Eight Days a Week

I came up with the idea for the eight day week some time ago.  I was having a boring night and realized that 21 went into 168 exactly eight times.  You say “big whoop”, I said “eight day week, baby!”  As it turns out you were right.  

The schedule I used was based on 14 hours of wakefulness followed by 7 hours of sleep.  You will see how well this worked.  The following are my journal entries for the week.

 

Charting out the 8 day week

 

 

MONDAY

AWAKE -> 10:00-00:00

23:30 This day was fairly normal.  Things will become a bit strange by tomorrow.  I haven’t been up at seven in the morning since – I can’t remember when.  The girl who I am subletting my room from just came in and told me about the 25 year old artist she works for as an assistant who is making tons of money and having her do all his boring and tedious work.  Great for him, but kind of annoying information to fall asleep on all the same.

 

TUESDAY

AWAKE -> 07:00-21:00

07:45 I am on the subway right now.  I have once again done my two for one ticket deal where I don’t stamp my ticket the first time, and, if caught (which happens fairly regularly), just claim ignorance of the stamping protocol.  In fact, when you buy a ticket the time is stamped on it anyway, so they can see that I am traveling on a recently purchased ticket.  Then the next time I use it I actually stamp it.  I don’t feel bad about this one bit since it is such a dumb system to begin with.  Why in the world do you need to stamp the time on a single use ticket that already has the time of purchase stamped on it?

I had to use the small bowl for my cereal this morning.  I hate that.  We only have one semi-reasonable cereal bowl and a number of roommates who aren’t exactly gangbusters about doing dishes.  I think I may have left my Kiehl’s shampoo in the shower.  Shit.

I’m feeling okay.  I feel like I am getting a jump on the day.  I feel a bit dumb that I never get up this early.  Everyone on the subway, almost without exception, is reading right now – newspapers, magazines, novels.  I have NEVER seen this before.  It’s as if a whole new category of people occupy the city at this time of day.

11:53 I am starving and am going for lunch.  Very strange to go for lunch at noon.

20:35 I worked like gangbusters today.  I kind of feel ready for bed as I watch Olympic highlights on Eurosport.  I love that they show Olympics 24 hours a day on this channel.  Then during the day there is another channel (either 1 or 2, it switches according to the day due to some strange licensing logic) also playing non-stop Olympics.  Right now on Eurosport they are doing this strange daily mash-up where they play clips of Olympic athletes making strange faces/actions alongside music cues that are meant to be funny.  Or sometimes they just play sound effects.  Right now they just played the sound of a horse  whinnying and pawing the ground with a clip of a javelin thrower making a similar motion with his feet and blowing his lips in a way that sort of matched.  Actually, that was kind of funny.

WEDNESDAY

AWAKE -> 04:00-18:00

04:35 Waking up in the dark never feels natural.  I had a bit of trouble falling asleep last night but got there after perhaps 90 minutes.  I am working from home until the subway starts running.

07:45 On the subway now.  The lady across from me is doing a Sudoku puzzle that she cut out from a newspaper.  I’ve done Sudoku myself, but only because there was nothing else to do.  I would not, for example, ever buy a Sudoku book.  I think that if you are going to spend time working on a skill it should give you something above and beyond only the pleasure of successfully doing it.  For example: 

1. Social Interaction (sports for example)
2. Money (trading stocks for fun)
3. Physical Objects (carpentry)
4. Health (sports, cooking)
5. Knowledge (reading, taking classes)
6. etc.

Sudoku doesn’t hit any of these.  It’s even worse than crosswords, which are essentially in the same category – it’s like television for nerds.  Sit back and disconnect.  Plus, I usually get the feeling when I see someone doing a crossword (especially when they are my age) that they are happy that I have seen them being so fucking erudite.

17:18 Another gangbusters day of work.  My productivity is through the roof.  Am going to have to stay up a bit “late” tonight as it is a friends birthday party at 18:00.  

20:25 Shit.  Just getting to bed now.  The 1am alarm is not going to be a pleasant sound.

 

THURSDAY

AWAKE -> 01:00-15:00

01:45 This sucks.  I hate it.  The roommates finished the milk and now I can’t have any cereal and I have nothing else to eat right now and nothing is open except doner shops.  I don’t know if I can handle a doner for breakfast.

