Similar previous research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefania_Follini
spent 130 days underground, isolated from external clues about time and circadian rhythms. Her sleep cycle lengthened a lot.
Besides the big one, some other positives:
- Lack of a single time zone means I can participate in international work/online communities regardless of location
- Jet lag is mostly not a thing, since my schedule is independent of where the sun is
- Plenty of quiet time while everyone else is asleep. I live in a very safe area and love going on 2am walks in the park with the entire thing all to myself.
And some negatives:
- My social life suffers a lot. I can only attend events if they happen to fall on a day of the week where I'm awake at that time. Right now this is mitigated somewhat because I'm living in Australia but working at US working hours, which means my weekend schedule lines up with "local time". So I tend to see local friends mostly on weekends.
- Requires flexible working hours, as it's not possible to be awake from 9-5 for 5 days in a row no matter what start point you pick for your schedule. From my coworkers perspective, I come in early on mondays (ending around their midday) and late on fridays (starting around their midday).
- At larger companies where they may want to do a "follow the sun" on call rotation (so you're only on call during your waking hours), I don't fit in anywhere because my waking hours aren't always the same.
- During winter, the lack of sunlight (since you're sleeping through it half the time) can get to you after a while.
- Anything that you're meant to do "daily" you either need to stretch to doing every 28hr instead, or have some complex accounting to do to ensure you do it once per 24h period (I mostly opt for the former).
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I wanted to improve this, but going to bed earlier would make me restless, and have even worse sleep. Forcing myself to wake up earlier was torture - be exhausted during the day, only to feel energetic at evening again, and not being able to sleep earlier.
So I "rotated the day". Each day, I went to bed 3 (or 4?) hours later, slept 8h, and woke up. This was a bit tiring, but not more than the other alternatives! It worked for a few weeks but later I went back to my old habits.
After 2 rotations, I went to the doctor and got calming medications and the the recommendation to go to sleep 1h earlier each day. This was much easier and I didn't get dependent on the medication.
Later, having a job with a schedule (not that rigid but also not super flexible) helped me get on track, and things haven't gotten so bad.
When on a standard cycle, I'd lie awake in bed bored out of my mind for _hours_ upon hours, fall asleep with only time for 0.3 to 2.5 sleep cycles, wake up in sleep-deprived pain and misery. (X_X)
In recent years, I deal with the standard cycle with the various in-vogue things like scheduled bluelight blocking, zero-lux bedroom (cities at night are so fekking bright compared to when I was a child), and sometimes morning-only caffeine sources.
I miss my 21/9.