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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Here I thought I'd be getting some validation for being a night owl.

4 AM is my most productive hour. It's just that I haven't gone to bed yet then. What's this "up before the sun rises" stuff? It's productive because the day is just coming to a close.

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Same here. I assumed the article would be about someone who discovered the joys of being a night owl. I tend to head to bed around 1 or 2am, but if other life constraints allowed me to stay up later I almost certainly would.

Once when I was in my early 20s I had a magical period of 2-3 months where there was no work, no school, and not really even social or family obligations. I would go bed when I was tired and wake up when I woke up. What I found was that every night I stayed up about an hour later than the night before. After 24 days my sleeping cycle went lapped the clock. At the time I interpreted it as, biologically I had a 25 hour cycle. No idea if that was true or not. Probably not. Regardless, if left to my own devices I always tend to stay up into the wee hours.

If there's an opposite of a morning person, I'm it. My entire life, I've felt completely wrecked after waking up, and it takes up to an hour to feel awake and alert. I get progressively more productive until it's time to go to bed again. Apparently it's the other way around for most people.

Very likely true. There've been a few cave studies where they shield the experimental subjects from all natural light, and then time how long their "biological" day is. It usually ranges from about 23.5 hours to around 28, with an average of about 25. It varies significantly by person, but was not at all unusual for someone's cycle to be longer than 24 hours.

(Personally, my natural sleep cycle seems to be about 25-26 hours; I'll usually go to bed 1-2 hours later each night until I reset at some point.)

I wonder if there's some control-theory reason why one's unsynchronized circadian rhythm is on average slightly longer than a day? Intuitively it seems that one might actually have more consistent synchronization with the solar cycle if upward pressure from a natural setpoint is balanced by downward pressure from end-of-day environmental signals (light levels, etc). Or in other words, the body has evolved a slight margin to allow for adjustability "in the field" via feedback loops.

But that's just a guess and I can't seem to find anything in a quick search... anyone know more about this?

There is also the fact that in most places in the world, the length of the daytime hours change over the course of a year.

That proves we come from another planet which revolves more slowly :-)

Exact same here for all your paragraphs. Perhaps even closer to 26 hours. And during the same time of a couple of months without any obligation at all that you described, I found out that I should skip one 'night' (if I may call it so, let's rather say a sleeping period) every 7-10 days, to 'resynchronise' a bit with the classical day. Because you sometimes have to go shopping, see someone, do a bit of gardening work in the daylight, etc. :-)

It seems like the common thread between early risers and night owls is that they both find their most productive time during a period when people don't normally socialize, so that they can avoid meetings and have some 'maker time'.

They don't seem all that different on the face of it, it's just a shame that society considers one productive and the other less so. Probably because night owl hours coincide with those of people who party all night and sleep in? Nobody gets up early to party all morning.

> Nobody gets up early to party all morning.

You clearly haven't been to Berlin yet.

(I do agree with your post, though.)

I wish I could sleep in until sunrise. That would mean quite a lot of sleep during winter ^_^

https://www.google.se/search?hl=en&q=sunrise+in+lule%C3%A5+a...

I'd sleep a few minutes later :) https://www.google.no/search?q=sunrise+for+trondheim+norway+...

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