The article mostly focuses on teenagers and school start times, which is an important issue, but this definitely affects adults as well. How many people have a weekday schedule that looks...
The article mostly focuses on teenagers and school start times, which is an important issue, but this definitely affects adults as well. How many people have a weekday schedule that looks something like this?
9 hours: Standard 8–5 job. 2 hours: Commuting one hour each way to work. 1 hour: Preparing and eating dinner, cleaning up, miscellaneous chores. 1 hour: Routine before and after sleeping. (Shower, breakfast, packing lunch, etc.) 9 hours: 8.5 hours of sleep to feel rested, plus 30 minutes to fall asleep. 2 hours: Leisure time. i.e. everything else about life that isn't work, sleep, or chores.
Now, obviously 2 hours per night for the things you actually want to do isn't enough, especially if you're trying to fit in raising kids, getting enough exercise, learning new skills, etc. So where does the extra time come from? You can live closer to work, find a job that's closer to a true 8-hour day, eat out instead of cooking, move some tasks to the weekend. But the easiest place to steal a few extra hours for yourself is sleep.
When you have so little time to do what you want why spend 8 or 9 hours lying in bed? If you only have a few hours to yourself in the evening getting a few more hours from sleeping only 6–7 hours is very tempting. Of course, this has immediate consequences to your quality of life and performance, and can have serious long term health effects as well.
The solution, I think, is to take more time from that other big block of hours: work. How many people are really working all those hours every day, compared to the number of people browsing Facebook or Reddit? Not to mention that as a whole we're more productive than ever.
However, suggesting a reduction in work hours is practically taboo. Wanting to "work" (i.e. selling your time and labour to someone else) less is seen as lazy and many people take pride in how much they work, even if they hate it. ("It's supposed to suck, that's why they call it work!") We also get a lot less now for the amount of work we put in. Sure, I can buy fun electronics cheaper than my parents could, but when they were my age they could afford to buy a house and start a family on a single middle-class income.
So I guess the solution is: if we want to get enough sleep at night, we have to change society's view of work and also fix wealth inequality. Sounds a bit more difficult than just telling people not to use screens an hour before bed.
I think it varies from person to person. The estimates I've seen for adults is between 7–9 hours of sleep needed per night with anecdotes of certain famous people getting by on 4 hours or...
I think it varies from person to person. The estimates I've seen for adults is between 7–9 hours of sleep needed per night with anecdotes of certain famous people getting by on 4 hours or something incredibly low like that. There are also different sleeping patterns (e.g. 5 hours at night plus a 2 hour nap) and evidence that our habit of trying to sleep through the night might not be as natural as we think. I'm not sure if there really is good evidence about how much sleep is healthy beyond the standard "about 8 hours, more or less if it feels right" advice. And, with artificial light and ubiquitous caffeine in our diet, knowing what feels right or healthy can be difficult.
In any case, my point wasn't so much "we need to be getting 8.5 hours of sleep." It's more that many of us are chronically sleep deprived and I think a big contributor to that is how much we work compared to how much time we have for ourselves, and if we want to fix how much we're sleeping we need to address that.
The article mostly focuses on teenagers and school start times, which is an important issue, but this definitely affects adults as well. How many people have a weekday schedule that looks something like this?
9 hours: Standard 8–5 job.
2 hours: Commuting one hour each way to work.
1 hour: Preparing and eating dinner, cleaning up, miscellaneous chores.
1 hour: Routine before and after sleeping. (Shower, breakfast, packing lunch, etc.)
9 hours: 8.5 hours of sleep to feel rested, plus 30 minutes to fall asleep.
2 hours: Leisure time. i.e. everything else about life that isn't work, sleep, or chores.
Now, obviously 2 hours per night for the things you actually want to do isn't enough, especially if you're trying to fit in raising kids, getting enough exercise, learning new skills, etc. So where does the extra time come from? You can live closer to work, find a job that's closer to a true 8-hour day, eat out instead of cooking, move some tasks to the weekend. But the easiest place to steal a few extra hours for yourself is sleep.
When you have so little time to do what you want why spend 8 or 9 hours lying in bed? If you only have a few hours to yourself in the evening getting a few more hours from sleeping only 6–7 hours is very tempting. Of course, this has immediate consequences to your quality of life and performance, and can have serious long term health effects as well.
The solution, I think, is to take more time from that other big block of hours: work. How many people are really working all those hours every day, compared to the number of people browsing Facebook or Reddit? Not to mention that as a whole we're more productive than ever.
However, suggesting a reduction in work hours is practically taboo. Wanting to "work" (i.e. selling your time and labour to someone else) less is seen as lazy and many people take pride in how much they work, even if they hate it. ("It's supposed to suck, that's why they call it work!") We also get a lot less now for the amount of work we put in. Sure, I can buy fun electronics cheaper than my parents could, but when they were my age they could afford to buy a house and start a family on a single middle-class income.
So I guess the solution is: if we want to get enough sleep at night, we have to change society's view of work and also fix wealth inequality. Sounds a bit more difficult than just telling people not to use screens an hour before bed.
Average adults can sleep 7 hours and that's not deprivation, even if it's less than in pre industrial age.
I think it varies from person to person. The estimates I've seen for adults is between 7–9 hours of sleep needed per night with anecdotes of certain famous people getting by on 4 hours or something incredibly low like that. There are also different sleeping patterns (e.g. 5 hours at night plus a 2 hour nap) and evidence that our habit of trying to sleep through the night might not be as natural as we think. I'm not sure if there really is good evidence about how much sleep is healthy beyond the standard "about 8 hours, more or less if it feels right" advice. And, with artificial light and ubiquitous caffeine in our diet, knowing what feels right or healthy can be difficult.
In any case, my point wasn't so much "we need to be getting 8.5 hours of sleep." It's more that many of us are chronically sleep deprived and I think a big contributor to that is how much we work compared to how much time we have for ourselves, and if we want to fix how much we're sleeping we need to address that.
How many people drop to sleep as soon as they hit the pillow and don't wake up until the last second they need to?
Not many. Time for falling sleep is a separate thing.