In September of 2007, xkcd released a comic that would stick with me for over a decade.
I’ve always wanted to try this schedule but been held back by work or other commitments. However since I’ve decided to take an extended break for myself, I thought it would finally be the perfect time to try and crank this out for a week or two and document the process.
Of course, with the bevy of mental health problems I suffer this could be calamitous. I am pretty tuned in to my mental health though so if it starts to go awry I’ll pull out and revert back to the usual 24-hour cycle.
Weekly Alignment
As outlined in the comic above, the schedule can be synced up to the existing 24-hour/7-day week in such a way that you spend most of the normal work operating hours (Monday-Friday) awake during the daytime periods - allowing you to maintain an almost consistent connection to an existing job if you have some flex-time arrangement. It does start to flip over at the end of the week and carry on into an early night on Monday morning, however the advantage is you get to party during the night time on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights without altering your sleep schedule (which can have knock on fatigue/mood effects).
Experience And Planning
I decided to to experiment with a 28 hour day, but I messed up and didn’t sync it right to the week and had to cancel the experiment and I plan to begin a proper attempt starting Thursday, 12th September 2019 (two days hence). My experience with a 28 hour day was interesting, I felt like I got a lot of stuff done, despite having many hours of leisure time as well. I also felt suitably exhausted by bedtime, so wasn’t kept awake by racing thoughts. This bodes well for me, and hopefully with some good discipline I can use this as a time to get lots of stuff done.
Six Day Week - Fiction
When discussing the 6-day week, we have no names for it’s days, and stealing all bar one (screw you, Thursday) from the existing planetary week feels like a cop-out. So I rifled through various collections of mine and stumbled across my favourite curio; the extended Major Arcana tarot created by Uel Aramcheck and Lays Farra. What better way to name a time span then with icons representing the future, the past, and the present?
So I shuffled around, found my favourites, and narrowed it down to the following:
The photo is pretty blurry, but I’ll link to the designs for each card below. Of course, how do they fit in with the week? They line up with ISO 8601 standard week, which begins on a Monday. The names of each day and the meanings behind them are below.
Atom
Every week begins at the start, with the smallest unit our smiths can forge.
Network
Meeting paths, crossed destinies, a world under creation and so much still to do. Possibility abounds, but must be harnessed.
Android
As the week continues, we try to outdo ourselves, build bigger and better, even moreso than us.
Satellite
We submit ourselves to the [machines|gods] we have made, our output and creations now beyond our control.
Uprising
We revolt against our roles, tear down all that we have created that has enslaved us. Now time is ours.
Hitchhiker
The world is ours for exploring, free from constraint. We know what we have done. We await transport though into the next week, where we begin again.
Singularity
Typically speaking, not a normal day. This does not exist week-to-week, but represents the future and a point at which we transcend the need for all - not just the concept of a week. It’s the hidden day, the one waiting beyond the horizon.
Thanks
Shoutout to @shmouflon for telling me to to document this, and to @nyx_photography for being okay with me taking on this weird-ass schedule while sharing a house together.