Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired by Roenneberg Till

Author:Roenneberg, Till
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2012-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

16

The Scissors of Sleep

After graduating from high school, Timothy had visited Benjamin at Princeton University and had worked in his friend’s small start-up company. Ever since they lived on the same street in a suburb of Eugene, Oregon, they had been the closest friends, even though Benjamin had been the classmate of Timothy’s elder brother. The six months in Princeton had been Timothy’s first taste of independence away from home and had been heaven on earth. He loved Princeton, with its university and its sidewalk cafés.

Benjamin had opened a small shop called LayIn&Out—a sophisticated kind of copy shop and café. Besides providing all the normal photocopying possibilities, customers (predominantly students) could bring documents or slide presentations for professional improvement on layout. Benjamin had gotten the idea after watching an Indian Bollywood movie that told the story of an old-fashioned “letter writer” who provided communication services in a faraway little village where only a few people could read and write. Afterward in the bar, he discussed with friends how this profession still persisted in other ways in modern society, for example when experts advised customers on layouts for their documents, presentations, or personal websites.

Besides being an excellent coffee bar, LayIn&Out offered several desktop computers, each of which had a Skype connection to one of Benjamin’s young employees, who had to be on call when the shop opened at seven in the morning. The early morning hours had the highest customer traffic because many students worked all night on a paper or a presentation due the next day. To give it the final polish, they took it to LayIn&Out for professional improvement while trying to compensate for the sleepless work night with an excellent latte and a delicious croissant.

Timothy was good at polishing layouts and had always been an early type compared with the rest of his peer group. So, during the six months of his Princeton visit, he quickly became an irreplaceable cog in the up-and-running machinery of the young company. Although he loved his life in Princeton, he decided to return home after half a year. Amy and Timothy had always been very close, but it took the long separation and endless Skype sessions for them to realize that something more than friendship had developed between them. Benjamin insistently but unsuccessfully tried to persuade Timothy to stay—his role at LayIn&Out was crucial. In the end they worked out a compromise that involved frequent visits to Princeton (billed to the company’s expense account) and a continuation of Timothy’s expertise—online from Oregon. So Timothy went back home with a well-paid job and a brand new super-fast computer in his luggage. From the day of his arrival in Eugene, Timothy sat at his computer every work day (LayIn&Out was closed on Saturdays), advised customers via Skype, worked on their documents’ layouts, and delivered the final product in the shortest possible time.

Another half a year into the existence of LayIn&Out, it became clear that the concept was a terrific success and that the young company was making a huge profit.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.