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NEWYORKER  |  annals of inquiry 2026-02-18  2957词  难度等级-高 Why Some People Thrive on Four Hours of Sleep 为什么有些人只需四小时睡眠就能蓬勃发展 In February, a pop-up science column, Annals of Inquiry, is appearing in place of Kyle Chayka’s column, Infinite Scroll. Chayka will return in March. 2月，一档临时科普专栏《探究纪事》将取代凯尔·柴卡的《无尽滚动》专栏与读者见面。柴卡将于3月回归。 When Joanne Osmond was growing up, in rural Pennsylvania, her family had two nighttime rules: you had to stay in your room, and you had to be quiet. There was no rule that you had to be asleep—which was fortunate, because Osmond, her three brothers, and her two sisters rarely were. Osmond stayed up late reading novels from her school library. Her sisters loved solving crossword puzzles. Even her father, an engineer, tinkered with television sets late at night and early in the morning. Only Osmond’s mother, for whom the rules had been created, routinely got what she considered a full night’s sleep. 乔安妮·奥斯蒙德在宾夕法尼亚州乡村长大时，家里有两条夜间规矩：必须待在自己房间里，且必须保持安静。但并没有规定必须睡着——这很幸运，因为奥斯蒙德、她的三个兄弟和两个姐妹很少能睡着。奥斯蒙德经常熬夜阅读学校图书馆借来的小说。她的姐妹们喜欢玩填字游戏。就连她当工程师的父亲，也常在深夜和凌晨捣鼓电视机。只有奥斯蒙德的母亲能按常规睡上她认为的整宿觉，而这些规矩正是为她制定的。 Osmond, her siblings, and her father were what scientists call natural short sleepers. Some people don’t sleep enough because they have insomnia, or work a night shift; they tend to struggle with exhaustion, cognitive impairment, and even long-term health issues, such as elevated rates of depression and a higher risk of heart attack. But short sleepers, who make up less than one per cent of the population, spend significantly less time snoozing without any apparent health consequences. “Growing up, we didn’t realize that there was anything different about us,” Osmond told me. Only in 2011 did she learn that she has a genetic variation linked to short sleep. Her sisters, who were tested in 2019, have variations in the same gene. Osmond, now seventy-seven, sleeps no more than four hours a night. 奥斯蒙德、她的兄弟姐妹以及她的父亲，都是科学家所说的天生短睡眠者。有些人睡眠不足，是因为患有失眠症或上夜班。他们往往会饱受疲惫、认知障碍之苦，甚至会面临长期健康问题，比如抑郁症发病率升高和心脏病发作风险增加。但短睡眠者在人群中占比不到1%，他们睡眠时间明显更短，却没有明显的健康问题。奥斯蒙德告诉我：“从小到大，我们都没意识到自己有什么不同。”直到2011年，她才得知自己有一种与短睡眠相关的基因变异。她的姐妹们在2019年接受了检测，结果显示她们也有同一基因的变异。如今77岁的奥斯蒙德，每晚睡眠时间不超过4小时。 My curiosity about short sleepers was piqued after several of my friends (not for the first time) made New Year’s resolutions to sleep better. Sleep was also on my mind. I have never had insomnia, but in my late teens and twenties I bartended while going to school, and sleep felt like a luxury that I could opt out of if needed. When I became a journalist, a cup of strong black tea helped me start writing at four-thirty or 5 A.M.—my most productive time—before spending a full day at the office. As I enter my mid-thirties, however, I often start writing after sunrise, and caffeine has lost its power to reinvigorate me. When I’m sleep-deprived, my mind feels like hard leather: unpliant, easily creased under stress.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter 我的几位朋友（这已不是第一次）立下新年决心，要改善睡眠质量，这激起了我对短睡眠者的好奇心。我也开始思考睡眠问题。我从未失眠过，但在十八九岁到二十多岁时，我边上学边在酒吧当调酒师，那时我觉得睡眠是一种奢侈品，必要时可以舍弃。成为记者后，清晨四点半或五点是我效率最高的时候，我会喝上一杯浓烈的红茶，然后开始写作，之后再去办公室工作一整天。