so what's up with sleep?

back when i was working, before school started, i always used to tell amy that she went to bed too early, and that i didn't think she needed as much sleep (necessarily) as she got. in the last year or so, the tables have totally turned. not that she doesn't enjoy sleeping, but she is better able to get through the days on fewer hours of sleep than i am. i think a lot of it has to do with working in an office vs. being in school (which expends a lot more energy in walking, commuting, meeting about diverse things, and changing your mental focus a lot), but i've come full circle on sleep. (the other ironic thing about this is that amy's company focuses on sleep technologies and she always used to tell me to sleep more!)

so my ideal amount is 7.5 or 8 hours. also, my most creative and productive working/thinking time tends to be in the late evening, around 10pm-1am. so, perfect for me would be to go to bed around 1am and get up at 8am. that's pretty much what i did when i was single, and man, was i happy. i was tired once in a while, but there's just something mental about getting up after most other people do that makes me feel more rested. it's like the relative happiness that prevails in the happiness research - maybe it's not absolutes but comparisons that matter most. this isn't just a local feeling either - when i was on the east coast working with people in california, i would feel extremely tired almost no matter when i got to the office, because i was working for 2-3 hours before they even got into the office. i know, i know, there's no logic to it, but that's what was going on inside my head.

amy gets up anywhere between 7am and 7:30am. 7:30 is usually OK, but unless i am in bed by 11, any earlier can be tough. sometimes we sleep a little later when amy can work at home, and those are awesome mornings for me. but she's a morning person and i have a commute and need to be on campus at 9am so i really can't adhere to my optimal schedule yet. also, i'm going to work for a new company after graduation, and won't be able to just roll in at 10am. after a while when i've built up my relationships and people know that i am much more productive at individual work in the evenings, i imagine some sort of equilibrium will settle in, but for the time being i need to continue to adjust to being more of a morning person.

all this thinking and over-thinking about my sleep made me think about how i always have a mid-afternoon lag feeling, during which i want to be doing nothing other than laying down and re-centering or napping. not terribly easy as a relatively involved MBA student, and definitely not easy in physical-resource-poor Haas. but i started to think more longer term and wondered about all my friends going to cool tech companies - would they be able to nap at work if they wanted to? and i thought, OK, napping makes people really happy, right? can our team do something for the creativity class final project that would make office workers happier by giving them more sleep when they most need it, that is, in those periods where the brain is basically on a treadmill and looking straight ahead and hardly capable of meaningful amounts of productivty, either because of lack of sleep or because it's a natural break point in the day? so i started to talk to amy about the research, looked up a lot of it on my own, talked to my teammates, bounced the idea off some friends and other classmates, and here we are.

i may not sleep as well as i want at home for the forseeable future because i'm married to a morning person who pays the bills, but with any luck, prophet and everywhere else will look upon naps as a normal part of the workday when i need it most.