At the heart of much speculative fiction (and fiction in general) is a question. What if? On Tuesdays I like to throw one out there and see what you make of it. Do with it as you please. If a for-instance is not specified, feel free to interpret that instance as you wish. And if you find this becomes a novel-length answer, I'd appreciate a thank you in the acknowledgements ;)
I don't know where I saw the article originally (I thought I bookmarked it, but alas...), but I found another that says the same thing. Apparently, our eight-hour a night sleep cycle is wrong. Just another thing that modern life has done to us.
What if our modern society had adapted to two four-hour sleep cycles? Would it be better for us? Or would someone be out there trying to get us to do something different?
I think I would like this two 4-hour block of sleep routine :) I tend to only sleep four hours a night before I wake up, sometimes can get back to sleep, sometimes can't for a bit or not at all. So if I had two blocks like this during the day, I probably would actually not be tired most of the time :)
ReplyDeletebetty
Maybe you should get up when you can't sleep and find time later when you can.
DeleteI'm not sure how I'd do with blocks like that. I'd just like to know what it feels like to get the full eight hours.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure it's something that you could adapt to. I remember reading an article on the BBC about it and it had information about people going out to coffee houses at 2am and things.
ReplyDeleteApparently people who try to conceive in the waking hours between blocks of sleep have a higher chance of conceiving as well.
I think humans being the way that we are that if we had adapted to sleep in blocks like that, someone would come along and tell us all we should be sleeping in eight hour chunks instead. ;-)
I think that's the very article I linked to.
DeleteI remember hearing about something like that. I think it would be cool if the chunks were at opposite ends of the day, although that would probably screw up work days. But it would be cool if the 12-4 block was always sleep time because then you're out through the (usually) hottest and coldest parts of the day.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why I even try to comment from my phone: the comments just disappear.
ReplyDeleteThe small group of people who rely on prescription drugs to function on the current 16-8 average schedule (narcolepsy and chronic fatigue come to mind) would be forced to a 20-4 schedule unless much better drugs were developed.
I heard about this in the news. I think our body gets the sleep it needs unless we are ill or suffer from insomnia or some other ailment that prevents us from sleeping. We may get more stuff done but then people, I mean scientists, always like to mess things up
ReplyDelete"They" are always trying to change something about us aren't they? Really I suppose we should go to bed at dark and get up at light but that is only feasible if you live near the equator like me where the sun goes down about 7:30 pm and dawns at 4:30am (in Summer). That's 9 hours sleep which would be more than enough.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it'll catch on, but it gives me ideas...
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