然而，到了三十五六岁，我常常要等太阳升起后才开始写作，而且咖啡因也无法再让我恢复精力了。睡眠不足时，我的大脑就像坚硬的皮革，缺乏弹性，一有压力就容易出现褶皱。 If you’ve ever wondered what you could do with a few more hours in the day, Osmond suggests an answer. A rough calculation suggests that she has been conscious for thirteen years longer than her average peer from elementary school. She has certainly made use of the time: she went to college for engineering, married an engineer, had five children, in the suburbs of Chicago, and worked demanding jobs in technology and management. While her husband was asleep, she studied educational policy, eventually becoming president of the Illinois Association of School Boards. During one of our conversations, she told me that, after I went to bed, she’d be teaching students from around the globe how to start their own businesses. “The world seems to need eight hours, and I don’t,” she told me. I felt a warm stirring of envy in my gut. 如果你曾好奇一天多几个小时能干些什么，奥斯蒙德给出了答案。粗略计算表明，她清醒的时间比她小学时的同龄人平均多出了13年。她显然充分利用了这些时间：她上大学学的是工程专业，嫁给了一位工程师，在芝加哥郊区养育了五个孩子，还从事过颇具挑战性的技术和管理工作。在丈夫睡觉的时候，她研究教育政策，最终成为了伊利诺伊州学校董事会协会的主席。在我们的一次交谈中，她告诉我，等我睡了以后，她要教全球各地的学生如何创业。她对我说：“似乎大家都需要睡八个小时，可我不用。”我心里涌起一股热乎的羡慕劲儿。 Ying-Hui Fu, a human geneticist at U.C.S.F. who has studied about a hundred short sleepers, told me that they raise fascinating questions about the nature of sleep. She is sometimes asked why short sleepers are so rare: wouldn’t evolution reward individuals who spend less of their lives unconscious? But she speculates that such a trait only became prized in modern times. “Before electricity, there was no advantage to being a short sleeper in darkness,” she said. Fu’s work also suggests a connection between our sleep needs and the ways we fill our days. Many of the people she’s studied are drawn to demanding jobs and intensive hobbies. They often have a high tolerance for pain. Many don’t need to drink tea or coffee, and they don’t get jet lag. “I call them Homo sapiens 2.0,” Fu joked. Perhaps the deepest mystery is how short sleepers thrive on so little rest—and whether anyone else might ever be able to do the same. 傅英惠是加州大学旧金山分校的人类遗传学家。她研究了约一百位短睡眠者，她告诉我，这些人对睡眠的本质提出了引人深思的问题。有时有人会问她，为什么短睡眠者如此罕见：进化难道不会青睐那些花更少时间处于无意识状态的人吗？但她推测，这种特质直到现代才受到重视。她说：“在有电之前，在黑暗中成为短睡眠者并没有优势。”傅英惠的研究还表明，我们的睡眠需求与我们度过每一天的方式之间存在联系。她研究的许多人都热衷于高要求的工作和高强度的爱好。他们通常对疼痛有较高的耐受性。很多人不需要喝茶或咖啡，而且不会有时差反应。傅英惠开玩笑说：“我称他们为‘智人2.0’。”或许最深刻的谜团在于，短睡眠者如何能在如此少的休息下茁壮成长，以及其他人是否也能做到这一点。 Most animals need sleep, but it’s difficult to say exactly why. One leading theory is that sleep replenishes energy that’s stored in brain cells. Another postulates that sleep removes waste from the brain. Still another says that sleep allows us to consolidate memories from the preceding day. If sleep’s purpose is elusive, so is the number of hours the job requires. Bats sleep eighteen to twenty hours a day, while wild elephants sleep just two hours a night. In humans, eight hours is dogma—“My body needs eight,” Fu told me—but our actual sleep requirements depend in large part on genetics. 大多数动物都需要睡眠，但确切原因却难以说清。一种主流理论认为，睡眠能补充脑细胞中储存的能量。另一种假设认为，睡眠能清除大脑中的废物。还有一种说法是，睡眠能帮助我们巩固前一天的记忆。如果说睡眠的目的难以捉摸，那么所需的时长同样如此。蝙蝠每天要睡18到20个小时，而野生大象每晚仅睡2个小时。对人类而言，8小时睡眠是一种既定观念——傅颖慧（Ying-Hui Fu）告诉我：“我的身体需要睡8个小时”——但我们实际的睡眠需求在很大程度上取决于基因。 