Your take on sleep
5Another post about whatever’s on my mind right now. For the last four years, I’ve been working overnights. It’s been not terrible but not ideal. It pays the bills, but I’ve taken a cut in sleep.
Fast forward to February when my kid was born. Now my sleep’s even shortened more. I’d say probably five hours an afternoon. I finally hit a wall today, providing me with some weird feel-like-I-have-a-fever-but-don’t sickness. So I write this at work, wondering if their are other Meh’ers out there that have run the low-on-sleep gambit.
So, how about it? How much do you sleep? Do you work weird hours? Do you have any tricks? Mine is making sure all the caffeine I jam into my body is taken with a bowl spinach and lots of water.
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i am probably your parents age, fwtw. i have worked weird hours recently supporting korea. that messed up my sleep. i am lucky to sleep 5 straight even though i used to sleep 9 straight without any trouble. my tricks are naps and ear plugs, sometime short, sometime long (the naps that is).
@Yoda_Daenerys I’ve never needed naps until the last month, but I’ve started trying to get them in when I can.
I’m on the east so I’m up at midnight to see the new product on Meh. It’s usually 12:30 to 12:45 by the time I get to bed. I wake up at 3:55 am to begin my workday.
I try to take a nap around 6:30 to 7:30am (I work from home). Then I work until 3pm. I take another nap from 3pm to 5pm unless I have a doctor’s appointment or something.
I don’t get much sleep and it’s broken up into several small sleep session throughout the day. I blame Meh because I could go to sleep earlier if this site didn’t exist.
@cengland0 with the new circuit breaker thing, you can go to sleep. Guaranteed product at 8am eastern!
@RiotDemon Not necessarily guaranteed. If it’s a good product, there will be a mad rush trying to buy at 8am and everybody will already know what the product was and have time to do all their research. Besides, that doesn’t work for FUKOs.
@RiotDemon Exactly! @cengland0 my advice, don’t stay up to midnight (unless you think a fuko is coming) - i fell into that trap with my korea schedule making it ‘easier’ and i’ve been paying for it ever since, so i’m grateful for the circuit breaker relief.
@cengland0 it’s 9:30 and they’re still selling. I’m pretty sure you would of had a chance.
@RiotDemon For this product, yes. But I the circuit breaker hit a second time for another product recently and the next offering was at 4pm. May have been the foodsaver but not 100% sure.
You guys can risk it if you want but I’ll stay up until midnight. I also have no idea when the next FUKO will be offered so I’m staying up.
@cengland0 suit yourself. I’m gonna get my sweet sweet sleep. I guess the fuko/fuku just isn’t that important to me. If I’m up, and I get one, cool. But otherwise, I’m going to get my rest because it’s more important than some random junk that might have something cool in it.
Here it is, 10:17 and the product is still selling. If I came at 8, I would of definitely gotten it if I wanted it.
I now sleep an average of four hours each night, but I also take three 30 minute naps, as though it were religion, every day. I have actually worked the nap time into employment contracts (once very recently).
I average 5 hours. While I am good for most of the week, I crash hard on Fridays. I usually get 12 hours on Friday. I am not big on sleeping, I always feel like I am not going to wake up on time for whatever I am doing, and stress myself out over it.
Sleep is highly overrated, especially being an East-Coaster who stays up for the Meh product change at midnight. I typically get about 4-5 hours on weeknights and cram more in over the weekend to make up for the shortfall. Health experts say not to do that, but I do anyway.
You might try looking into meditation. I’ve read that 20 minutes of meditation can equal a few hours hours of sleep. Haven’t tried it myself, but it may be worth a shot.
@heartny I’ve heard the same. I’ve gotten so far as downloading a couple apps but never tried. I need to seriously try it.
I worked overnights (10-6:30 or 8-4:30) on a couple of occasions, the most recent stint was last winter. I worked full time plus overtime, up to 60 hours a week, in addition to taking a full course load (15 hours). 2 of my classes were physical fitness classes, which weren’t hard study-wise, but I was working out everyday between class and training on off days. I would get out of work, drive to the community college, study in my car until the library opened, do homework or catch up on online lectures until class, go work out, then go home and crash. Sleep maybe 6 hours or so, get up, study some more, drive to work. I don’t know how I did it, and I realize that it is insane that students in this country are expected to do this to get through school debt free- I still had to take out loans to pay for school and housing on top of all that overtime. (end higher education finance reform rant).
I drank a lot of caffeine, mostly tea and instant coffee. I had access to a really nice espresso machine (I work in a high end grocery store), but I was always afraid to use it, so I just stuck to the hot water spigot. I also watched a lot of Netflix and listened to a lot of podcasts.
