The Sleep\Wake Interconnectivity Thesis

The Sleep/Wake Interconnectivity Thesis

As responsible human beings, our species has struggled for generations to accurately determine the precise time to consume our final alcoholic beverage before stumbling off to our comfortable beds from IKEA. Now in fairness those beds would be even more comfortable if we knew what to do with the twenty nuts and bolts left over from the Allen key driven cartoon directions.

There are volumes of literature debating the appropriate time one should call it a night, whilst the words of our grandparents “every hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after midnight” echo through our intoxicated minds. It is not a simple question to address, as so many variables can influence the answer. Questions like “Are you talking weekday or weekends?”‘ “Am I at home or am I at my neighbour’s house, where these inhospitable neighbours went to bed two hours ago?” “The bartender just yelled last call, so do I order one or two final drinks?” “It is 4:30 in the morning, I am watching the Matlock marathon on A&E so should I go to bed at all?”

The truth is the theory of bedtime determination is a double-edged sword. Your personal sleep time requirements will be intrinsically connected to your personal wake up time. Inexplicably most of the highly sophisticated research on this topic forgot to connect these two critical variables so I made a point of recognizing this in my thesis below. I proudly call this The Sleep/Wake Interconnectivity Thesis.

There is, of course a whole movement from church groups, that is gaining popularity, that suggest drinking alcohol should be eliminated as a consideration in your bedtime decision. That radical idea was fortunately, dismissed by every national brewer across this vast land we inhabit. Environmentalists were also against removing alcohol from the data, as they could not figure out what one would do with all the empties in your garage. For the dozen or so people who do not rely on alcohol to create their sleeping patterns, we will expand the scope of our conclusions to include sober sleep considerations.

Many sleep experts, with long beards and funny hats, will support the notion, that people should go to bed when they are tired, however, going to bed at 11:00 a.m., seems unpractical as we would all miss the airing of The Price is Right. The research continues, but the information is flawed, as shift workers and emergency room nurses keep altering the results. In my attempt to consolidate current trends with nominal acknowledgements of changing time zones, increased dependency on PVRs and improvements with pillow technology, I believe I have come up with a pretty simple algorithm to help tired people decide the declaration of bed time that coincides with a connected wake time. My groundbreaking formula will focus on four key concepts. Basic Interconnectivity, Learn from your Successes, Deferred Gratification, and Preplanning will be the themes to help explain my revolutionary thinking.

Basic interconnectivity: It really comes down to some undeniable facts, when one determines the bed time that best suits one’s individual biorhythm. “What time do I have to get up?”, Might be a question one could ask. This question becomes less relevant as one approaches their wake up time. For example if you are asking yourself this question at four in the morning, and you discover the answer to this question is five in the morning, I highly recommend you ask yourself a different question, like “where did I put my car keys and is the coffee shop open yet?”

Learn from your successes: If you are at a hotel and use the wake up call service as a tool to assist your morning arising strategy, consider using this service every day of your life, even when you are at home. Some of the more prestigious hotel chains will call you at home every morning, if you ask them nicely. That underused approach pretty well eliminates the next two points in this ever evolving thesis.

Deferred gratification (ooze buttons): One of the most important decisions one must make when considering the sleep/wake interconnectivity theory, is the strategic use of the snooze button. If you are deploying this device properly, the “s” and “n” should be worn away on the button of your Kmart purchased dimly red-lighted digital clock from over usage. Oozing into daily consciousness is a very civilized way of greeting each morning. Research shows that moderate work performers hit that button on average of fifteen times each morning, before they jump out of bed. Interesting that your high performing employees only hit the button fourteen times before they head off to work.

Preplanning: This annoying habit might be a part of a night time contemplation of tomorrow if one hopes to achieve any measure of success with this still untested thesis. As this obscure idea gains traction, early results are showing that the real trailblazers of this practice take a moment, let’s say around supper-time, to do a little math. Current early adopters of our little raw proposal, tend to think ahead and meticulously calculate the sleep based on three points of data. How much sleep do I need? What time will I get up? What time it is now? These questions are currently trending on twitter right now as three hashtags with their own curious connectivity.

It is unfortunate one cannot generate vast amounts of money from a brilliant theory. Einstein never made a cent from Relativity. Newton and Gravity were charitable partners of non-profit discovery. And nobody will make any money once the Space Time Continuum is finally confirmed. But here I am, sharing a theory that could have made me a billionaire, if I had only accepted that job offer at the R&D department of Monsanto.

So there it is, my unselfish gift to the world, The Sleep/Wake Interconnectivity Thesis. You’re Welcome! Like all untested scientific proposals, this must pass the scrutiny of scholarly examination, and ultimately must move from the laboratory to the real world. I would help pursue this important, necessary clinical step myself, but I am a little tired (brilliance is surprisingly exhausting) and I am in desperate need of a data skewing nap.

Dennis Ford