Sleep

I was going to rant about Microsoft for my first post, since I had been designing a website and wrestling with the fact that IE is a total muppet when it comes to rendering CSS.

I had started typing it, but when i was halfway through my computer just randomly froze, which has never happened on this machine before. How odd.

Anyway, i decided not to try and retype all that i had typed before, because it just never seems the same when you try to recreate something after the flow has been interupted.

hmmm, stupid mobile fone, got interupted there.

So anyway, sleep, yes.

Why do we need sleep? We are supposed to spend at least 8 hours a day sleeping. That leaves only 16 hours in every day to do stuff. It might sound like a lot when u look at it like that, but remember u spend at least 1.5 hours of that eating, about 3 hours feeling tired/just waking up, and 2 hours relaxing cos youve been busy all day. That leaves 9.5 hours, and if you're in a 9-5 job, then thats your entire day.

Where's the space for doing your own stuff. You'd get sacked if u were doing non-work during a working day. This is why sleep is so damn inconvenient. Yes, you could eat less, do stuff during you relaxation period (most of which is probably spent down the pub anyway, so then your going to start missing out on drinking time), and fuel yourself with caffeine through the tired bit, but it isnt good. Your body starts moaning and you start feeling knackered during the working day.

This is why my 24/12 theory works so well. Basically, you spend 24 hours awake and then spend 12 hours sleeping. Obviously when you think about it, the current daily structure doesnt support such a scheme, but if it was reworked it would work rather well. In the long run, you will end up sleeping during the day, then in you next sleep cycle, you sleep during the night. This means that you get your daily dosage of sunlight hours. I was once totally nocturnal for 5 weeks, and almost slipped into a depression due to the lack of daylight, dont do it for too long, trust me.

Ive experimented with the 24/12 theory, and after a few cycles (1 cycle being 1 awake perion and 1 sleep perion, totalling 36 hours) it worked. The latter part of the awake cycle was tough at first, but once you aclimatise to it, it works rather well. So if we adjusted the day so that it was 36 hours long, then the world would be a lot more productive, and everyone would be happy as they finaly have time to put up those shelves, and all that other wonderful stuff that you all put off like the plague - 'because you didnt have time'.

If you are feeling strong, are not currently ill, and don't have too many commitments during the day to attend (ah, the beauty of uni, experimentation) then you could try it. Though don't blame me if it all goes terribly wrong, you have been warned :-)

by cake, posted on Monday, 03. February 2003 @ 0755.56 gmt