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You're making some assumptions here that I don't think hold.

OP is likely able to do this because they have a longer circadian cycle (though I think it's still less than 28 hours)

A person who might naturally have a 24.4 hour cycle without external stimuli (which is the average sleep researchers found) will likely have problems trying to adjust to a 26 hour cycle or longer, because even if they push themselves to stay up beyond the beginning of the sleep phase of their cycle on a regular basis, there is a good chance they'll wake up closer to the end of their sleep phase, and therefore might not get enough sleep.

It's better to follow a sleep cycle tailored to your own circadian rhythm, which for most people conveniently aligns pretty well with the natural day.

I say this as someone with non-24 who often does free-running sleep (where I've found my own cycle to be a little over 26 hours in winters, and closer to 24 hours in the summer)

How do you figure out your cycle time?

This isnt scientific but I’ve found that I “feel like” going to bed about 24.5 hours after I went to bed the day before.

Without external stimuli, it’s very hard to avoid drifting into staying up very late at night for me.

This sounds suspiciously like “I tend to stay up later and later every night unless I force myself to go to bed on time” — which I suspect is pretty common, it certainly is for me. I’ll start staying up till 3, 4, 5, or later if I’m not on a schedule. Having kids helps.

It is suspiciously similar because they are the same exact thing. The whole premise is how many hours is a comfortable wake-sleep cycle.

I don't think so actually. If you can "make yourself" go to bed at a "normal time" then you don't have non-24.

People with non-24 usually have a longer than 24-hour cycle and can't "make themselves" go to sleep consistently at the same time (people with 24.5 or 25-hour days probably have some success with this though because if they stay up a bit later one day and still wake up at the same time, then by the time a proper bedtime rolls around they'll be close enough to their the sleep phase of their cycle, and tired enough to fall asleep at that time)

I'm skeptical. Chronic sleep deprivation does a pretty good job of helping people go to sleep at the same time each day.

Either way, it seems like a arbitrary distinction to make. If Bob is happier and more productive on a 26 hour schedule, but can unhappily live on a 24 hour schedule, why doest that count?

It seems the relevant Factor is what their natural schedule actually is, given the circumstances etc

Why would anyone be happier on a 26-hour schedule if they can get an adequate amount of sleep and go to sleep close to the same time on 24-hour schedule?

I can see it going the other way, where if your natural rhythm is 22 hours you can likely force yourself to stay awake to align with 24 (and likely would be much happier than free-running on a 22-hour clock).

Speaking from personal experience, if I could consistently stick to a 24-hour schedule, I would. And I think most people with non-24 have the same position (and have likely tried many things before giving up, as tossing and turning for hours every night and then still not sleeping enough is pretty unpleasant).

Additionally, if Bob's rhythm is 26 hours then his sleep cycle is shifting ahead by 2 hours every night regardless of when he falls asleep. If he is able to fall asleep at the same time every night, his sleep cycle presumably isn't shifting, and even if 26 hours might be more natural for him, he's able to sync his cycle to 24 hours regardless.

So I don't think this would qualify them for non-24, as the circadian rhythm isn't shifting every day.

On the other hand, if Bob chooses to sleep 26 hours for whatever reason, perhaps he could be said to have it then? It's just inconceivable to me that someone would actually choose that given the option.

It's worth noting that the average human circadian rhythm is closer to 24.5 hours when external stimuli are removed. So it doesn't strike me as too different from Bob; people are nevertheless regulated to 24 hours by daylight and not said to be non-24, even if, like Bob, their natural state might be to sleep more.

My point is that a lot of these people are just sleep deprived.

Bob might go to sleep the same time, but maybe he gets 4 hours of sleep a night and operates on a deficit all day.

It's repeatable on a 24-hour cycle but miserable

Gotcha, that wasn't clear in your earlier comment.

If someone is unable to get adequate sleep on a 24-hour day due to their circadian rhythm misalignment then I believe this is non-24 even if it's because they wake up too early rather then go to sleep too late when trying to keep 24-hour days.

Yup, a kid is a driver for regularity in sleep cycles.

This makes me wonder about the point he briefly touches at, but otherwise leaves out: his partner. Are there no children planned at all? Have they already raised kids and are done with this? Is he planning to break up with her?

You can't do this and raise a child¹ without being, well, an asshole. He would force the mother to do all the fixed daily things, and the child to navigate your availability using your private clock.