What we know for certain is that terrible things happen when animals stop sleeping entirely. In 1894, a Russian doctor deprived some puppies of food and others of sleep. The sleep-deprived died within days, but the hungry survived. The Guinness Book of Records no longer accepts entries for the longest time a human can stay awake, citing “inherent dangers associated with sleep deprivation.” Most of us have the opposite ambition: we have become so fixated on sleep amount and quality that sleep books spend months on best-seller lists, and the market for trackers such as Oura and Whoop is valued in the billions of dollars. There is even a modern affliction called orthosomnia, described by one scientific article as “the obsessive pursuit of optimal sleep metrics.” Tragically, it may lead to poor sleep. 我们可以确定的是，当动物完全停止睡眠时，可怕的事情就会发生。1894年，一位俄国医生分别对一些幼犬进行了禁食和剥夺睡眠的实验。被剥夺睡眠的幼犬在几天内就死亡了，而挨饿的幼犬却存活了下来。《吉尼斯世界纪录大全》不再接受人类最长清醒时间的记录条目，理由是“睡眠剥夺存在内在危险”。而我们大多数人则有着相反的追求：我们过于关注睡眠的时长和质量，以至于有关睡眠的书籍能在畅销书排行榜上停留数月，像Oura和Whoop等睡眠追踪设备的市场价值高达数十亿美元。甚至有一种现代病症叫做“完美睡眠强迫症”，一篇科学文章将其描述为“对最佳睡眠指标的执着追求”。可悲的是，这可能会导致睡眠质量下降。 Sleep is orchestrated by two systems. The first is the so-called biological clock, which runs the body on a roughly twenty-four-hour cycle of sleeping and wakefulness. We all have slightly different circadian rhythms, which explains why some people (larks) get up early and others (night owls) stay up late. The second system is the homeostatic drive for sleep: the longer you are awake, the tireder you get. One’s circadian rhythm and one’s drive for sleep usually work in tandem, but they can fall out of step, Amita Sehgal, a chronobiologist and an investigator at the University of Pennsylvania’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute, told me. When you’re badly sleep-deprived, you want to go to bed no matter what time it is. (Our reactions to sleep deprivation seem to have a genetic basis, too: after thirty-eight hours awake, identical twins, who are born with identical DNA, performed more similarly on tests of reflexes and alertness than nonidentical twins did.) 睡眠受两个系统调控。第一个是所谓的生物钟，它会让身体大致按照24小时的周期进行睡眠和清醒的循环。我们每个人的昼夜节律都略有不同，这就解释了为什么有些人（早起的人）早起，而有些人（夜猫子）晚睡。第二个系统是睡眠的稳态驱动力：清醒的时间越长，人就越疲惫。宾夕法尼亚大学霍华德·休斯医学研究所的时间生物学家兼研究员阿米塔·塞加尔告诉我，人的昼夜节律和睡眠驱动力通常协同运作，但它们也可能失调。当你严重缺乏睡眠时，无论什么时候你都想上床睡觉。（我们对睡眠不足的反应似乎也有基因基础：在清醒38小时后，拥有相同DNA的同卵双胞胎在反射和警觉性测试中的表现，比异卵双胞胎更为相似。） People with extreme sleep patterns first became a focus of genetic research in the nineties, after a neurologist at the University of Utah, Chris Jones, met a woman who regularly went to sleep in the early evening and woke up in the middle of the night. Her granddaughter had the same sleep patterns, and Jones had a hunch that their habits might be explained by DNA. He got in touch with Louis Ptácek, a neurogeneticist at U.C.S.F., who helped him identify a DNA mutation that seemed to play a role. Fu joined Ptácek’s research team in 1997. “I was very good at finding mutations,” she told me. 上世纪九十年代，犹他大学的神经学家克里斯·琼斯遇到一位女士，她经常傍晚早早入睡，半夜就会醒来。此后，睡眠模式极端的人首次成为基因研究的焦点。她的孙女也有同样的睡眠模式，琼斯预感她们的睡眠习惯可能与基因有关。他联系了加州大学旧金山分校的神经遗传学家路易斯·普塔塞克，后者帮助他确定了一种似乎起作用的基因突变。1997 年，傅嫈惠加入了普塔塞克的研究团队。