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Comment by tshtf | Hacker News Reader

Chances are this does not affect you:

Delayed sleep phase is extreme. Less than 1 percent of the population has it.

Delayed sleep phase is defined in the article as going to sleep at 2-3am and getting up at noon. It said that most people wake up at around 7am but ~40% wake up noticeably earlier or later than that. So I wouldn't say it's irrelevant for the vast majority of the people.

(I personally like to wake up late, though it's not tremendously painful to adjust to another schedule.)

Agreed. Simply waking up naturally at 8 or 9am makes it challenging to keep a traditional work (or school) schedule. It's worse if you're not on the east coast, but are expected to join meetings with people who are.

Exactly. The East Coast can go to hell :) Meetings before 10am (MY time) in general can go to hell. I don't mind a quick status meeting with the team (that actually helps me get to work on time), but otherwise, morning meetings suck.

I wonder how much less than 1%.

If it was 1% it'd be 1 in every 100, which I'd consider fairly common.

Even 1 in every 200 or 300 is still an awful lot of people.

How is 1% fairly common? I get that globally, 1% is a lot of people. But that doesn't make it common...

1% of San Francisco's population is ~8374 people.

Common, by definition, means "found often." If it's indeed 1 our of 100, that means there are 2-3 people in my office right now like this. That's a big enough issue for management to perhaps consider accommodating these people.

There's a few thousand in my building, but I very rarely see anyone in a wheelchair or on crutches. But we still have a handicap stall in every bathroom and a ramp for every step.

So?

I'm agreeing with you and providing an analogous example of commonality vs accommodation.

ohh, sorry about that. :-)

Being a teenager or in your twenties and/or consuming caffeine can also cause similar symptoms.

When I was in my twenties, I actually used to work on a 28 hour day schedule.[1] Now I've quit caffeine and hit my forties, and am one of those people that goes to the gym at 5:30AM.

1: (28x6 == 24x7) https://xkcd.com/320/

I've never read this before, but I'm mid-20s and I'm pretty sure I'm on that schedule. In my grad-student years I noted the same tendency - my schedule would "roll backwards" a couple of hours each day. For what it's worth I'm under the impression that this is a well-known phenomenon with hackers. The Jargon File includes this reference:

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/phase.html

My employer expects me to work a roughly normal 9-5. The best compromise I seem to have worked out is that I take Wednesday morning off and I work a little longer on the other 4 days to make up for it. This gives me the ability to rotate my sleep schedule on a semi-weekly basis. Wednesday morning I can sleep in and "reset". Tuesday and Friday aren't the most productive days because my internal clock is the most detached from my working hours, but around noon my grogginess will clear up and I'm on track, so it's workable.

TBH, I actually feel worse if I sleep in. But it is interesting to think about if I get in to work before everyone else, I can leave early without anyone batting an eye. Late sleepers do tend to get shit on for no good reason, and as others have pointed out, allowing more flexible schedules would benefit everyone (commuting/traffic congestion as just one facet).

1% is quite a few people. And chances are probably higher if you are already interested in this article.

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