Night owls and early birds have different personality traits (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Night owls and early birds have different personality traits (2014)

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The description of night owls seems to be in agreement with my experiences.

It's also fucking hard to be a night owl. For me, this is the single biggest issue my bosses had with me in every job - because they can tolerate someone coming at 12:00 to work only for so long. I tried everything I could think of - sleeping longer, not sleeping, drinking shitton of coffee, not drinking any coffee, melatonin before sleep, adrafinil in the morning, winding down early with alcohol, winding down early with sedatives, etc. and none of it works - I can maintain the "early bird" schedule for at most few days, any longer and I'll be feeling miserable and sleeping on the keyboard - and then my body will force me back to night schedule anyway, by means of sleeping through even loudest of alarm clocks, or suddenly crashing in the late afternoon and waking up at 1 AM, or something.

BTW. it's 04:17 for me right now, and I'm supposed to be at work in 5 hours. Wish me luck.

#HNTherapy

There are workplaces that can tolerate people coming in at noon. Took me years to find one, but they do exist. Keep looking :-)

In my experience, they are easy to find in the US:

Get a job at a company with East and West Coast offices at the East Coast office. Always offer to help on the projects and areas that have mostly West Coast resources and leadership.

I've had this problem all my life, and I've found a solution. I think. Before I say what it is, I have to preface it by saying that there is a greater than zero chance that I am a natural shortsleeper, and not just a night owl.

That said, here's what worked for me:

I accepted that mornings are a wash and are not going to be super productive either way. So I stopped trying to wake up early, and instead wake up at 9am or as late as 9:30am.

I killed my commute (more rent, but it's worth it cause I don't need a car). That means that even when I get up as late as 9:30am, I am in the office by 10:15am.

And I avoid all serious work at least until lunch time. Those two to three hours are where I pack code review, any meetings, everything that's necessary work, but doesn't require deep focus and a lot of brainpower.

This is also when I load up on caffeine. In those two hours I drink the equivalent of two energy drinks (CogniTea is my poison of choice because it's high in caffeine, and low in crap).

Then in the afternoon is my focus time and I get about 5 hours of mostly uninterrupted time. Caffeine keeps being drunk, of course. Just less than in the morning.

At 6pm I leave and go to the gym. Going to the gym daily helps with making sure my body is tired. If I don't tire out my body, then it's almost impossible to get a good night of sleep. And I'm also very edgy and agitated all day.

So remember, make sure your body is tired.

After the gym I have my relax time, and I drink more caffeine at around 9pm. This might seem stupid, but there's a good reason.

Drinking caffeine in the evening speeds me up and makes sure that at around 2am or 3am I will crash. I can get more work done (or whatever) between 10/11pm and 2/3am.

And then I am tired. Like really really tired. Hard to stay awake.

Which is perfect, because I can go to bed. And if both my mind and body were tired enough, I will fall asleep 3 minutes after my head hits the pillow.

And because I'm well tired, I sleep like a rock. Sleep tracking apps sometimes think I'm dead.

Because I got good focused sleep, I am rested and ready to go next morning at 9am.

Or as Arnold would say "Sleep faster, I would recommend".

You might have noticed I only get 6 hours of sleep per night. Sometimes a bit less. That has historically been way enough for me. I don't know why, maybe I'm a genetic freak, maybe I'm fooling myself, but it's a pattern I've been able to keep with small variations for the past 10 years of my life.

The approach boils down to:

  * sleep when tired
  * focused work when rested
  * fuzzy work when fuzzy

Thanks a lot for all the details! It sounds like something that could fit into my day style. The only thing missing, and the one I want to rectify after I go back from abroad, is the gym thing - I want to schedule serious gym time after work. It's true that my body isn't usually tired at night.

As for caffeine - I hate coffee, it makes me sick. Club Mate is expensive over here, but it's my choice of a drink when I need the caffeine boost. Gonna check out CogniTea though. How many bags/day you drink?

> In the study, researchers looked at the lifestyles and personality traits of 700 Spanish psychology students from two universities. The subjects ranged in age from 18 to 32 and included slightly more women than men.

