28h Days: year 1 update

It’s been a little over a year since I started living 28h days . I figured it might be a good idea to write an yearly update, and doing it at the beginning of the year feels appropriate, so here we are.

The one-sentence summary is that moving to a 28h-day schedule is the second best thing I’ve done for my health, with the first one being to regularly exercise. Keep reading for details, what I had to change, some important things I discovered, and some funny realisations.

It took me around 2 months to adapt to this new schedule. Those 2 months were hard, trying to get my body used to the new cycle while I got super sleepy after 10 or 11 hours into the day, but also with the SO complaining that I wasn’t available to reply to messages sometimes (because I was sleeping when she was awake), which was no encouragement to keep going.

Things improved after I made an adjustment: if I got too sleepy before the 10- or 11-hour mark, I’d take a nap shorter than 1 hour. I realised that on certain days, especially when I exercised during my morning, it was almost impossible to stay up the full 18h, so the nap helped me keep going while sticking to the weekly sleep schedule. I still deploy the strategic nap when needed.

When I travel and visit friends, or friends visit me, or I make plans with people to do things over many days, it's useful to be on a 24h schedule. This happened a few times so far, and after each one I got better at moving between both schedules. Since they “match” during weekends, that's when I move from one schedule to another. I discovered that it's important to stay on the same schedule for the entire week until the next opportunity to move back to the other schedule (i.e. weekends). Napping is the key to smoothly shift my sleep schedule, and by now I'm able to effortlessly go to 24h when needed, which isn't more than 4 or 5 times distributed over an year.

A consequence of the shifting schedule is that words like “daily”, “day”, “night”, “morning”, “breakfast”, “lunch”, “dinner” get a different meaning and sometimes end up confusing other people. For example, on Wednesdays I eat my breakfast around 22:00, and my lunch for that “day” falls on Thursdays around 04:00. People have a hard time following these things, and I haven’t found an easier way to convey this kind of information to them, so I avoid talking about this with others.

In fact, I avoid talking about the schedule at all with others. I’ve experienced wildly different reactions to my 28h schedule. Some people find it amusing or a curiosity, others seem interested and end up asking a few questions, but there are those who get offended or think I’m crazy or being unhealthy and try to lecture me or get me to stop. I’m lucky when the latter kind decide to stop talking to me or change subjects instead. Because of these reactions, I only comment about this schedule when I need to make plans involving other people and they need to know why I’m not available on certain days.

The internal benefits more than make up for the slightly trickier external interactions. My sleep has been the most consistent throughout the year when compared to any other year (I don’t keep track of this in any scientific way, only mental notes that I make along the way). I feel like I have a lot of time every day, and at the end of the day I usually feel like I got a lot of things done. My workouts got more regular, and I increased the amount of workouts I get every week.

Since my schedule shifts compared to the 24h one, there’s always at least one day in the week when I’m online at the same time as friends that live all over the world. This means I can chat with people in Australia when they’re going through their day at least once a week, for example. This is useful for meetings and/or video calls.

I also get to go to the gym between 05:30 and 06:00, which means way fewer people working out at the same time as me, so I never have to wait to use any equipment and the environment isn’t as noisy. As a result, I get my workouts done faster and feel less drained after them, which is why I increased the amount of workouts per week: they became a more pleasant experience. I still have to force myself to exercise, but there are hardly any negative experiences since I don’t need to interact with other people anymore.

Even small things became more pleasant. For example, now I can open my window to let fresh air in when everyone else’s sleeping and there’s almost no noise on the street (I’m in Canada, and it’s essentially impossible to keep windows open for too long for a good part of the year since it’s too cold outside, so I can't leave them unattended). I’ve had a lot of opportunities to watch the sun rise without forcing myself to wake up earlier. Since my weekdays only partially overlap normal business hours, there’s less noise on average on my day. It seems silly, but noise makes a noticeable effect on my mood, so I’m more often on better mood now.

Early on, one of the most important realisations I made was that I had to change my meal plans. Since I had 6 days on my week, if I kept following the meal plan I had made for a 7-day week it would mean I'd essentially skip an entire day worth of nutrition. As a result, I increased my daily calorie intake to compensate for the longer days.

Since I now live 6-day weeks, I also do certain things less often, like showering or brushing my teeth. Brazilians take the most showers out of any other people in the world, so by showering less often I'm also moving closer to the global average.

I still have enough opportunities throughout the week to do things that need to happen at “normal people schedule”, like getting groceries, getting the occasional meal with someone, going to the dentist, and so on.

In summary, 28h days have been a successful experiment for me, and I can’t see myself willingly going back to a 24h schedule again. It’s only been a year, but I feel like I already found 95% of the “short-term changes” between both schedules. There might be some longer-term changes, mostly associated with my health, but if these exist, they’ll likely start showing up in the next few years. We’ll see what the future holds.

Until then, I’ll enjoy as much as possible this freedom that I discovered.