These days I work many different shifts throughout the week, not taking any classes, and my sleep schedule is a lot more erratic. I miss the stability of my overnight M-F shifts. I get around 5 hours unless it’s my day off, then it’s usually around 7. I avoid naps because I wake up feeling gross and groggy and lose time trying to recover from the nap. I have that run-down feeling all the time, too, like I’m getting sick or have some undiagnosed cancer or something. I think the main thing that helped was the exercise, which I’m not doing any of right now.
Good luck!
@HemlockTea I feel so gross and cranky if I take a nap as well. I does a lot more harm than good for me.
@HemlockTea @conandlibrarian Naps are the worst. They really mess me up, too.
You mentioned missing the stability of your old night schedule. There’s really something to that. Even if you are working against the sun and the body’s natural rhythms, researchers have repeatedly shown that going to bed and getting up around the same time every day is one of the biggest things you can do to improve the quality and quantity of your sleep. It seems to be most ideal if sleep time doesn’t vary by more than half an hour.
@conandlibrarian I have the same reaction to a “good” nap. When I wake up I’m groggy and the rest of the day just doesn’t feel right.
Now a 15 minute cat nap on the other hand… I will come outta that feeling fresh and rejuvenated.
I did a night shift for several years. I did a lot of research and have many thoughts, experiences, and tricks. But… It’s almost 8am and I still haven’t gone to sleep. So I’m going to go try the sleep thing and come back later.
@christinewas I used to work 3rd shift from 5:30pm to 2:30am. Not only did I get paid 10% night differential, it was easier to work that shift. No traffic (traffic going the opposite direction on the way there). I could easily schedule appointments because I had so much day time available. Only problem is that I had to sleep during the day and friends and family didn’t understand that and wouldn’t leave me alone to sleep. Phone calls and other disturbances were my biggest annoyances.
@cengland0 Shopping and driving at night really are peaceful. Walking into a busy grocery store in the middle of the day still overwhelms me, after so many years on that schedule.
The thing that always bothered me the most was strangers knocking on my door to try to sell me things or religions. Keep your hands off my door and your religion/products to yourself! My roommates and I (all on the same schedule, which helped) had to disconnect our doorbell for a while.
I also lived uncomfortably close to an emergency weather siren. Being just off of our back yard, the thing might as well have been in the living room. It was the most awful noise, and painfully loud. They tested it at noon on Wednesdays, and I usually slept between 7am and 3pm. I hated that thing.
@christinewas Someone I know put a sign on the door: ‘If you ring the bell or knock on the door, we will set the dog on you’, with photo of a snarling dog. (They didn’t have a dog).
I work a rotating shift type thing… So some days I leave for work at 5am, some days it’s 9:30, and some days it’s noon before I leave. It gets annoying because my body will get used to going to sleep really late, and then I might have a day or two off where I work the early shift next time, and I’ll have a hard time going to sleep. Sometimes I’ll take melatonin if I’m not able to sleep. Otherwise, I’ll only sleep four hours, go to work, and then take a nap when I get home.
I love naps. 15-30 minute ones are great. Anything more than an hour messes with me. (You really don’t want your body going into REM sleep unless you’re going to stay there a while) On my days off, I sleep as late as my body lets me (if the animals don’t protest too much) and I’ll usually take a nap after lunch time if I’m spending the day at home.
When I was in high school, I remember getting sleepy after lunch… Which is kinda funny because I tend to get sleepy at work meetings which are always after lunch as well. Anywhere between 1-3 pm usually. It doesn’t help now that I’m on allergy medicine that can make you sleepy. If I sit for more than an hour, I might as well take a nap.
Once a year I have to work overnights for 1-2 weeks. The work is fun, but I hate trying to sleep. I’ve added darker curtains, which helps… But there’s always someone cutting grass which tends to wake me up. Or lots of dogs barking. I can’t sleep with ear plugs. I always pull them out.
The 8 hour sleep thing has been disproved. It’s not natural, it’s not healthy, and it’s very recent. Naps are great. The siesta, riposo or whatever you call it is the way to go. Http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783
@OldCatLady huh… So I guess I shouldn’t feel so bad when I sleep on the couch for a few hours, and then get up for an hour or two, and crawl into bed for the rest of the night.
My dad used to do the same thing.
@OldCatLady Great article!
Everybody is a little different. I am a night owl and a lot of my friends are also. I have always been a night owl. It is refreshing to get work done at night when things are so quiet and calm all around me. I hate having to work my schedule around this modern society which makes my more fatigued.
It hit 100F in PA around 5pm - it is too damn hot to be out and about. The waste of energy to keep cool is insane. Take a siesta and do some work in the evening when it is more conductive to humanity.
/giphy Too Damn Hot
