Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

What if the world slept polyphasically?

I recently followed Steve Pavlina's journey into a polyphasic sleep routine, and have found myself wondering what it'd be like if a majority of the world operated in this way. He just posted his "60 day update" on polyphasic sleep, raving about the productivity gains he's seen.

In case you haven't followed Steve's experiement, he describes polyphasic sleep this way:

"Polyphasic sleep involves taking multiple short sleep periods throughout the day instead of getting all your sleep in one long chunk. A popular form of polyphasic sleep, the Uberman sleep schedule, suggests that you sleep 20-30 minutes six times per day, with equally spaced naps every 4 hours around the clock. This means you're only sleeping 2-3 hours per day."

I have been thinking about some of the implications, were this ever to catch on across the majority of the world:

  • Would we change the length of our work days? What about the school day?
    • Maybe we could spread out the congestion of "rush hour" by having staggered shifts around the clock?
  • Would all business begin staying open 24 hours?
  • Would this create more jobs, or just create the expectation that we should do more at our current jobs?
  • Would we all consume more?
    • We'd leave our lights on a lot more (at home and at work)
    • We probably wouldn't turn down our heat at night during the winter
    • We'd probably drive more
    • We'd be awake more and eat more
  • Would the hotel and leisure industry change? How?
  • When would they play those infomercials on TV?
  • Would bars and restaurants change how they operate?
    • After all, when would it be "time for breakfast?"
  • Would we still get jet lag?
  • Would our joints and organs wear out faster because we'd make them work more?
  • Would we get sick more or less often?
  • Would the murder rate (or crime in general) go up or down?
    • If more people were awake for more of the time, and you didn't have everyone away from their neighborhoods at the same time every day, what would that do to crimes of opportunity?
  • What about the suicide rate?
  • When someone said they needed to "sleep on it" would they really be ready to answer about 15 minutes later?

And I could go on, of course. This is fun and intriguing to think about, but I don't think the majority of the world will every sleep polyphasically. A few years ago, I heard claims that the "Atkins diet" would cause all kind of negative impacts on the market for sugar, potatoes, corn, and all kinds of things like that. Of course, that didn't happen - and I think polyphasic sleep is much less of a phenomenon than Atkins was.

Sometimes, I consider doing the polyphasic sleep thing and have even discussed it with my wife. She is also intrigued by it, especially after hearing some of Steve's stories about how much more he is getting done with all of his extra time.

At the end of it, my wife usually says, "Wait until Steve's done it for about 6 months to see if he has some big problem." And then there's the fact that on cold winter mornings like this morning. As I reached over, hit snooze, retreated back into my warm, comfy bed, I decided I'll just consider it a bit longer.

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Knowing vs. doing - Where is the value?

I just read the second installment of a 3-part series on EM Sky's Win-Win Web. She is talking about the house her father (and a couple of guys named Herman and Louie) built. She grew up there, but the world has moved on since then and now someone else owns it and is remodeling it. Go read it - she has some powerful thoughts on what this change means to her.

Handscrew_1 In today's post (part 2) she talks about how easy it has become to discard the blood and sweat that goes into creating things of value. She says, "We measure the value of the things we buy through the price we pay for them. And we forget to be grateful for the labor of others because we already paid them in cash. Money becomes the extent of every exchange, and relationship is forgotten."

I think there is another aspect of today's society that contributes to our disposable view of the world. We're getting very good at efficiency over individuality these days. Cram a bunch of kids through a one-size-fits-all educational system (and no, I'm not blaming the teachers) and program them in a cost-effective way.

Once upon a time, people learned by doing. There were apprenticeships, hands-on training, and lots of *creating* things to learn how to create them better.

Today, people (yes, I'm one of them) learn about things they'll never see or do, and become "experts" on places and people they'll never see. We buy things we could never make on our own, made by people we'll never meet or get to know. It makes our lives a lot easier, but it also makes the lives of the anonymous "thing makers" - and the things they make - less valuable. How much of the furniture in your house will last for 200 years? Unfortunately, not much of mine. Heck, I don't think my house itself will last that long.

What's the answer? I don't know. But I'm encouraged that the internet doesn't just make it easier for us to buy the cheapest commodities at the lowest prices. It also makes it easier for us to reach the unique offerings of today's artisans that live beyond the bounds of our villages. Yes, there are still people out there who make things by hand and put a bit of themselves in each thing they make.

Here are but a few examples:

And I could go on... All of this is just a Google (or Yahoo! or MSN...) search away. Sure, you might pay a bit more, but I think the unique value is worth it for some things. The nature of our world is changing; we need to make sure that value and relationships don't become things of the past.

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Everything happens for a reason

I often say that "Everything happens for a reason," and that it's up to us to find out the reason. Recent reflection on this topic has caused me to alter this philosophy just a bit.

I am still convinced that everything happens for a reason, however, I am also convinced that it is up to us to define that reason within our own lives. Events have meaning because we assign meaning to them. Events only have significance when we choose to do significant things because of them.Events only have significance when we choose to do significant things because of them

In my recent post about feeling "stuck" in my action lists, I realize that a big factor in that "stuckness" is that I haven't been doing enough to create significance out of the opportunities before me. I'm not talking about earth-shattering things; more along the lines of less time focusing on things that don't matter in the grand scheme of things, and more time focusing on the things that make a difference.

A bunch of recent events and "nudges" came together to get me to this point. In no small part, I owe a lot of the credit to the blogging community where I've found a gold mine of ideas, great advice, and a lot of inspiration - thank you. Ironically, the final piece clicked into place as my wife and I were watching the movie "Envy," in which the main characters (played by Ben Stiller and Jack Black) each go through a period where their effectiveness ratings at their jobs were good for most of the year, but their performances went down the tubes when their "focus score" was poor..

So, now that I've seen the spark, what will I do differently? On the personal side, I spent a refreshing few days with the family doing fun family things the last couple of days (had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, saw Nemo On Ice, saw the new Harry Potter movie, got my 12-year-old son signed up for our local health club and took him to work out a couple of times, and stuff like that). And, as Lisa suggested in her comments, I stayed off of email. I intend to do plan more stuff like this.

On Monday, I am going to take a "clean slate" look at everything I'm doing at work and decide what significant things I want to achieve there. My goal is to stop sailing on the prevailing winds of urgency, stop putting off "hard stuff," and chart a course that feeds my passions and plays to my strengths as fully as possible..

This realization is simultaneously a very liberating and frightening to me, but I think that only good can come from it. And it's up to me to make that true, isn't it?

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