02:27 I settled for a falafel.  It is actually pretty good.  In contrast to the eight day week.  I just made a little chart while waiting for my falafel and the eight day week officially sucks.  For some reason I thought that I would work five days and then have a nice three day weekend from Friday to Sunday.  But in fact my Friday is going to go from 10pm tonight until noon on real Friday, so I am going to be asleep from noon until 7pm on Friday.  So basically, I may as well have done a normal week and then just done an all-nighter on Thursday night and then slept from noon until 19:00 on Friday and I would be in exactly the same position.  And probably way less tired.  At least I am getting to watch some live Olympics.  I am kind of bored of watching the rowing though.  They have some many variations on the same theme.  One.  Two.  Four.  Eight. Kayak. Canoe. Boat. 500m. 1000m. And so on.  It seems a bit much.

17:20 Can’t sleep.  It is a beautiful sunny day outside.  This was a terrible idea.

 

FRIDAY

AWAKE -> 22:00-12:00

22:22 Fell asleep for a bit.  Feel severely out of it at this point.  It is everyone else’s Thursday, but my Friday.  Knowing this gives me absolutely no satisfaction.  The website I have been working on all week is just about done, but I just found a few more tweaks it needs from the flash programmer and there is no way to get her to do it before I go to bed tomorrow.

11:15 Just got back from a run – I am trying to tire myself out so that I might have a chance of falling asleep at noon.  Ran into a friend coming back home who was in a cafe having his morning coffee.

14:45 This is not working.  

16:50 “Saturday” is going to suck.

 

SATURDAY

AWAKE -> 19:00-09:00

19:10 I got about 75 minutes of sleep and feel delirious.  Now I have to go get dressed up in a suit for some kind of networking/party/swing dance event.  Philip sounded excited that he had gotten us on the list for it but I really can’t wrap my head around what exactly “it” is.

04:38 I am laying in bed eating a doner now and watching the Olympics.  I am still not sure what I went to.  It was kind of like a normal party combined with a high-school dance for grown-ups.  It felt very “organized.”  The highlight was the free food.  I am not sure why I feel like I must stay up until 9am but I am going to do it.  The US basketball team starts playing their semifinal in 3.4 hours.

 

 

SUNDAY

AWAKE -> 16:00-06:00

16:15 Finally some sleep.  I plan to do nothing remotely productive today.

05:30 Just got home.  Ran into a guy I knew from Montreal – Justin, who was a friend of a friend – at a bar tonight.  It was very bizarre running into him.  This is the second time this has happened to me in Berlin, where I am going out somewhere and I hear “Hey, Dan!” and turn and see someone who looks like they were just teleported in for dramatic effect.  We had a bizarre conversation, which I came out of understanding that either he was leaving soon or had no interest in hanging out or both.  It will still be semi-dark when I go to bed today.

 

EXTRADAY

AWAKE -> 13:00-03:00

13:50 I feel a bit more normal now, but these closing ceremonies are baffling me.  First they had the medal awards for the marathon winners and one of the guys – who won the silver – looked like he was going to fall over the whole time.  I don’t know if he was nervous or exhausted or both, but it was strange.  Then there was that London-Beijing-London bus that drove in and all this weird shit started happening.  I guess it has to do with passing on the torch.  I need to get outside.

01:30 Almost done.  I am very glad.  I am going to watch a terrible streaming version of Pineapple Express (just joking, I never break copyright law) and then call it an eight day week.

 

CONCLUSION

Don’t do this.  I repeat, this is a bad idea.  I have to thank the Olympics for making it possible for me to complete this week.  I really don’t think  I would have made it otherwise.  I am still curious about other variations on sleeping patterns, but the eight day week will not be repeated.  It doesn’t allow for any sort of sleep rhythm and kills your social life.  It’s terrible.

I found out about polyphasic sleep this week – which is where you sleep for 25-30 minutes 6-8 times per day; which works out to about three hours of sleep per day.  My roommate did this for six months during a busy period of school.  He said it really wasn’t bad after the first two weeks.  He quit it because it just made life too complicated – I didn’t really understand why that would be the case until he pointed out that he HAD to sleep every 4 hours or else he would get totally messed up.  So if he was out with friends having a good time he would have to take off for a nap after 4 hours.  Which, he was right, did not seem terribly practical.

I am now considering doing something slightly more logical.  A 12 day week.  This would involve having two days every weekday.  A work day from 08:00-16:00, followed by a four hour sleep, followed by a “fun” day of exercise, reading and going out with friends from 16:00-04:00.  Then another four hours of sleep.  Then on weekends you just do normal days (hence the 12 days instead of 14).  I will keep you posted on how this goes.