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Comment by ilamont | Hacker News Reader

Does anybody else split their sleep into two periods? I've done this out of necessity at several points in my life, first more than 20 years ago when I worked at a job that required me to get up at 3 in the morning and then more recently when I find I do my best work at night (last night, for instance, working at 1 am) but have to get up at 6:30 to help my kids get ready for school. I work from home and can set my own schedule, so I can go back to sleep for a few hours in the mid morning but I am not sure if this is optimal in terms of getting enough sleep or the "right" kind of sleep.

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I've done it for short stretches (couple weeks), and found I needed more sleep overall to get close to the same waking clarity as when I sleep for a single period.

So I'd need 2 x 4.5h blocks to get close to how I'd feel with 1 x 8h stretch. Even then, only close. Couldn't quite get it to feel the same and definitely not better.

TBH I think most of the 'off' feeling about it is in how it broke my normal perception of days and time passing. I spent a lot more time having to consider where I was, temporally, and how it lined up to anyone I needed to interact with.

If you're able to work on your own schedule it definitely works. I'm most productive in the morning and at night so I like to work from 7am to about 2-3pm. Then I'll take a nap from 3:30-6:30, and work from 7p to 1 or 2 am and go to sleep again.

I'm able to be very productive on this schedule but obviously not everyone is able to follow a schedule like this.

There's a decent amount of evidence that prior to the 17th century people in many parts of Europe would break their sleep up into 2 chunks of about equal length.

Sometimes I take a 20 minute nap at lunch time.

Other times I'll go to sleep right after dinner, awaken around 11 PM, do stuff until 2, and then sleep until 7.

I always feel well rested on days like either of those.

Interested to hear more - What time do you sleep? How long for, in each period? How long have you being doing this? Whats the effect been?

Currently, 6 hours at night (from about midnight to 6:30 am) and then another 90 minutes to two hours from around 8:30 to 10:30. I started last month.

I feel that I need to do it, as it's very difficult for me to go to sleep before midnight and if I don't get the mid-morning sleep I will be ineffective in the morning. At first I felt bad about doing it (going back to sleep when everyone else is working) but I usually work until about 9 pm at night as well as on the weekends for about 3 or 4 hours on Saturday and Sunday so I feel I am working a normal amount, just at really odd times. And I feel much more productive, particularly in the afternoon which I used to reserve for low-brain activity work.

It replaces a much shorter catnap I used to take in the mid-afternoon, which I have been doing for some years. I no longer need to do that.

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