When I was younger I hated siestas because I had energy and everything was closed, you couldn't do anything in those hours. It felt like a waste. In fact I think that sports clubs, book clubs and similar things are not as important here as in other countries of Europe (at least from my perspective, no data) because people don't have time. After siesta, stores open and you have to do your chores, giving you no time to have a leisure activity (other than going to the bar and drink, that is).

And if you work keep in mind the shift is 8 hours, so how do you fit siesta in it? A way is to start working early and having lunch very late, working like 7-15. Some government offices and factories work this way. Some people like this schedule but waking up so early, specially during winter I think defeats the point of siesta, as you're probably damaging your body in the morning. Other like me have a split schedule with lunch in the middle, more similar to Europe but the problem is that you leave later. Because at some jobs the mandatory stop is 2 hours.

Now, schools have also different schedules to fit better into their parents schedules and there's been an infinite discussion about which one is better for children. The reality is that is a mess. If we could work less than 8 hours, it would be much better but 8 hours plus siesta is difficult to put up with.

I like it from a different point of view, which is that stores are opened after I finish working. The average worker doesn't have time for a siesta in the middle of the day. But once you finish working at 5, things are still open. You can go to the dentist, you can go shopping, restaurants close at midnight, etc.

It's way more flexible for me (way less flexible for service workers though). I moved to the US and I have to take time off of work to even get a haircut...

By contrast, my observation is that MOST of the world's population still works from about an hour after dawn until early afternoon, or sometimes until dusk, depending on their age, job, station in life and the general level of resources they have versus what they need. And they probably always did.

> An unbroken eight hours of sleep did not always fit with the cycles of the sky above and sleep was therefore rhythmically polyphasic.

I tend to disagree. There is serious literature suggesting this, but to my knowledge no concrete evidence confirms it. In fact the industrial age did not arrive uniformly to all societies on Earth. We should have seen polyphasic sleep practice long ago in non-industrialized nations. Anyone aware of anything like this?

With a perspective that goes farther back in time and a wider geography the sleep patterns promoted here as universal simply stated are not.

However, humans have always been flexible in their sleep patterns, and a lot of modern sleep pattern promotion is overly inflexible.

There are studies of hunter gatherers that lived close to the equator. Most of them did not nap most of the time, but in the summer they might nap during the day 20% of the time. They usually slept 6-7 hours in one stretch. [1]

But sleep was very flexible. In some cultures people would go to sleep at different times so there was always someone around the campfire. Mothers would nurse babies. Some cultures might for example once a month during a full moon stay up and party at night and then nap a lot the next day. And the sleep patterns mentioned in the submitted article show further flexibility.

Your sleep quality is likely a lot lower than a hunter gather due to modern light pollution, ability to use devices and have entertainment at night, and a lot of other factors. Unless you are monitoring your sleep with tracking devices there is a good chance you are probably getting a lot less (like an hour) than you might think. So committing to a 9 hour sleep window is still a good idea even if it might be natural in ideal settings to sleep for just 7 hours. Ultimately though you want to feel well rested with energy for your day rather than satisfying a belief system about sleep.

My approach with young children is to go to bed early so that if I get woken up I can deal with that and have time to go back to sleep. I might end up in the biphasic pattern of northern Europe sometimes with that. There was a time where I more intentionally tried to take a short nap during the day. But now I just take a nap if I feel tired.

References

  * [1] Hunter Gather Sleep study: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(15)01157-4
  * Why We Nap
  * The Old Way
  * Keep the River on Your Right

Of course one could argue that living in such high latitudes is unnatural and unhealthy but that would be much bigger topic

I could get inflammatory and say that functional members of society are being discriminated against in this way, or flip it around, stating that any disadvantage that requires you interacting with public services is systemically pushing you away from meaningful employment.

I really like this website's design. It is functional and easy to parse, more websites should be like this.

1. Going to bed early and rising early, closer to 8 pm to 4:30 am.

2. An afternoon nap is extremely beneficial to having an attentive and productive evening. The nap makes quick work of clearing accumulated waste from the brain. Employers would do well to have nap pods for a 30 minute nap as a default, although longer is useful if you don't have a 9-5 job. A nap doesn't negate the need for exercise.

3. Biphasic sleep at night as needed, taking care that excessive caffeine intake isn't harming nighttime sleep.

Researchers who lived in African tribes that are _really_ following the "old ways" found that tribespeople followed all kinds of sleep schedules. Somebody was up at almost _all_ times, including the middle of the night.

This makes total sense: you want at least somebody to be awake at all times to raise the alarm if a pride of lions happens to wander close by.

By doing the "split day" you just switch to another fixed pattern.

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in groups of people who share very specific life styles, where the givens are different than other groups indivuals will adapt or suffer, farmers, long haul truckers, commercial pilots, emergency doctors/staff, shift worker(which shift?, split shift) et fucking cetera.