 more to confirm, which is quite hard when you don't even know that it is a thing.

[pcthrowaway]

> rationale: without cues the circadian cycle extends up to 48h, there was an experiment about that

Do you have a link to this experiment? I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere. Studies referenced in the non-24 wikipedia page suggest natural circadian rhythms typically range from 24-25.5 hours for people not getting external cues.

[lloeki]

I had to do a quick search again, this is the guy:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Siffre

Here's an interview on the subject, which includes the initial experiment (which had him having a slightly over 24h rhythm) and subsequent ones (where the 48h rhythm showed up)

https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/30/foer_siffre.php

The interesting thing about going down a cave is that it removes a ton of other possible cues like temperature variation (or side effects of trying to mechanically account for that)

My pet theory about human beings generally having slightly longer than 24 hour circadian rhythm is that it gives margin: with a 24 sun cycle and a 24.5 rhythm you naturally get a self-correcting consistent positive benefit; otherwise you'd always be right on the edge and unable to recover when things go sideways.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[1] https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/

[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.

[Barrin92]

>Since many studies seem to show that getting a solid amount of sleep is good,

This one of the bigger myths around. There's not really scientific evidence that people sleep eight hours, or need that much[1]. It's one of those strange pop culture food pyramid like statements that just doesn't really have any evidence for it. It's much more likely that you simply need less sleep than that you have some circadian rhythm problem.

[1]https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/09/daniel-lieberman-...

[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.)

[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.

[econ]

I did a similar experiment for 14 days when I was 13-14ish, it balanced out to 20-30 minutes wake and a 5 to 10 min nap.

It was pretty wild. I coded (machine code) in bed until my head got heavy then I would nap and wake up shortly after with the task noticably organized in my head. It felt perfectly natural to sleep on it as well as to wake up when the data was parsed. I kinda lived in the twilight zone.

Fun details: the room was perfectly dark. The tv was set to be so dark that I had to wait for my eyes to adjust to see the code. Nothing else was visible. The bed was tilted about a foot. The computer had no mouse pointer.

[m463]

I'll bet a lot of people did that experiment at the beginning of covid.

[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.

[notcrazylol]

I think its more of a lifestyle preference rather than 28h is better than 24h for everyone kinda rule. I, for instance, hate sleeping. I want to maximise my awake hours and sleep when only when I get tired. So this article speaks to me. The only thing I am worried about is long term health problems that might arise doing this stunt.

Also if people cant respect or don't like your lifestyle, I don't see a point in being with them. If they cant move things around or if we cant find time for something, move on. Life is too short to deal with people problems that can be solved just by doing nothing.

[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).

[MrsPeaches]

All in the original post: https://sidhion.com/blog/28h_days/

This was just the 1 year update.

Idea is that you go to be when you feel tired.

[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.

[throwawayk7h]

Overall more hours awake. 7×8 < 6×9

[Freak_NL]

> 7×8 < 6×9

Not usually, no. Typo?

[cko]

His statement is still correct, even though he inverted the sign.

Fewer hours asleep means 2 more hours awake.

[throwawayk7h]

whoops!