她告诉我：“我很擅长发现基因突变。” In response to the team’s findings—some of the first on how DNA influences sleep—thousands of people reached out. Many had irregular bedtimes and wake times but slept a consistent number of hours per night. An exceedingly small number, Fu said, went to bed very late and woke up very early. Curiously, they didn’t have the complaints that people with insomnia or other sleep disorders often do. In 2009, after studying a mother and a daughter who were both short sleepers, Fu published a paper about a variation in a gene called DEC2, which influences the production of orexin, a hormone associated with wakefulness. (Orexin deficiency is one of the main causes of narcolepsy.) When Fu bred mice with the same mutation, they slept less than other mice. 该团队的研究成果是最早一批关于DNA如何影响睡眠的研究，成果公布后，数千人主动联系了他们。许多人的就寝和起床时间不规律，但每晚的睡眠时间却固定不变。傅嫈惠表示，极少数人睡得很晚，却起得很早。奇怪的是，他们并没有像失眠患者或其他睡眠障碍患者那样抱怨连连。2009年，傅嫈惠研究了一对同为短睡眠者的母女，随后发表了一篇论文，探讨了一种名为DEC2的基因变异。该基因会影响食欲素的分泌，而食欲素是一种与清醒状态相关的激素。（食欲素缺乏是导致发作性睡病的主要原因之一。）傅嫈惠培育出带有相同变异基因的小鼠，结果发现这些小鼠的睡眠时间比其他小鼠短。 Since 2009, Fu and her colleagues have published research on six mutations across five genes linked to reduced sleep needs. (A few more genes are being researched, Fu told me.) Osmond and her sisters have variations on a gene that affects receptors for glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter with many functions throughout the brain. A different mutation was found in a father and a son in 2019; when Fu’s team introduced it into mice, the animals didn’t show memory deficits that usually appear in sleep-deprived mice. 自2009年以来，傅嫈惠（Fu）和她的同事发表了关于五个基因中的六种突变的研究，这些突变与减少睡眠需求有关。傅嫈惠告诉我，还有几个基因正在研究中。奥斯蒙德（Osmond）和她的姐妹们的一个基因存在变异，该基因会影响谷氨酸受体，谷氨酸是一种在整个大脑中具有多种功能的兴奋性神经递质。2019年，在一对父子身上发现了另一种突变；当傅嫈惠的团队将这种突变引入小鼠体内时，这些小鼠并未出现通常在睡眠不足的小鼠身上出现的记忆缺陷。 Sehgal, who has studied sleep in fruit flies, and who was not involved in Fu’s research, was intrigued by the fact that these genes do not seem to be connected by a particular sleep process or brain pathway. “It’s not one specific thing that stands out,” she said. Mehdi Tafti, a neurophysiologist and a geneticist, said that the unsolved mystery of short sleepers reveals our ignorance about how sleep works. When he looked for DEC2 mutations in hundreds of patients with irregular sleep patterns, he couldn’t find any. Fu believes that short sleepers have developed different ways of sleeping efficiently. Sehgal offered a different explanation: maybe their bodies don’t accumulate as much damage while awake. 塞加尔曾研究果蝇的睡眠情况，且未参与傅嫈惠的研究。她对这些基因似乎并未通过特定的睡眠过程或大脑通路相互关联这一事实很感兴趣。她说：“并没有一个特别突出的因素。”神经生理学家兼遗传学家迈赫迪·塔夫蒂表示，短睡眠者这一未解之谜揭示了我们对睡眠机制的认知不足。他在数百名睡眠模式异常的患者中寻找DEC2基因突变，但一无所获。傅嫈惠认为，短睡眠者已经形成了不同的高效睡眠方式。塞加尔提出了另一种解释：也许他们的身体在清醒时积累的损伤没那么多。 