Eyes Wide Open: On the Benefits of Insomnia

If you’re looking for self-help material or tech gadgets that promote to you 9 hours of sleep, and send you to bed at times designed for toddlers, you’ll have a blast: there’s an entire industry trying to get you off Netflix and home from the bar

Yet the dead of night is a strange realm of magic that has inspired poets and inventors since the dawn of time, right when our ancestors figured out it’s calmer and competitively advantageous to stay up until dawn.

At this tongue-in-cheek salon we will celebrate working and thinking at ungodly hours, why those hours might be the godliest of all, and what creative and other pleasures might make it worth our while to stay up and just be a little sleepier tomorrow…

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Some more questions to ponder about…

• The beauty of the night hour: the serenity and clarity of thought that the late night brings
• Is the norm of 9-5 working hours “biased” against insomniacs/”night people”?
  • Perception of waking up late as a sign of laziness/poor executive function
  • Famous people who did their best work at night? More likely to be creatives than left-brained types?
• Health effects of sleeping late/importance of aligning your circadian rhythm to natural light? (Andrew Huberman, etc)
• Growth of health wearables for tracking fitness/sleep – good or bad?
  • Data-driven vs intuitive (“listen to your body”) approaches to health

Recommended Readings:

• https://www.vice.com/en/article/mb58a8/late-night-creativity-spike
• https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/if-you-want-to-get-ahead-be-a-night-owl-8547115.html
• https://www.thehealthy.com/habits/benefits-of-being-a-night-owl/
• https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
• https://www.businessinsider.com/successful-people-who-wake-up-late-2017-6

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