This is a big deal - college students are not a representative sample of the general population when it comes to behavior. There are going to be confounding factors galore here; I can only hope the researchers took care to untangle them.

the Single White Educated College Student, the basis of all (flawed) studies

This may actually work for their benefit this time; college is the single time besides pre-school when a person is basically free to arrange the time however they feel like. Before college you have to be at 0800 in school, after it you have to be at 0900 at work.

That's a relatively reasonable critique on the face of it. On the other hand, work schedules tend to vary dramatically, particularly around social classes.

Aside from the college student population choice issue, is Spain as a whole even a representative model for the USA, or the world at large? The traditional midday siesta break combined with standard late night dinners and nightlife is not paralleled in the rest of the world.

Personally I've had periods in my life where I've went to bed at 9 PM and been up at 5 AM, but also periods where I've been awake til 5 AM and slept til 4 PM. So I don't really believe there is any such thing as morning or night persons, just excuses to not change your habits.

I'm thankful for such excuse (or rather I would be if anyone actually bought it), because it's simpler to say "I'm a night owl" than explaining how I can't adjust my sleeping patterns even with chemicals to match that of everyone else, and how this is making me miserable in life. Some of us have their internal clocks running in a different timezone. Mine is LocalTime+4.

Habits can be changed, but your circadian rhythm has a natural state which is different for everyone, and it's an eternal struggle if those two things are at odds with each other.

Isn't it possible that you are just more flexible to changing your cycle than others?

I need a lot of sleep - I'm very jealous of my coworkers that can stay up until 1-4 am and still be at work at 9. Meanwhile I need 8 hours of sleep minimum, or after 3 days I'm a zombie. Just last night I slept for 11 hours (no exaggeration) because I crashed after too many nights short of sleep.

I'm also a night owl - I wake at 7, and come night time I force myself to bed at 11 - I could be up for hours, but not if I want to wake on time, and while waking earlier would be great for my schedule, I can't just shift my 8-hour sleep window - I've tried.

It's possible that I and others with similar situations are just making excuses (and presumably that's true for at least some), but it's also possible that you are using your single experience to denounce others.

Please don't assume that because something is easy for you that it must therefore be easy for everyone, and that others that claim otherwise are just lazy.

> Please don't assume that because something is easy for you that it must therefore be easy for everyone

But I didn't say changing my sleep cycle has been easy, and I didn't even say I've managed to do it by my selves. Or that I even would have healthy sleep habits at this moment. But depending on mental health, diet, exercise, employment vs studies. These things have made me have all sorts of sleeping habits, and my personal belief is that these outer circumstances has had much greater impact on my sleep then anything in my genes. And that's why don't like this idea of morning and night persons as it only enhances thee feeling that you can not change your ways.

> Personally [I'm not affected by X]. So I don't really believe [X exists at all].

Do you personally believe that everyone is made exactly like you?

Exactly. I quit smoking and (temporarily, to help with that) drinking recently and immediately regressed to my early bird habits, which I have had from childhood, and involve waking up pre-dawn. (It's 5:30AM now, and I've been waking up at 4AM for a week.) Personally I enjoy both rhythms, and vacillate between them as it suits. There is no doubt in my mind that 'early bird' is healthier for me personally, though.

"Night owls" as defined by staying up late are more likely to suffer from insomnia. Groundbreaking research here.

I get what you are saying, but couldn't it work the other way?

For example, if someone has trouble falling asleep but still needs to get up in the morning and tries to fall asleep early. Only to give up after not being able to adequately sleep and rise early?

Needing to get up early has nothing to do with being a night owl, most of us need to get up early regardless.

Being a night owl is a matter of preference. Having trouble winding down and sleeping is a problem. You can have insomnia whenever your day ends.

If your day ends in the middle of the night, and your job doesn't cater to that, you have insomnia for sociological rather than physiological reasons, but it is insomnia just the same.

I don't have jobs with such requirements.

My wife and I just had a great laugh over this. The descriptions of night owls and early birds fit us perfectly. I gotta say that I love being a night owl :) And she loves being an early bird. But she's picked up some bad habits ;)

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