I've been altering my sleep schedule the past couple years to be more in sync with the seasons (more in the winter less in the summer, essentially). This was the first year in a while that work got in the way of that in the winter and it has been miserable. My lifting/workout schedule is out of wack again, and my diet isn't as good (more cravings for bad stuff). Usually I can dial it down during November/December because of the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday but I work in a more "global" role now and can't really do that anymore. Definitely considering moving on to something else soon.
Can't emphasize the sleep timing thing enough. It's been a game changer, especially in the summer. Productivity through the roof and I am generally in great shape July - September.
Does this mean you sleep less in Summer? And what latitude do you stay in? I imagine this would be more difficult in Scotland where in winter there's only 7 hours of sunlight but in summer there's over 16 hours of sun.
Is it good for us to need more sleep in winter, or just lost time? Because we can fight this with bright lights and other means of advancing the circadian clock (anything that works for SAD).
Hunt prey on the savannah? Be food-insecure? Live to 60 if you're lucky?
We need to understand these things, not just assume whatever is (prehistorically) natural is healthy.
Humans didn't particularly evolve to live places where winter days are as short as they are in much of North America and Europe. We hacked our body by inventing clothing, shelter, and fire (fire/cooking is a huge digestive system hack). Sure, I guess there was a little adaption in skin tone to try to compensate for less Vitamin D, but then we invented supplement vitamins (so people of all skin tones can live healthy lives at high latitudes in winter). Hacking the body is probably what most makes us human, and it should be celebrated.
Far more people need eyeglasses now than a few decades ago. It is like a myopia epidemic.
That implies that most people who need glasses now could see perfectly well without glasses, if they had grown up in a more natural lifestyle with more outdoor time and less screentime
Flippant retort that completely misses the spirit and the substance of my comment. If you think there’s a way to safely “hack” your body to somehow undo evolution be my guest. As a culture with a proud tradition of ignoring nature and fucking ourselves up, we should rethink our approach to our bodies and health. If your body asks you for some rest, your first instinct shouldn’t be “what kind of meds can I take to avoid resting”, should be “how can I change my lifestyle so I can rest a little more.
When I asked the original question, I was looking for more than a poll; I was hoping someone had some insight into which of the two views to go with here (i.e. whether the evolutionary reasons for the sleepier-in-winter phenomenon are still applicable today or not). You've made it clear which side you're on, without any substantive argument yet. In hopes of eliciting one, I'll play devil's advocate.
Food has always been scarcest in winter. The smart move is to invest less when risk/reward is poorer. A straightforward way for mammals to do that is to conserve energy by sleeping more in the winter. So, there's a reason I'd expect mammals to have evolved to sleep more when there's less light, but this reason is no longer applicable in modern societies. Right?
That's somewhat pointless. You have an extremely complex system of hormones and circadian cycles that might have evolved for obsolete reasons, but you're still bound by it. It might be intellectually interesting to understand why (necessary even) but you're still better off avoiding the urge to "hack it".
I've got a 32 hour contract, so all my weekends are three days. It's great, would highly recommend it if you can afford it, or if you can make small lifestyle changes that would allow you to afford it.
(And for nbrempel: I'm an employee at a small startup. Everyone else works 40h, but I asked for a 32h contract with reduced salary and that was fine.)
I’m more effective and more detail-oriented in dark, cold winter months. If there is bright sunlight outside I get distracted because I want to go for a bike ride, and above 25C I’m just less effective.
Daylight lamps sometimes triggered headaches for me.
Summer cycles can easily stretch into a few hours. That's a significant amount of time out of the workday already, and they leave the mind thinking about personal stuff as often as about work. Much as this is a nice freedom, it doesn't come for free, even in taking into account the difficult problems worked out while working out.
You're surely on to something, but then scope creep (of personal stuff) would put some people out of work :) Otherwise, crap jobs exist for a reason, and not everyone can afford what's optimal for them.
When I was more obsessive about team productivity, I saw a biennial pattern on several teams. Late summer was awful for some but not all of us, but most had trouble with the period starting a couple weeks around thanksgiving to the beginning of January (coworkers disappearing at random intervals hampers collaboration).
Basic research seemed to do better during this time.
The peasant's free time extended beyond officially sanctioned holidays. There is considerable evidence of what economists call the backward-bending supply curve of labor -- the idea that when wages rise, workers supply less labor. During one period of unusually high wages (the late fourteenth century), many laborers refused to work "by the year or the half year or by any of the usual terms but only by the day." And they worked only as many days as were necessary to earn their customary income -- which in this case amounted to about 120 days a year, for a probable total of only 1,440 hours annually (this estimate assumes a 12-hour day because the days worked were probably during spring, summer and fall). A thirteenth-century estime finds that whole peasant families did not put in more than 150 days per year on their land. Manorial records from fourteenth-century England indicate an extremely short working year -- 175 days -- for servile laborers. Later evidence for farmer-miners, a group with control over their worktime, indicates they worked only 180 days a year.
Keep in mind this is only true of peasant classes that grow wheat as their primary grain. Rice in stark contrast requires much more labor, and I’ve seen sources suggest 365 days of labor was necessary for peasant the peasant class in south east asia as a result. I’ve also heard theorized that a significant contributor to the perceived cultural differences of northern china and southern china is that north china grew wheat and south china grew rice.
Overall work culture needs a massive thrust to change from a face to face politicking culture to an efficient, asynchronous, remote culture, especially in these times of extreme weather, considering more than a few workplaces had to switch to remote due to weather exigencies (but they promptly switched back when employee pushback relaxed).
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 89.9 ms ] threadCan't emphasize the sleep timing thing enough. It's been a game changer, especially in the summer. Productivity through the roof and I am generally in great shape July - September.
(In six months it rises at 03:40 and sets at 23:36)
We need to understand these things, not just assume whatever is (prehistorically) natural is healthy.
Humans didn't particularly evolve to live places where winter days are as short as they are in much of North America and Europe. We hacked our body by inventing clothing, shelter, and fire (fire/cooking is a huge digestive system hack). Sure, I guess there was a little adaption in skin tone to try to compensate for less Vitamin D, but then we invented supplement vitamins (so people of all skin tones can live healthy lives at high latitudes in winter). Hacking the body is probably what most makes us human, and it should be celebrated.
That implies that most people who need glasses now could see perfectly well without glasses, if they had grown up in a more natural lifestyle with more outdoor time and less screentime
Food has always been scarcest in winter. The smart move is to invest less when risk/reward is poorer. A straightforward way for mammals to do that is to conserve energy by sleeping more in the winter. So, there's a reason I'd expect mammals to have evolved to sleep more when there's less light, but this reason is no longer applicable in modern societies. Right?
I'm curious since I'm building https://30hourjobs.com and I'm always looking for new resources and companies that support this.
(And for nbrempel: I'm an employee at a small startup. Everyone else works 40h, but I asked for a 32h contract with reduced salary and that was fine.)
I could reduce to 20 hours a week (for half pay) and still receive full health insurance.
If you are planning to retire in just a few years (or if you’re a new mother!), do consider 80% work for 80% pay.
Daylight lamps sometimes triggered headaches for me.
Probably I should move north.
That (with few exceptions) is what keeps me going and happy for years now.
Job's that don't allow me this little bit of flexibility, are just not my kind jobs.
What's a big happy purse with a sad person to wear it?
Basic research seemed to do better during this time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16656903
If you search for "medieval peasant" on HN, we've had various articles along these lines over the years.