In theory, the genetic mutations associated with short sleep—and the pathways they seem to affect—could point to targets for drugs that would safely reduce our sleep needs. The discovery that orexin is linked to narcolepsy has sparked new pharmaceutical research, and last year an experimental orexin-blocking medication showed promise for insomnia in a clinical trial. Experimental drugs increasing orexin may also help people with narcolepsy stay awake longer. But it will be more challenging to develop a drug that transforms us into Osmonds. Fu said that, by finding short sleepers and then backtracking to single mutations, she may be missing out on other, more subtle genetic factors. When scientists scoured samples from nearly two hundred thousand people, in the U.K. Biobank, those mutations alone weren’t associated with extreme sleep patterns. And sleep is so important that Fu would want drug developers to proceed with caution. “The worst thing is, you come up with a drug and have horrible side effects,” she said. “You sleep less, but then, five years later, you get Alzheimer’s.” 理论上，与短睡眠相关的基因突变及其可能影响的路径，或许能为研发可安全减少睡眠需求的药物提供靶点。食欲素与嗜睡症相关这一发现，激发了新的药物研究。去年，一种实验性的食欲素阻断药物在临床试验中显示出对失眠症的治疗前景。实验性的食欲素增强药物，或许也能帮助嗜睡症患者保持更长时间的清醒。但研发一种能让我们变成像奥兹蒙德一家那样短睡眠者的药物，难度会更大。傅嫈惠表示，通过寻找短睡眠者，然后回溯单个基因突变，她可能忽略了其他更细微的遗传因素。科学家在英国生物样本库中对近二十万人的样本进行了详细研究，结果发现，仅这些基因突变与极端睡眠模式并无关联。睡眠至关重要，因此傅嫈惠希望药物研发人员谨慎行事。她说：“最糟糕的情况是，研发出的药物有严重的副作用。”“你睡眠减少了，但五年后却患上了阿尔茨海默病。” We fantasize about getting by with less sleep, Tafti said, because the twin goals of sleeping well and sleeping enough are more elusive than they sound. Good sleep hygiene—things like going to bed and waking up at the same time every day—requires us to set boundaries in our work and family responsibilities. It asks us to make choices that are prudent, but not very fun: leaving a party early, cutting back on alcohol, refraining from late-night snacks and screen time. Of course we’d rather take a pill than do all of that. Unfortunately, Tafti said, “we cannot dissolve the need for sleep.” At one time, clinicians hoped that central-nervous-system stimulants such as modafinil could help us sleep less without consequences, but they were wrong. (Like caffeine, wakefulness drugs suppress sleepiness; they don’t eliminate it.) Maybe the next best thing is to find out for yourself how long you need to sleep. One way to do that, according to the experts, is to go on vacation. Sleep only when you’re tired and get up when you feel rested, and you’ll naturally settle close to your actual needs. 塔夫蒂说，我们幻想能少睡点也没关系，因为睡好和睡足这两大目标比听起来要更难以实现。良好的睡眠习惯，比如每天在固定时间上床睡觉和起床，要求我们在工作和家庭责任方面设定界限。这要求我们做出明智但并不有趣的选择：提前离开派对、减少饮酒、避免吃夜宵和减少夜间使用电子设备的时间。当然，比起做这些，我们更愿意吃片药。不幸的是，塔夫蒂说：“我们无法消除对睡眠的需求。”曾几何时，临床医生希望莫达非尼等中枢神经系统兴奋剂能让我们少睡也无大碍，但他们错了。（和咖啡因一样，提神药物只能抑制困倦感，而不能消除它。）或许次优之选是亲自弄清楚自己需要多长时间的睡眠。专家表示，实现这一点的一个方法是去度假。累了就睡，休息好了就起床，这样你自然会接近自己实际的睡眠需求。 A few weeks ago, my alarm startled me awake at 2:46 A.M. I plodded to the kitchen, where I tried to make myself more alert by turning on some lamps. I’d organized a Zoom meeting with Osmond and two other short sleepers, at a time that they were typically awake but I wasn’t. Two of them had even joined the waiting room early. 几周前，凌晨2点46分，闹钟突然把我从睡梦中惊醒。我拖着沉重的步伐走进厨房，打开几盏灯，试图让自己清醒一些。我安排了一场Zoom会议，和奥斯蒙德以及另外两位睡眠少的人一起参加。这个时间通常是他们醒着而我还在睡觉的时候。其中两人甚至还提前进入了等候室。 Brad Johnson, a sixty-nine-year-old in Utah, had grown up in a family of five short sleepers and three normal sleepers. His mutation is associated with a neurotransmitter receptor found throughout the body, including in parts of the brain that are active during REM sleep and wakefulness. It was 1 A.M. where he was, and he was going to sleep soon. 