(Disclaimer: This article is satire with some real facts. Don’t take the satirical elements seriously.)

The new generation of youngsters (including me) are super passionate. Not just about their career or ambitions, but also about spending time doing nothing but staring at the screen. Some take up multiple jobs, some dedicate time in polishing their skills, some learn entirely new skills and some stare at the screen for long as we can, binge-watching some interesting show or playing an addictive game.

However, there is one impossible hurdle for everyone to cross. The time, which is necessary for carrying out the activities, is bound to just 24 hours a day. I am sure every one of you must be thinking about doing that one extra thing you wanted before the clock strikes 12am. In this article, we will be looking at various ways to live more than 24 hours a day.

Altering timekeeping devices.

Easiest trick in the book, is to manipulate the time that being shown to you. We might have to do some preparations ahead. By time manipulation, I refer to the art of altering timekeeping devices. These include predominantly wall clocks, followed by alarm clocks, wristwatches and mobile phones.

A wall clock is a traditionally used timekeeper, usually fitted on walls and are battery-powered. While a majority of human population still uses analog clocks, I have seen the rare 7 segment LCD clocks which not only display time, but also dates, temperature and few other useless stuff. It’s strictly advised to avoid digital clocks like them for this experiment.

Generally, we adjust time on these analog clocks by rotating a gear on the back of the clock. For time manipulation on a closed space, these clocks are your best friend. You need to acquire a used battery, preferably Eveready or Duracell. Used batteries have less electricity, and are a perfect option in this context. Simply fit one of those used batteries onto the back of the analog clock, fit it in the wall, and forget it. The minimal electricity in the battery ensures that the dials rotate slower than usual. Sometimes, they might even stop, and rotate again. Using this simple trick is proven to improve the number of hours on a day in a drastic manner. When the clock seems to stop altogether, all you need to do is to unmount it off the wall and give a nice slap on the back, and it is good to go!

We can also use the same trick on alarm clocks (remember, only the analog ones) to achieve maximum efficiency. With the slowed down time, the alarm you had set will ring a bit later than usual, which is a positive indication that our day has actually extended beyond 24 hours!

Coming to wristwatches, a kind recommendation is to avoid using them. Screwed shut batteries make it harder for you to manipulate them without twisting the gear in the analog ones. A common method we can use here, is to twist the gear anti-clockwise a little/hour. Ignore 9-segment LCD watches though, their time manipulation techniques take a bit more effort to actually do something substantial, that you might waste the precious time you just gained.

Modern smartwatches refer your mobile phone for time, so they are a useless device when it comes to solitary manipulation. In conjunction with a smartphone, however, they serve as a powerful tool to meddle with your perception of time.

Current tech society owns more mobile phones than watches, in a sense that they are used more than watches to view time. Heck, some have entirely abandoned the use of watches in favor of smartphones. In a smartphone, one can either manually set time, or rely on time-syncing servers to maintain time without any error.

For our cause, we should strictly abandon the thought of syncing the device time with the server. It is recommended to follow the inaccurate wall clock and set an arbitrary time, whatever that appears clearly to you. Set the timezone to your location, and then forget about the time and date settings. Don’t visit there again. Don’t sync time. The effects won’t be immediate. Give it some time, some weeks, some months, and you can see that the time will start to vary between the synced one and the non-synced one. It will be mere minutes, but as months go on, they will increase minute by minute.

While it might seem that all those additions are actually speeding up the sense of time, you need to understand that timekeeping using your smartphone’s battery might not be that accurate as a cesium atomic clock installed in space. They might gain or lose seconds on a daily basis. This clearly implies the possibility that the local time can increase or decrease in the count of minutes over a long period.

That’s right. Your device’s time will have already entered the unpredictable territory by then. From this, we can conclude that smartphones have the ability to distort your sense of time more than any other device due to their dependence of battery power. Let’s move onto another method which helps flesh out the simulation further.

Setup indoor illumination

While time manipulation does let you lose track of time, it doesn’t help much if you are witnessing the natural day-night cycle. As a creature belonging to the human race who has lived for generations in this world, having studied how days and nights work and adapted themselves to it, we have something called a biological clock that helps us rest when it’s dark and keep us active when it’s bright.

But for someone who is striving to gain access to additional time in a day, this is disastrous news. When you think you have cracked the time-saving formula by manipulation of timekeeping devices, the organic, biological clock will do its job and put you into extreme tiredness and subsequently sleep by the end of the day.

Then comes the question about the biological clock. Since it’s still a clock, could we not just manipulate it too?

The answer is yes. And it’s a well-known answer too. Every one of us must have tried to stay beyond our usual sleep time and see if we could stay awake. Many have failed. Many have succeeded in the initial stage, before eventually dozing off. Very little manage to actually beat their usual sleep time and stay awake till they please. There are also few who suffer from insomnia, and don’t have the luxury to attempt such challenges. Their body ignores day-night cycles, so naturally they spend more than 24 hours a day. It would be an understatement to say that they might not even have such hour limits to complete days. Do they even have to count days though? Insomniacs, please clarify. We can better ignore them for this tutorial.

Now, how can we effectively manipulate the biological clock into thinking that we are not staying awake past our usual bedtime?

One of the key factors which make us think about the days and nights, is the sky. The rotation of Earth, which changes the position of the two light sources in the sky, is responsible for the day-night cycle. As fortunate as we are, it is entirely possible to avoid witnessing this distressing source of daylight.

