Why office workers can't sleep and why that's bad

https://lithub.com/why-office-workers-cant-sleep-and-why-thats-bad/

by Crou • 7 years ago

212 72 7 years ago

The part where they spoke about various populations sleeping for around an hour longer each night in the winter is very interesting to me.

AdrianB13• 7 years ago

It is quite logical, the night is much longer and we used to depend on the light cycle. Also many animals hibernate in the winter, we just sleep a bit more, it is an adaptation to environmental conditions: less light, less food, movement in lower temperatures require more energy, sleep conserves energy.

In my country we have a bit less than 9 hours of light in December and over 15 hours in June, we continuously adjust for it.

RugnirViking2• 7 years ago

Well yes, it makes sense evolutionarily, but I don't think I had ever specifically heard someone suggest that not following such a pattern in modern times might have bad effects

aussieguy1234• 7 years ago

This study mentions blue light as from smartphones as a problem. My phone has a blue light filter which I have on all the time. Linux gnome desktop also has one for late night coding sessions.

vfc1• 7 years ago

Turned it on just now, thanks for sharing I didn't know that existed.

noir_lord• 7 years ago

For those not using Gnome, gtk-redshift is great if using X11.

I use it on cinnamon all the time.

globuous• 7 years ago

These things are incredible. I used to turn it on for my eyes, but i noticed that when on my laptop in bed, without it on, i wont feel tired at all. I turn nightshift on and suddenly i feel sleepy :)

mk89• 7 years ago

Not only that, try to switch it on and off a couple of times. You'll see that when the blue light is ON after having used the blue filter for like a couple of seconds, you'll feel like someone punching your eyes!

It's almost like having a lamp in your face all the time in the night - of course you can't sleep! We just got used to it. Now thankfully someone has implemented such filters.

dugite-code• 7 years ago

Additionally Windows 10 has also introduced this option in Display Settings -> nightlight

haolez• 7 years ago

ChromeOS supports this as well.

greenbush• 7 years ago

f.lux is awesome - it's been around for many years, and is free. Available for Linux, Mac, iOS, Android, and Windows! https://justgetflux.com/

brobdingnagians• 7 years ago

I use f.lux on Windows and it awesome.

Also, redshift is available for at least Linux, the BSDs, and an experimental version for Windows.

eemil• 7 years ago

SunsetScreen is good if you live at an extreme latitude. Don't know if this has been addressed in recent updates, last time I used flux it wanted to start dimming my screen at 18.00 in the winter and close to midnight in the summer.

At the time, f.lux's devs seemed completely opposed to any kind of adjustable schedule for people who cannot follow the sun.

rimliu• 7 years ago

iOS and OS X has Night Shift, which is native implementation of the same idea.

nucleardog4• 7 years ago

You can solve this globally by getting eye glasses that filter blue light as long as you're not doing any sort of colour-sensitive work.

After a day or two you don't notice the colour difference anymore.

croon• 7 years ago

If everyone wears them you should to when doing color-sensitive work. Granted that's a mighty big if.

NKosmatos2• 7 years ago

I came here to say the same thing, ever since I've gotten a new pair of glasses with blue filter coating, I don't get that match eye strain and headaches in the office. you get used to them immediately and can see the difference in many places you wouldn't expect.

AdrianB13• 7 years ago

I had my glasses with the blue light filter lenses for a couple of years, the problem is that I wear it all the time and I got used with it very easy, but the entire world was skewed. Also the monitors were looking yellow, an ugly kind of yellow, I switched back to regular lenses and I am perfectly fine with it.

MaximumYComb4• 7 years ago

How do you personally find the balance between blue light keeping you awake verse mental stimulation keeping you awake? I don't do any math or coding in the ~2 hours before bed, as a general rule.

hanoz• 7 years ago

Your solution to this is just to look at the world through rose tinted glasses?

asdff2• 7 years ago

But then you have to wear indoor glasses which is no fun. Light shift is baked into MacoOS, iOS, and Windows at this point, so there is no excuse to fall victim to these instagram adverts selling these cheap glasses.

rob74• 7 years ago

I guess this varies from person to person. Maybe it is a problem if you have trouble sleeping anyway, but as far as I'm concerned, I guess the blue light just keeps me awake as long as I need to finish whatever I'm doing, after that I usually have no trouble at all going to sleep. When using a blue-light-reduced "night mode" however, I find I can barely keep my eyes open...

bitL4• 7 years ago

There are special Gunnar glasses that seem to work well by reflecting blue light - they completely eliminated any eye strain I felt while coding in the night. Coupled with natural light lamp, it's a great combo for a winter coder.

graeme6• 7 years ago

Has anyone tested bright indoor lighting and its effect on their own sleep.