犹他州69岁的布拉德·约翰逊成长于一个有五名短睡眠者和三名正常睡眠者的家庭。他携带的基因突变与一种遍布全身的神经递质受体有关，这种受体在快速眼动睡眠和清醒时活跃的部分大脑区域也有分布。他所在的地方已是凌晨1点，他很快就要去睡觉了。 Lynne White, an eighty-three-year-old in California, is the only short sleeper in her family. She has a mutation that, in lab mice, is associated with reduced non-REM sleep and more brain waves found in deep sleep. It was midnight where she was, and she was planning the rest of her evening. 住在加利福尼亚州的83岁老人琳恩·怀特是家中唯一的短睡眠者。她携带一种基因突变，在实验小鼠身上，这种突变与非快速眼动睡眠减少以及深度睡眠时更多脑电波的出现有关。她所在的地方已是午夜，她正在规划当晚接下来的活动。 The trio had never met, and they were curious about one another. Johnson asked how many hours the others usually slept. Osmond, in Chicago, was just waking up, having gone to sleep around 11 P.M. “I’ve been known to stay up, Brad, for three days,” White said, laughing. 这三个人从未见过面，他们对彼此都很好奇。约翰逊询问其他人通常睡几个小时。身处芝加哥的奥斯蒙德刚睡醒，他大约晚上11点就睡了。“布拉德，大家都知道我能连续三天不睡觉。”怀特笑着说。 Johnson used to sleep five hours, but lately he’s been needing about four and a half. He realized that he was a short sleeper at nineteen, during a two-year Mormon mission that had a bedtime of 10:30 P.M. “It was like asking me, ‘Why don’t you just be seven foot five by tomorrow?’ ” he told us. He recalled hiding in closets or bathrooms to read. 约翰逊过去通常睡五个小时，但最近他只需要大约四个半小时的睡眠。他在19岁时意识到自己是个睡眠少的人，当时他正在执行一项为期两年的摩门教传教任务，规定晚上10点30分就寝。他告诉我们：“这就好像在问我，‘你明天怎么不长到7英尺5英寸高呢？’”他回忆起自己曾躲在壁橱或浴室里看书。 “Our brains never stop,” Osmond said. “No matter what we try to do. It just needs to be filled.” 奥斯蒙德说：“我们的大脑永不停歇。”“无论我们做什么。”“它都得被填满。” “You just have to do things,” Johnson agreed. He used to worry that his sleep patterns were unhealthy—after all, he kept hearing that he was supposed to be sleeping much more. Learning about his genes has quieted those anxieties. These days, he’s a retired financial executive with eight children; he chairs a two-hundred-member choir and orchestra, volunteers for his church, and reads untold numbers of biographies. He’s also collecting all the talks and presentations that he’s given in the past fifty years. 约翰逊附和道：“你就得找点事做。”他过去常常担心自己的睡眠模式不健康，毕竟，他总是听说自己应该多睡点。了解了自己的基因后，他不再为此焦虑。如今，他是一位退休的金融高管，育有八个孩子。他担任着一个两百人合唱团和管弦乐队的负责人，在教会做义工，还读了无数本传记。他还在收集自己过去五十年来的所有演讲和报告资料。 Being awake so much can be an isolating experience. “There are times when I look outside and there isn’t a light on in any of the houses in my whole subdivision,” Osmond said. Whereas I might be frustrated by running out of time before bed, a short sleeper has to make sure she doesn’t run out of constructive tasks. (“I think one of my brothers died because he could not keep his mind busy and started to drink,” Osmond had told me previously.) Despite all of her volunteering, tutoring, working, parenting, and hobbying, she is always searching for new interests. In 2021, when Iceland’s volcanoes started to erupt for the first time in hundreds of years, she read everything she could find on geology. Then she got bored and moved on. 长时间清醒会让人产生孤立感。奥斯蒙德说：“有时候我望向窗外，整个小区的房子里都没有一盏灯亮着。”我可能会因睡前时间不够用而懊恼，而睡眠少的人则得确保自己有足够多有意义的事可做。（奥斯蒙德之前曾告诉我：“我觉得我的一个兄弟去世，是因为他没办法让自己的大脑有事可做，于是开始酗酒。”）尽管她做了大量志愿活动、辅导工作、日常工作，还要养育孩子、发展爱好，但她仍一直在寻找新的兴趣点。2021年，冰岛的火山数百年来首次喷发，她找来了所有能找到的地质学资料阅读。后来她厌倦了，便转移了兴趣。 