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24 Hours Not Enough?

  • May 16th, 2007
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  • Productivity
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  • 1 comment

    • Work it up to 36 hours and I’ll be happy…

    They studied 12 healthy young adults (average age: 28) who volunteered to spend 65 days living in individual rooms without windows, clocks, or any other time cues.

    …..<snip>…..

    Next, the scientists tacked on an extra hour of light to each participants’ natural amount of daily wakefulness.

    The researchers didn’t just leave the lights on for an extra hour. At the end of each “day,” the scientists cranked up the light in the overhead fluorescent lights, delivering two pulses of extremely bright light.

    The bright light pulses were nearly 10 times brighter than normal room light, according to the study.
    After the pulses of bright light, participants didn’t go to sleep right away. They stayed up an extra hour, effectively getting 25 hours per day.

    Participants stayed on the 25-hour-day cycle for a month. They adjusted to the schedule, judging by their core body temperature and levels of melatonin, a hormone involved in circadian rhythms.

    Source: 24 Hours Not Enough? See The Light, Pulses Of Bright Light May Reset Body Clock And Stretch The Day To 25 Hours - CBS News

    Tim posted this entry on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 12:12 pm. Posted in the category Productivity You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    One Response to “24 Hours Not Enough?”

    1. mark Says:
      May 16th, 2007 at 6:02 pm

      This really comes practically down to 2 issues. First, how many waking hours can a person have? We typically assume 16 hours of waking, 8 hours sleeping in 24 hour period. So, reset and wake 17 hours and sleep for 7. People can get used to this and more. I bet military people subsist on much less sleep. It’s NOT putting 25 hours into a day - it’s just extending how long you can routinely function.

      If a person tried to put a “25th” hour into just their day, and the rest of society went along on “normal” time, the individual would begin to get out of sync with everyone else. After perhaps 10 days or so, they would have slowly ratched their way around everyone else’s static clock, so that they might well be waking while others are sleeping and vice versa. Unless they kept the same routine, but that’s really just staying away an extra hour, it’s not making a 25 hour day. Two different things.

      So, the second point. Time is irrelevant - the concept is just to be able to provide structure and organization to people’s activities so they can work together. If we want to have more hours in a day we could all just shift to more hours and fewer days of the week. I’d be in favor of dumping Monday. So, Tuesday through Sunday it is. We’ll make them 28 hour days. Should be able to pack more in that way right?

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