I have some LED studio lights for video work by my desk all the time. I'm wondering if I should just turn them on while I work each morning. From what I can tell:

1. LEDs won't cause sunburn/skin damage 2. There's no blue light risk of them if they're not rates above a certain level of light output and you don't stare directly at them.

I have to check the light rating, but it seems like there shouldn't be negative side effects to this. My new apartment gets little direct sunlight, so I've been feeling daytime darkness more acutely.

ehnto• 7 years ago

LEDs could still have all the same issues, it depends on the LED and it's particular output spectrum and the energies for each wavelength. I would check all that before concluding they would be good or bad.

NKosmatos2• 7 years ago

Exactly! Blue light doesn't mean just the colour of the light, but the wavelength, power output, flicker rate and so on. It's a good step, but pay attention to details ;-)

graeme6• 7 years ago

Which same issues - do you mean some LEDs emit UV?

bitL4• 7 years ago

I bought a huge 10,000 lux lamp that was supposed to emit similar wavelengths to daylight because I found myself to be a bit sleepy during winters all day long. That one managed to "wake me up" and I ended up as productive as in summer. Some people also use it to alleviate their seasonal depression (never had that). I have it illuminating my workspace behind my back. I believe our eyes have some special "wake up" receptors that react to sunrise and this type of lamp seems to engage them.

AdrianB13• 7 years ago

Can you provide some details on that lamp, especially power consumption? It seems an interesting experiment that I would like to try.

graeme6• 7 years ago

Interesting. Why behind rather than in front? And which type did you get?

digitalsushi• 7 years ago

for anyone interested - HL-NHB285-NP08B is a 30k lumen light for 150 dollars. it's 5000 kelvin color temperature. i parked one over my home office desk. it's like being outside at the park feeding birds, but inside. says 92 dollars per year power consumption. i dont know the terms of that calculation

tbf i know your unit of lux takes into account the distance over which the energy is dispersed and mine of lumens, does not

edit: a friend asked how to wire it. this is probably illegal in your jurisdiction but you can just lop the ends of an extension cord off, and direct wire the copper ends in and plug it into a wall outlet. you dont even need to buy wire nuts or any other accessory, other than possibly a hook, to hang the hook mount that comes with this unit. it took me like 10 minutes. this is not advice, no warranty is implied by my comment, i disavow all your actions if you do this. someone please correct my post and i will edit mine.

Doxin• 7 years ago

Plural of anecdote doesn't make data, but I've got one for you in any case:

I used to suffer quite badly from winter dips, I've since installed a IKEA Floalt panel right next to my desk. I turn it on when I sit down and turn it off when I'm done for the day. I run it at full brightness at the medium color temperature (which is still fairly reddish in my opinion). Since then it definitely seems that my winter dips have gotten significantly less severe, though actual sunlight still seems to work better.

Now all that said I'm aware it might just be a placebo effect, but honestly if a placebo stops me getting all gloomy I'm all for it. To me at least it seems that my winter dips are heavily influenced simply by environment brightness.

asdff2• 7 years ago

In college I lived in a windowless room for a year. I would have to get a light on a timer to flick on when I wanted to wake up, or else I'd wake up completely delirious at like 1-2pm rather than around 9am. I eventually switched to a full spectrum bulb and that helped with waking up a lot.

imgabe3• 7 years ago

The main reason why offices have gotten dimmer is that energy conservation codes limit the amount of power you can use for lighting. Most office type spaces are only allowed 0.9 - 1.1 watts per square foot compared to 3 watts per square foot in the past. Part of that reduction is also that lights are vastly more efficient, but designers are also incentivized to use as little lighting power as possible.

Lighting power is also tradeable among spaces. If you want to use some extra light for a fancy lobby space, you can make the office areas dimmer as long as you still come under the allowed total overall.

Energy codes are in general a good thing, but there are some tradeoffs and unintended consequences.

