Normal v Me

Normal, it goes wihout saying, is a subjective term. What you consider perfectly reasonable, someone else might think is laughable, insane or just disgusting. Take Jedward, for example: someone must be buying the cds, and while no-one I know owns a copy of Planet Jedward (as far as I'm aware), the sales just keep on coming. It stands to reason, therefore, that while I mostly listen to rock, some people prefer the tone-deaf caterwauling of two overgrown toddlers.

However, leaving musical taste aside, I have long been aware that I am... how shall I put this?... a little odd. I mean, I don't go around licking pigeons, or anything, but every now and then, something happens that makes me pause for a second and think: 'man, I'm pretty weird, aren't I?' 

One such event came after a conversation with a friend who was rather busy at the time. “If there were another 24 hours in the day, I'd be fine”, quoth she. Most people would sympathise, move on and forget it. Not me. I thought about it. I decided fairly early on that adding 24 hours to the existing 24 would be unworkable. Most people, so I'm told, sleep for up to 8 hours a day, leaving 16 hours for going to work, eating, googling OMG cat, etc... A 48 hour day would mean sleeping for up to 16 hours at a time. While I might be able to manage that (I once slept for 18 hours, but there were special circumstances), I realise some people might find it a bit of a stretch. The bigger problem is trying to stay awake for 32 hours a day, for the rest of your life. Student doctors can get stuck with 36 hour shifts, but not consecutive, continuous 36 hour shifts. This may be why it is relatively rare for a student doctor to suddenly snap and go on a killing spree. Prolonged periods of sleeplessness can cause weakening of the immune system, psychosis and even death, so the 48 hour day is clearly unfeasible. I considered splitting the 16 hour period allocated to sleep into two 8 hour periods, but then realised this would be basically the same as the current 24 hour day. Most people would give up at this point, but I was stuck on a runaway train of thought and, to be honest, I was enjoying the ride.

So. There are 168 hours in a week. If we divide that by 6, instead of 7, we get a 6 day week, with 28 hours in a day. It may seem like giving up a lot for a small gain, but bear with me. If, in a 28 hour day, the average person were to sleep for 9 hours, that leaves 19 hours for other things. If you don't have much to do, 19 hours worth of blinking is no more useful to you than 16, but, to someone with a lot of things to do and places to be, the extra 3 hours could be extremely beneficial. Imagine how productive the human race could be, if we all worked for, say, 11 hours at a time, rather than just 8. 11 hours a day, 4 days a week gives a 44 hour working week, which is 4 hours more than 9-5, monday to friday and means the weekend can still be 2 days, only now there's more time to have a lie-in or read the even bigger weekend paper they'll no doubt be producing.

Unfortunately, as with a lot of revolutionary ideas, there are a few bugs to work out of the system. Mostly minor stuff, like how many days are now in each month, but then there's the small matter of trying to slow the rotation of the earth by 16.666666666666667%, so that each full rotation takes 28 hours. Might take a while to ponder that one. Or I might just go to the pub. Guess which.