I have been in a losing war with sleep for as long as I can remember.

I’m not an insomniac or anything (thankfully), but I also wouldn’t classify myself as someone who sleeps well. My partner and other close family members can fall asleep at the drop of a hat (sometimes even unintentionally!) To them, sleep seems to come to them as naturally as breathing.

Not so for me. I’ve had black-out curtains. I’ve worn sleep masks. I’ve taken melatonin many times. I’ve made major lifestyle adjustments to assist my sleep. For instance, I stop looking at any screen 60-90 minutes before I attempt to fall asleep. I don’t play any video games past 9pm. I set up blue light filtering (like f.lux) on most of my devices. I have a Fitbit to track my sleep patterns.

In spite of all this, sleep and I still have an inconsistent relationship. There are days, even weeks where I believe I fall asleep reasonably fast (let’s say within 15-30 minutes). But then my old foe sleep rallies, and I have nights where I’m staring at the back of my eyelids for what feels like the whole night.

A couple months ago, I heard something curious about sleep (though for the life of me I can’t find the source). As I recall, the speaker was positing the idea that humans are not built to sleep “through the night”. We’re built more for “shift sleep”, where we sleep for a couple hours while someone else watches for predators before switching off.

I’m going to call sleeping through the night “1x8 sleep” (one session of 8 hours), and shift sleep “2x4 sleep” (two sessions of four hours). I’m a firm believer that we need about 8 hours of sleep a day. I’ve done less, during university. I do not recommend it. However, it hadn’t occurred to me before to attempt to break that 8 hours up over more than one session.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been finding myself awake (and not that groggy half-dream state but wide awake) about 3.5 hours into my night’s sleep. It happened frequently enough that when this speaker made this comment, my subconscious surfaced the possibility of a connection. What if “sleeping through the night” is another one of the post-hoc adaptations to civilized living we’ve made that the biology hasn’t caught up with? “We need about 8 hours of sleep,” we say to ourselves, “may as well get it all over with at once”.

I think it makes sense that our distant ancestors could not afford to be unconscious for long stretches of time, or they would get eaten. The idea of 2x4 sleep makes a lot of sense as an adaption to living in a hostile world (if you’ve played any amount of D&D, 2x4 sleep is probably how your party takes a Long Rest most of the time). I wonder if there’s an evolutionary trait that predicts for 1x8 sleepers versus 2x4 sleepers.

I don’t think I can get away with 2x4 sleep in practice. I think my current life circumstance and schedule does not lend itself well to a ten-to-twelve hour sleep span, with two-to-four of those hours being activity around 3AM. I would be curious if someone has ever tried to operate on a 2x4 schedule, and for how long, and how it affected their health and happiness.

I’ve been ruminating on the nature of time more as the pandemic has begun to wind down. A related notion I brought up to my partner was that I intend to live on Daylight savings time forever. My idea, roughly, is to shift my schedule one hour “back” when we roll the clocks forward in the fall. For instance, I’m working 9-5 these days, but to maintain my schedule, I will shift to 8-4 when the clocks roll back. The intent will be that my days will “feel” the same; just the numbers on the machines will be one less than usual. Whatever.

I recognize that not everyone has the freedom or latitude to explore these schedule modifications for countless reasons. I guess I’m interested in exploring them as a way to “destroy my enemy (sleep) by making it my friend”. I don’t want to be in this constant battle with sleep. I want that peaceful, serene look some people get when they sleep. I’m going to spend a third of my life sleeping, I might as well try to enjoy it.

What if the struggle stems from the fact that I’m “doing it wrong”? Sleep seems like an adversary in the 1x8 model, but maybe we’re not on the same wavelength. It’s trying to keep me from being eaten by predators with the 2x4 model. What if I went along with it? Maybe, if I got up and was active from 3AM to 5AM, sleep and I could become friends.

The cats nestle close to their kittens now. The lambs have laid down with the sheep. You’re cozy and warm in your bed, my dear. Please go the fuck to sleep.