RandomBacon• 7 years ago

I would be looking at the regs to see how the spaces are measured and see if I could create 1" high ceilings for some spaces that are pitch black (and stack those spaces) so that I could use more lighting elsewhere.

imgabe3• 7 years ago

It doesn't work that way, you can't just define arbitrary spaces. They have to be actual habitable rooms, which means a minumum ceiling height if 6.5-7' in every jurisdiction I know of.

Dylan168072• 7 years ago

0.9 - 1.1 watts per square foot

So with LEDs, one and a half 60 watt equivalents per square meter? That's pretty bright. If I'm doing my math right that's enough for 1000 lux.

imgabe3• 7 years ago

I'm not sure how you're calculating that, but if you're just looking at the lumen output of the bulb, the lighting level is measured at the work surface. In an office, that's at 3' off the floor and the light is at the ceiling which is at 8'-10'. Lighting intensity decreases with the square of distance, so if you have 1000 lux right next to the bulb, you're going to have considerably less 5' - 7' away.

Add to that that those aren't the kinds of fixtures that are used in offices. People don't want to look at bare bulbs (and they also create glare) so most lights have some sort of lens that is going to reduce the light output somewhat.

The target lighting level for offices is 30 footcandles or about 322 lux. Even 1000 lux is nowhere close to being outside on a sunny day which is more like 100,000 lux.

wrnr• 7 years ago

I've had insomnia for as long as I can remember and wish there was another culture about sleep. I saw this documentary about the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) wherein a physicist was staying awake for 48 hours so he can focus on his work. The IAS is famous for hiring the best scientists and letting them work on whatever they want. I am not a genius like him but I wish I could use my restlessness to my advantage and work in long stretches of time and just sleep when my mind stops spinning.

MaximumYComb4• 7 years ago

I had medically diagnosed insomnia for a period. If your insomnia is anything like mine then you'd have a decent idea about if you're going to sleep that night or not. If it's 1am and I'm still wide awake then I'm not getting quality sleep that night. What do you have to lose by going to your PC at that time and working for 6 hours before work? You're going to be tired tomorrow anyway any attempting to sleep for another 5 hours isn't going to help.

dominotw• 7 years ago

medically diagnosed insomnia

What is the difference between this and just regular insomnia.

Did you have sleep studies done?

greggman2• 7 years ago

I'm curious about this idea of insomnia. I'm between jobs right now which means I don't have to get up. That means for whatever reason (my genes?) I find I'm not tired until 5am, 6am often. I sleep 7 hours just fine. So the only thing about it being "insomnia" as in "unable to sleep" would be some artificial reason I have to get up in the morning. Am I making any sense? It seems like it's only insomina because someone/something is forcing you out of the schedule your body wants. Well, I don't know your body. I'm talking about mine but just saying. I'm getting my sleep just not a the times other people claim I should be getting it.

tsss• 7 years ago

I'm not getting paid for those 6 hours so why should I work?

yhoneycomb• 7 years ago

sounds hypomanic at the very least, you should get that checked out

hownottowrite• 7 years ago

For a more historical take on our relationship with the night, I highly recommend At Day's Close by A. Roger Ekirch

C1sc0cat2• 7 years ago

Interesting however there is data going back to the 1920's about changing lighting at work (Taylor I think) that shows that the very fact of changing light levels improved output.

However when the changed the lighting levels back output improved again. It looks to me this is based on poorly designed studies, the including of trigger words like "kids" "iPad" is a bit of a red flag.

taneq• 7 years ago

There are a whole bunch of effects that you tend to get when conditions change. Same thing happens in traffic where (say) a set of traffic lights goes out, and suddenly there are fewer accidents. Of course, this is because the lights being out puts everyone on their best behaviour and the accident rate goes back up as people get used to it.

sokoloff• 7 years ago

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

C1sc0cat2• 7 years ago

Thank you that is the guy who I was thinking of - its a long time since I did my production engineering courses.

La1n• 7 years ago

I could also be the change itself and not the final state that causes it, or not?

iamtheworstdev• 7 years ago

That's one of the conclusions. People assumed the changes lighting meant they were being monitored or watched in some way, so they performed better.

wjakob• 7 years ago

Here are links to more concrete studies concerning this effect.

Action spectrum for melatonin regulation in humans: evidence for a novel circadian photoreceptor. Brainard et al. https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/21/16/6405.full.pdf

Phototransduction by retinal ganglion cells that set the circadian clock. Berson et al. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/295/5557/1070.ful...

Why office workers can't sleep and why that's bad

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