All we have to do, is to find a room with no windows. If you couldn’t, then just buy some thick window-drapes and cover up the windows so that no light passes through. Don’t forget to have room ventilation though. We don’t want you to lose oxygen and plunge into darkness with a light source after all.

Preparing the room is the bigger step. Once you have completed it successfully, there is no cause for worry. The next step is quite simple. All you have to do, is to find an incandescent light source that doesn’t spike your electricity bill. Low wattage, high brightness LED lights should do the trick. Install them, keep them on all day, and you have practically achieved an indefinite light source that doesn’t hurt your eyes much, while keeping the room bright. Add an out-of-sync wall clock and few manually updated digital clocks on your devices, and the illusion must be complete. Let’s move on to the next step.

Forget about traditional day calculation

At this point of time, we have successfully negated the challenges posed by clocks and daylights. But there is one more thing we should be worried about, especially in the context of 24 hours.

We all know that 24 hours add up to a day. And these days add up to the bigger picture, that is the passage of time over years. Even if you have desynchronized the clocks, it is inevitable that they end up getting added up to 24 hours, which constitute a day. This basically overturns all the hard work we went through to manipulate the sense of time. So, what is the next obvious step that we must take?

That’s right. The metric system that measures the scale of time must be abandoned. Why should 24 hours constitute a day? When you have more things to do in a day, why should it fall under the time period of another day? These questions must definitely have been in your mind whenever you are short of a deadline, and are desperately trying to finish things before the dawn of the next day so that you don’t get the scoldings from your superiors.

While we cannot stage a revolution of any sort on the authority which coordinates time, one thing we can try peacefully from our side, is to ditch traditional month based calendars. When we are going beyond 24 hours a day, it is without question, that it will lead to a quick end of the year and make you feel that time is passing quickly.

So, what now? Here’s what we suggest - throw away your traditional calendar, constricted to months and years, and adopt a revolutionary day counting procedure. Open your Office suite, create a table with 5 rows and 5 columns, add numbers from 1 to 25 and get 10 copies of it printed at your local printing shop. Use a stapler lying around to pin the sheets, and hang it on the wall.

Why 25 days and 10 months? Because it’s simple! Since you have already thrown away your usual calendar, it doesn’t make much sense to follow that convoluted and inconsistent system of days and months. 31 days in one month, 30 in another, and 28 in another, which also changes every 4 years? Bull crap. 5 rows and 5 columns amounting to 10 months not only looks simple, it also saves precious time wasted on pondering over which day of the week falls in a weekend. After all, it’s your calendar and your time. You are the boss who decides which time should be free time! (at the cost of your actual boss, but it doesn’t matter now when you have already abandoned time regulations)

If you had thrown away your old calendars, kept the clocks with wrong times and closed off the daylight sources in an isolated room, then that must be more than enough to complete the illusion of more than 24 hours a day. But, is that all enough? In the next topic, we will see the various ways in which we could add value to the illusion.

Migrate to cities with a midnight sun

Living in an isolated, artificially lit room is a challenge, but how about visiting your local store for a late night purchase? You would be exposed to the night sky, breaking the illusion you had tried so hard to build. You could request the shopkeeper to relocate their store near to your living space, but that would be too much egocentric. Care must be taken not to disturb others while following your routine to live the extra time each day.

This is where the midnight sun comes in. During certain seasons, some countries in Europe and Australia tend to experience longer days due to them being in the extremes of Northern and Southern Hemispheres of the Earth. It is known that these days can extend beyond midnight - thus earning the name “midnight sun”. In order to continue living more than 24 hours a day without disturbing your neighbors, we suggest you to migrate to those countries, moving between them one-by-one as the seasons progress.

Though this sounds expensive, it is nothing in front of the amount of extra time you are going to gain, which in turn will improve your efficiency in various aspects and might also affect your revenue in a positive or negative way. Just make sure to have a massive bank balance before following this step.

Even after all these pages of rambling, you might think there is a very crucial point which has not been discussed yet, which could render the entire article invalid. In the final topic of this long article, we shall put it to rest.

Stay without sleep

That’s right! Sleep! With sleep, none of the above stuff is going to happen. With that being said, how are you going to avoid sleeping?

A good night’s sleep is usually considered as the fuel for an energetic day. Without it, how are we supposed to function properly? Some might say caffeine is a substitute, but I disagree. You can only run the petrol engine with kerosene for long till the engine stops functioning. If caffeine is not the option, then what is?

You need not think much on this. Instead of sleeping for long, you can follow the technique of power naps instead. Unlike sleep time, power naps can be taken at any time of the day, are short, and can help you energize without the need of caffeine. Historically, it is known that many leaders during World Wars used to have power naps, as they didn’t have time to relax when bombings occur around them. If they could do this during chaos, what’s preventing you from doing it in your own volition, in this peaceful world?

Conclusion

I believe that by following the above steps, one can pursue their passion of binge-watching their favorite series, playing their favorite game till they achieve the complete victory, complete their long pending assignments due to procrastination, do moonlighting on multiple time zones, learn an interesting skill or just scroll Shorts and Reels mindlessly till the world ends.

I hope some extra minutes after 24 hours were used to read this article. If not, then I guess you are not the target audience for this. You might have plenty of time already. (for reading, it’s a good habit!)