4 in 3

For the third experiment, the goal was to gain a full day by shortening the day to 18 hours. I did this experiment with Christian Spiess, a designer and my external mentor. For the experiment our days were made up of 12 hours of day-time and 6 hours of sleep, meaning after four so called “days”, we had saved 24 hours or put differently, had worked 4 days in 3. Since our schedule was kept strictly to this 12 to 6 ratio, this meant that on one day we were awake from 3am to 3pm and another from 9pm to 9am. We made sure we put in a minimum of 6 hours of focused work every day, ate 3 meals a day and ate lunch at the 12pm equivalent every day to replicate a normal daily rhythm. We had to plan what time we started the experiment so that it would line up with the meetings and other plans we had.

The first day was relatively normal, we awoke at 9am and went to sleep at 9pm. On day two we awoke at 3am and since we had a project kick-off meeting at 8:30am we had to have an early lunch at 8am (equivalent to 11am on a normal rhythm). It was a great overall experience and at the end of the experiment it felt very strange that it was only Wednesday morning as it felt like much more time had passed. It was fascinating (and somewhat amusing) to be able to define a new time span for what we call a “day”, simply by having 6 less hours a day. I enjoyed reflecting on our social time construct and our ability to manipulate the time.