Friday, October 21, 2005

Sleepism?

When you think about optimizing your life, you don't often think of huge chunk of time you spend each day sleeping. Sleep seems like an annoying obligation when you're trying to envision the most meaningful ways to spend your time and money, which is why it's often neglected by the busiest and most ambitious of us. Good sleep, good learning, good life covers and summarizes the latest research on sleep, and contains all kinds of lifestyle nuggets:
"Few upwardly mobile people in the modern rat-race society can live without an alarm clock. Increasingly, time becomes the most precious commodity in society where achievement is often associated with speed and perfect time-management. However, alarm clocks introduce two harmful side effects: stress and sleep deprivation.

The art of time-management makes it possible to live at high speed with the alarm clock on your side and actually be free from stress. However, the societal damage inflicted by alarm clocks used to regulate sleep is unforgivable. An alarm clock that interrupts your sleep damages your memory, your ability to learn, your mood and temper, your relationships with other people, your ability to focus and your overall intellectual performance!"
Thanks to Will for the pointer.

2 comments:

Emil said...

It's a great article, and makes some great points.

I've been very blessed in that recently I've had a chance to slow down enough that I need to rise late enough/am in bed early enough that the alarm goes for weeks without ringing while I'm in bed. It's amazing how much more fun getting up is.

Also, serendipitously, I heard Glenn Beck on the radio earlier today talking about the potential scientific advances that might render humans able to live for 1,000 years. One of the points he and his call screener made was, "Can you imagine how much you would HATE your alarm clock after a couple of hundred years of it?"

Time for a new paradigm of time, I say.

Jeremy said...

HA haha...projecting any of our habits and irritants out over a millenium makes them sound disturbing.

There's something so industrial about the need for everyone to wake up at the same time to show up at the same place to do the same things. So much more organic if our schedules were allowed to naturally synch with our internal clocks.