This week’s topic is:
‘If you didn’t have to sleep, what would you do with the extra time?’
I usually sleep for 8 hours, so we’re talking about an extra 8 hours at night-time when most of the country’s population sleeps, except for teenagers checking their phones and anybody who works a night shift.
There are a few things I would do:
At holiday times I would travel to my ‘van’ on the Isle of Wight at night, thereby avoiding heavy traffic on the M11, M25 and A3. I would arrive there in record time and in a good mood!
I would go to work and type my clinic letters at night, in absolute peace and quiet. There would be no phones ringing and nobody rushing in and out of my office to bother me. I could earn more money that way, as I could work for longer and never get tired. The whole day would then be mine for doing whatever I wanted to.
I could choose the best lit roads and cycle along for exercise without cars trying to run me over.
I could sit and write stories in peace without having to do anything else.
Assuming Sam wouldn’t need to sleep either, we would therefore not need a bed and so could get rid of it and use the space in the bedroom for something else.
This blog goes to show just how unsociable I am, as most of my ideas are about getting away from other people!
What would other blog-hoppers do if they didn’t have to sleep? Click on the blue button below to find out, or even add your own blog.
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Stevie Turner 
Enjoyed reading your blog.
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Thank you.
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Never thought abut the space you could save by not needing a bed. How many bookshelves could I fit in that same space?
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Ha ha, and a very large desk too!
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Reblogged this on aurorawatcherak.
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Thanks Lela.
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There are consequences to not feeling the need to sleep. Alaskans in the summer have this weird glowy, slightly manic look about them and it can cause problems. Your body does need sleep, it just goes haywire under the midnight sun and doesn’t think it needs sleep. But if you actually didn’t need sleep … now that would be a different story.
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Picking up on Richard’s shift work theme. I worked office hours in a business that operated 24/7. Those on shifts worked rotating shifts of 8 hours each: 7am -3pm-11pm-7am. Two mornings, two afternoons and two nights across a week of 48 hours. There was an extra day off every fortnight to bring the actual hours worked across a month to 168 (average of 42 hrs/week). I did it for one month when I was investigating a particular production problem. How people ever got used to such a pattern of work I have no idea. To complete the arithmetic, there were 4 teams (4 x 42 =168 which is also 7×24). Each team had an extra member to cover holidays and other absences.
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My youngest son worked either a 6am -2pm shift or a 2pm – 10pm shift when doing his engineering apprenticeship. There was no night shift though. Sam used to work for the MOD in his younger days and often worked all day, all night, and all the following day!
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The answer is that they never get used to it and that it is a very dangerous system of employment — dangerous to the health of the people doing it and, in medical situations, fire departments, things like that, dangerous for the population being served. I used to work in community behavioral health. I was an administrator, not treatment staff, but I had a lot of opportunity to work with clients and to interact with the treatment staff. One of our psychiatrists was a sleep expert and he was adamant that those rotating shifts increase patient deaths in hospitals and cause otherwise healthy people to mess with their acetylcholine levels, leading to hallucinations, depression, suicide, substance abuse, and heart attacks and strokes. A rotating shift does allow a company to hire fewer workers to cover the same amount of man-hours, but the costs are shifted to higher medical insurance premiums do to increased health care usage because … well, read above.
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Sounds very feasible. I always feel terrible if I haven’t slept at all.
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I get manic if I don’t sleep at all. I’ve seen it happen to so many people here. It’s like a summer surge of bipolar activity in people who are not otherwise bipolar. If I sleep about four hours a night, I get a lot done, feel like I’m not tired and it’s okay. About every third to five days, I’ll stay asleep six hours and it’s good. It’s doable. But I do need sleep because of the whole dreaming thing, so even though my mind is telling me that I don’t, I will occasionally go into my bedroom, close the blinds, throw a blanket over that and sleep because I am not bipolar and I have no desire to be manic. It FEELS great, but it’s an irresponsible and slightly insane state of mind.
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My eldest son was hyperactive as a child and hardly slept at all. I used to catnap during the day when he was at school and the youngest at nursery, terrified I’d sleep through the alarm and not be there to pick them up!
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Yeah, I just can’t nap. I need to dream and that takes time that napping just doesn’t provide. Our son woke up every night at 3:30 am for two and a half years. He says he still wakes up, looks at the clock and goes back to sleep, so it must be a circadian rhythm for him. He just doesn’t require company for it now. I just lived my life chronically sleep deprived except for my husband’s one week in six when he’d be in from remote camp on “vacation”. He’d get up and take care of the kid and I’d get a full night’s sleep. Somehow that was enough. So glad when that kid learned to self-sooth.
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I used to love night shifts; if only I could have done them all the time. Perhaps I could become a nocturnal writer?
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In reality I could never work a night shift. It upsets my body and makes me nauseated if I’m awake all night.
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I worked 24 hours on, 48 hours off for fifteen years, you get used to it!!!
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Wow. I could never do that.
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I would write more stories, catch up on emails and messages so I could spend more time outdoors in the day time. I would spend more time with friends and family. Now if only I could teleport so I could get back to Canada whenever I wanted to. xo
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Good idea about catching up on emails and writing during the night. Sometimes there doesn’t seem enough hours during the day to do it.
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