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Comment by bishopknight | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree that cognition is best during the afternoon. I have my best concentration and work effort from 9-noon.

I think at least part of this is age and habit. In college my best period of concentration and work was roughly 11-3 or so. I was also ~20 years old and had trouble going to bed before midnight or waking up before 9.

A decade later and after military service the lion's share of my day job work is done between 7 and 10 in the morning, and it's rare that I'm not up, dressed and showered by 6:30am or asleep by 10pm.

Individual experiences vary widely; I am 41 now and still have just as much trouble going to bed before midnight or waking up before 9 as I did in my 20s. It still takes effort to restrain my impulse to stay up all night, in fact, whenever there's something remotely interesting or creative I could be working on instead of sleeping. It is not simply a matter of habits, either; I spent most of seven years getting up in time for a 7 AM conference call every work day, and it never got any easier. As soon as that was over, I went right back to my old schedule.

Perhaps it's less of a struggle to fit my life into normal business hours now, after years of experience trying to do it, but that's really just a matter of coping skills; my body clock remains as stubbornly nocturnal as it has ever been.

I know a lot of people who feel the same as you. That said, I can't really think until around 2 in the afternoon.

May I suggest you look into intermittent fasting?

I stopped eating from 10pm until 2 pm, and it has changed my relationship to mornings entirely. It took a couple of days to for the hunger urgency to subside, and about a week before I started feeling more energetic and focused.

Most mornings, my breakfast is a cup of black coffee now.

Why must we make everyone fit the mold of a morning person. Working better in the afternoons/evenings is not a moral failing.

This doesn't. However, I'm now effective in the mornings, >and< afternoons. I do a great deal of programming in the late evenings too, these days.

Exactly. After I eat a real meal (lunch), my caveman brain declares 'Mission Success' and I'm done for the day.

I read somewhere that the best time to learn something is right when you wake up. I tested that theory when I was picking up ObjC a few years ago and it seems right (perhaps a placebo).

"I read somewhere that" I can justify anything by that, especially anectodally.

Very much agreed. I'm iffy from 5-7 (some days great, some days too tired), fairly productive 7-1230, nearly worthless 1230-2, then pretty effective until 4 or 5.

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