1: After they've settled into a stable daily sleeping rhythm of course. For a baby this system might even be useful some nights (but not others).

perhaps Junior will follow in Father’s footsteps. :)

If you are able to make relatively few commitments for a month, go to sleep when you feel tired. Sleep as much as feels good. Track it in a spreadsheet.

Some people with non-24 have very regular sleep/wake cycles. I'm not as fortunate, but in the winter will tend towards 24-29 hour days, with an average just over 27 (perhaps this winter has even been a little under 27 as I've been more physically active)

In the summer it's close enough to 24 hours that I can stick to a 24-hour schedule most of the time.

Interesting I’ll have to track it a bit. I’ve always adjusted a bit in winter but never thought to measure / optimize it.

> How

You need a significant period of time without any time-bound obligation (or even any obligation at all). Any need for an alarm or anything that you'd possibly materialise in a calendar needs to be removed.

You need a room which is pitch black at night (e.g blocks street lights, no leds), yet still allows a tiny bit of sunlight (rationale: without cues the circadian cycle extends up to 48h, there was an experiment about that)

Then, once you have that, start freewheeling, just when you feel tired go rest and when you wake up get up. It'll be a mess at first, for two reasons.

First you may be unable to properly recognise the "I need to take some rest" signal: we're trained by life to largely ignore it.

Second, you need to pay off any debt, sleep, physical, mind, that would play a role in altering your base cycle. Have fun, work out, meditate, go see a therapist even. In a nutshell, find your balance.

Once you have recovered from everything, once all biasing sources have been removed, then sleep will converge to some rhythm, which carries some error margin, so you can only observe it statistically over time. There's your baseline.

It could take months, which more often than not isn't practical to have, so from the above ideal scenario one could devise a protocol that would try to stick as close as possible to it.

Source: first principles+anecdata, sample size of 1, double-non-blind protocol; a.k.a myself digging out of a hole.

Protocol: 3 week sick leave for burnout x anxiety depression, coincidental breakup (so no SO), went from office to remote working, workout plan, 6 month therapy, statistically reliable sleep/health/performance tracking via watch allowing for outlier identification/retrospective deviation root cause analysis.

Result: 0130-0930~30min sleep, 7h45min~5min sleep duration made of two ~4h-ish blocks, 25h~30min cycle. When bound to 24h rhythm, occasional sleepless night leading to 48h day and three aforementioned blocks of sleep (~11h-ish total).

From the data it became painfully obvious that I experience delayed sleep phase disorder, took me 6 months to figure the baseline out, and 6 more to confirm, which is quite hard when you don't even know that it is a thing.

> rationale: without cues the circadian cycle extends up to 48h, there was an experiment about that

Do you have a link to this experiment? I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere. Studies referenced in the non-24 wikipedia page suggest natural circadian rhythms typically range from 24-25.5 hours for people not getting external cues.

I had to do a quick search again, this is the guy:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Siffre

Here's an interview on the subject, which includes the initial experiment (which had him having a slightly over 24h rhythm) and subsequent ones (where the 48h rhythm showed up)

https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/30/foer_siffre.php

The interesting thing about going down a cave is that it removes a ton of other possible cues like temperature variation (or side effects of trying to mechanically account for that)

My pet theory about human beings generally having slightly longer than 24 hour circadian rhythm is that it gives margin: with a 24 sun cycle and a 24.5 rhythm you naturally get a self-correcting consistent positive benefit; otherwise you'd always be right on the edge and unable to recover when things go sideways.

Do you have any recommended books or links on this topic?

I haven't read any books on the topic and don't recall any specific articles though I'm sure I've read many.

There are some good references in the wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake...), and I've been following https://reddit.com/r/N24 for a while also.

I’d never suggest that people shouldn’t read books or consult experts but.. sleep is probably like diets in that you can read whatever advice you’re looking to find somewhere.

Even after we accept that a dichotomy like typical vs atypical (or night owl vs morning lark; omnivore vs vegetarian) is way too simple.. the more we look the more we keep finding new “types” (like all the flavors of non-24; vegans, paleo, etc). So even reading stuff that’s trying to be rigorous may ultimately just tell you about fads and fashions that might be working for others. Natural variation in people seems to outpace or defy our ability to categorize stuff. To me this hints that there’s really no substitute for experimenting and listening to your body.

