My work enables me to have no fixed schedule, so I can basically sleep whenever I need to. What this means is that I work all night, go to bed around dawn for a few hours, up for a few hours, then back to bed through mid-afternoon. I wish my a.m. and p.m. were reversed, but when I try that I wind up with severe insomnia, followed by sleep deprivation.
I never knew that this could be considered “normal” for anyone else.
I read a book about the habits of traditional hunter-gathering Khoisans in the Kalahari Desert. They slept in segments because someone had to stay awake to tend the fire and be on the look-out for hyenas and lions. At any given moment through the night, someone in the camp would be awake.
And this tradition later carried over to “taking watches” during the night in games of Dungeons and Dragons…
clears throat
Erm, or so I’ve heard.
That said, would it actually be beneficial when you do wake up at 3am or whenever, if you did just get up for an hour or so and then go back to sleep instead of trying to roll over and go back to sleep? I wake up several times at night and always find it hard to actually wake up when I’m supposed to, so I might try it and see how it goes.
According to Ekirch, who literally wrote the book on the subject, segmented sleep was the norm from ancient times in at least the Western world. I’ve done enough reading about the ancient Japanese and Chinese world that I think you could make an equally strong case for the East too, though I don’t have the academic or linguistic qualifications to do original research to back that up.
Ethnographies have mentioned sleep patterns too. Most hunter-gatherer groups, which represent the closest thing we have to anything like our distant past lifestyle, don’t sleep through the night. There’s generally a rotating watch, party, or play group awake at just about any time during the night.
I don’t think everybody needs so much total sleep, either. After I recently took on a very long work day, I found that whether I sleep 8 hours a day or 4-5 hours a day, I feel the same for the rest of the day. In other words, sleeping more doesn’t make me feel any more rested, in fact, I just feel groggier all day, which is too bad, because I love to sleep.
So I only sleep 4-5 hours a day, and I’m able to do a lot more each day. I take a 15-minute siesta at lunch, and that’s all I need.
I wouldn’t be surprised if not only did people once sleep in two parts, but also just slept less, perhaps not even sleeping the second part, instead taking occasional naps.
My lady and I went to bed at about 9:30 PM yesterday.
I woke at 11:00 PM to greet some guests and then went back to bed.
I then woke at 3:00 AM to get some work done.
This is not remarkable for me because I work from home.
Some days I go to bed at 2:00 AM and wake at 7:00 AM and work until about 2:00 PM and then take a two hour ‘nap’.
This works for me.
It wouldn’t if I were still tied to the corporate “wake at 6:00 AM, drive to work from 6:30 to 8:00 AM, work from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, drive home and arrive at 7:30 PM, and after the fun part of the day, sleep from about 10:00 PM until the next morning at 6:00 AM” routine that ruled my life for 25 years.
I am certainly happier now.
Me, too. I find that I don’t feel any better during the day having slept 8-9 hours than if I only slept 4-5. So I normally go to sleep around 2-3 am and get up at 7.