Johnson’s children are not short sleepers, but he has seventeen grandchildren, and one of them might be. “I’ll get up at five, and she’ll be up shortly thereafter,” he said. He asked Osmond and White about their families. “I think I annoyed my children,” White said. “I was always waking them up.” When her son was in college, he got up early for a job and found her already awake, reading the newspaper. “You know, I’ve never seen you in bed,” he told her. 约翰逊的孩子都不是短睡眠者，但他有17个孙辈，其中可能有一个是。他说：“我5点起床，之后不久她也会起床。”他向奥斯蒙德和怀特询问了她们的家人情况。怀特说：“我觉得我惹孩子们烦了。”“我总是把他们叫醒。”她儿子上大学时，会早早起床去上班，却发现她已经醒了，正在看报纸。他对她说：“你知道吗，我从没见你在床上躺着过。” I was groggy and enjoyed listening to them swap stories, so I chimed in only occasionally. Johnson and White said that they didn’t need to take painkillers after surgeries. White talked about volunteering to fix people’s devices as part of a club of Apple users. 我迷迷糊糊的，很乐意听他们交换故事，所以只是偶尔插句话。约翰逊和怀特说，他们手术后不需要服用止痛药。怀特谈到，她作为苹果用户俱乐部的一员，自愿为人们修理设备。 I was still a little envious of short sleepers, but our conversation also served as a blunt reminder of how difficult it is to change one’s relationship to sleep. Johnson could no more make himself sleep through the night than I could get up every day for a 3 A.M. meeting. While they spoke, I thought about how nice it would be to get back into bed, and perhaps even to make up for lost time by sleeping in. There are some pleasures reserved for longer sleepers, I thought. 我还是有点羡慕那些睡眠少的人，但我们的对话也让我猛然意识到，改变自己与睡眠的关系有多难。约翰逊没法让自己一觉睡到天亮，就像我没法每天凌晨3点起床去开会一样。他们说话的时候，我在想，要是能回到床上就好了，说不定还能多睡会儿，把之前缺的觉补回来。我心想，有些乐趣是留给睡眠多的人的。 Had they squeezed more out of life in the time they’d had, I wondered? White said that, when she was younger, she’d needed the extra hours to run three real-estate companies and raise her children. She often organized her days by asking herself, What do I have left to do? Johnson had also felt a paradoxical time crunch. “I like to say that God knew I needed an extra three hours to keep up,” he said. 我不禁思索，他们是否在有限的时间里从生活中挖掘出了更多的价值？怀特说，年轻时，她需要额外的时间来经营三家房地产公司，还要抚养孩子。她常常通过自问“我还有什么事没做？”来安排自己的日常。约翰逊也有过一种矛盾的时间紧迫感。他说：“我常说，上帝知道我需要多三个小时才能跟上节奏。” But all three said that, in retirement, their experience of time has evolved. White now finds herself asking a more expansive question: What am I going to do? “Joanne sort of inspires me,” she said, of Osmond. “She’s so productive.” Osmond brushed her off, pointing out how frequently White volunteers, and I felt relieved that even short sleepers are self-conscious about how they use their time. 但这三人都表示，退休后，他们对时间的体验发生了变化。如今，怀特会问自己一个更宽泛的问题：我打算做什么？谈到奥斯蒙德时，她说：“乔安妮在某种程度上激励了我。”“她做事效率真高。”奥斯蒙德谦虚地回应，还指出怀特经常去做志愿者。我感到欣慰，因为即便是睡眠时间少的人，也会在意自己如何利用时间。 I got the feeling that the trio were happy to have found one another. Before we ended the call, White confessed to a bit of envy of her own. “It sounds wonderful to have a family that you can relate to,” she told Johnson and Osmond. “I don’t have anybody.” She turned to me and joked, “I feel like you created a friendship group for me.” 我感觉这三个人很高兴能结识彼此。在通话结束前，怀特坦承自己有点羡慕别人。她对约翰逊和奥斯蒙德说：“有个能亲密相处的家庭，听起来太美好了。”“我无依无靠。”她转向我开玩笑道，“感觉你为我组建了一个交友圈。” “You can contact me anytime you want,” Osmond chimed in. “More than likely, I'll be awake.”  “你随时都能联系我。”奥斯蒙德插话道。“很可能，我那时候都醒着。”