The hard part is just that this does require some time and space in your life to accomplish, because if you’re going back to basics about stuff like food or sleep then inevitably it’s going to be disruptive until you figure out what works best.

Data point: I found mine to be between 25 and 26 hours.

Probably a contributing factor to difficulty in getting to sleep "at a good hour".

OTOH mild sleep deprivation has been shown to counter depression, so there's that.

Likewise but I've found small melatonin doses (plus reducing caffeine to once per day) to really help me conform to a 24 hour day. Worth trying if you haven't.

I tried melatonin. It gave me nightmares. Weird, but it was repeatable. So, my 0,02€.

This happens if I take too much melatonin. The dosage in US-sold melatonin is unnecessarily high. Finnish tablets are typically 1.9mg, while US ones can have 10mg in just one.

Luckily some people warned about this a lot online (not to take too much, most pills are too much) and I was able to find 1mg tablets on Amazon when I wanted some.

1mg or less seems to work best. Source: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th...

I take melatonin (0.2mg via a spray). It is very effective. Nightmares are a recurring problem for me and other users I know, but can be solved with low doses and a lot of discipline.

Anecdotally, me too. If not nightmares, very bizzare dreams that leave me feeling a bit weird for the day and I don't really feel nearly as rested as regular sleep, even if I sleep for longer.

There's this stuff at GNC called "Tri-Sleep". Imagine meletonin tablet effects x5. I don't get nightmares, but my dreams definitely get incredibly weird and more lucid. To be honest though, I definitely think I sleep deeper and longer when I take it amd feel more recovered. Again, anecedotal.

I get those on valerian root myself.

> On a >24 hour sleep schedule, you _will_ be tired when it's time to sleep. Guaranteed. Not only that, you can sleep longer and will always feel well-rested.

Definitely not guaranteed at all. Many people’s circadian rhythms are intensely driven by daylight cycles. Trying to sleep and wake out of sync with those cycles will be very difficult.

In the past I had to do some work overnight which resulted in some very long days. I would have to be very careful to avoid seeing the sunrise because doing so would make it very hard to sleep even if I’d been up for a long time.

> Really though, the main benefit is the first one in this comment. You can live your life to the maximum extent

If your life involves a lot of solitary, indoor activities then maybe.

For the rest of us who like to socialize and do outdoor daytime activities, having your sleep schedule cut through daylight hours would be a big step backward.

I think people greatly overestimate the benefits of alternative sleep cycles (unless you have a naturally extended circadian cycle that can’t be otherwise managed)

> You can live your life to the maximum extent, without scheduling in the extra time to manage getting to sleep, and feeling tired when you don't.

I did this for a year when I was caring for my dad and working at the same time, but remember that this process makes you almost completely alone because your breaks do not line up with the world around you.

I would wake up at 7 AM on a monday, to attend the weekly planning meetings & keep slipping by about 1 hour every day of the week, so by Thu I am waking up after noon & I tended to just work through the night on Fri to sleep near dawn on Saturday.

The problem was that Fri nights and weekends are when people are mostly ready to socialize or relax, I would literally sleep through the day on Saturday and wake up close to 4 AM on Sunday.

Then go to sleep around 7 PM on Sunday, because I woke up so early and then monday I wake up with 12hours of sleep.

Lost weight from skipping meals by sleeping.

This felt completely awesome from a personal standpoint & also from the friends I had on IRC, but from an IRL standpoint it was very odd.

I definitely looked like a shut-in, even I grew my hair out simply because I did not have the time to go get it cut during business hours.

Then my dad died, which ended that chapter in an unexpected way.

I remembered those days when I had my first kid, the experience was shockingly similar when it comes to perturbed sleep schedules.

After reading the article it kinda sounds like he just takes a lot more naps. Feels like cheating.

I've never seen one of these alternative sleep cycle people put forward a sensible cognitive study to go along with it. Like the people who sleep 5 hours a day but all spread out.

The thing with taking a similar test every day is that you should get better at it. So if the test you are abusing shows that your cognitive function is holding steady day by day, week by week, that is likely not a very good sign. It just means you aren't unraveling at an alarming rate. Better to be evaluated by professionals at the beginning and end, and maybe for some people who already know you to chime in on how unhinged you have or have not become.

He said he would take an hour nap when tired , which means he will have another 6 hours sleep per week, which adds him another full night of sleep every week.