Before I throw in the towel and accept my fate as a nocturnal creature, has anyone successfully switched from being a night owl to a being on a regular schedule or (gasp) even being a morning person?
The key for me was having both a reason to wake up, and a reason to go to sleep. To have a shot of waking up on time in the morning, you unsurprisingly need to go to sleep about 8 hours before you want to wake up. Part of the kick for me was the realization that the later it gets, the more likely I am to do mindless things I don't actually want to do (e.g. Facebook). So, I thought, why not sleep instead?
If you're productive that late, maybe there's no need to change. But I will say I used to be productive that late (read: every college problem set was completed between midnight and 6am), and I still think becoming a morning person was a great decision. More than morning productivity, I just feel better in general.
To actually wake up on the other end, I find I need a particular reason, i.e. something that I'm going to do the moment I wake up. For me, that's running to the gym. I'm sure the fact that it's exercise has some extra effect, but I really think it's mostly just the fact that every morning, by rote, I roll out of bed, put on running clothes, and walk out the door. No thinking involved. I suspect it would work about as well to roll out of bed, put on clothes, and fry an egg.
To address particulars of other comments: I'm 25, I don't have a physically intensive job, I often (usually) eat as late as 7 or 8pm, I never drink caffeine after 4pm (I've found that makes it harder to fall asleep). I go to bed at 9:30pm and wake up ~5:45am.
Now I sleep at 23:00 and wake up at 7. Usually nap around 13 for 30mins. I feel very happy, productive and social.
This cannot be stressed enough. Nowadays, I have started going to the gym. I need to wake up by 6.30am to ensure that I can get enough exercise before office.
Having said that, I do believe that if you were to wake up at 6 am, go to the gym and work daily, you would be ready to sleep like a baby at 9-10 pm.
Most of the time when I become a night owl it is because I’ve been physically lazy and eating like Fat Bastard. I’ll just sit by my computer till 3-4 am wasting away. Change the activity level and eating habits and you’re back to a normal routine.
I think everybody can do this, with just a little courage, and perhaps less caffeine. It doesn't hurt if you set an alarm to a time that is absolute latest you should be getting out of bed, requiring you to take a cab in a rush without shower or anything alike, and then even being 5 minutes late to your appointment. That assumes you commute via some slower/cheaper means. This is what I do when there is something really important and I never had to take a cab.
It is all about trust in yourself, and getting rid of kind assurances (grace alarms) and self-restrictions helps.
P.S watching the sunrise is a secret reward morning people get, and it’s beautiful.
That said, I made the switch from night owl to morning person. Like many lifestyle changes, I think the biggest part is establishing the habit, after which it becomes your standard existence. Create a regular pattern.
Take a moment to understand what behaviors keep you up at night and change the time you engage in those habits. I used to drink coffee even in the evenings, now I don't have caffeine after noon. Eliminating screens, both because of the engagement and the light, can help. I haven't used it, but many people I know swear by melatonin for correcting sleep schedules when traveling, and it may help you through an adjustment period.
Regular exercise, in addition to being a generally good thing for you, can also help ensure your body wants rest at the end of the day. There were some great tips in the replies, camping / backpacking does tend to force the issue of being a morning person. I also don't use an alarm clock for a few reasons, but I think alarm clocks enable staying-up too late... you're less inclined to worry about when you get to sleep if you know something will wake you up.
Finally, I sometimes have a problem getting to sleep when too many thoughts are racing through my head. I find listening to podcasts is a huge help, but it has to be a topic that is interesting enough for me to ignore everything I was thinking, but not so interesting that I am engaged enough to stay awake.
None of these will turn a night owl into a early riser but they will help you adjust when needed.
After the switch I found (for me) caffeine wasn't much of a problem, I can drink an after dinner espresso. And it wasn't so much the screens - with flux installed, and all the lights in the house off, I can code till about ½ an hour before bedtime.
So although the transition can be rough - you are not necessarily giving everything up permanently, just doing so to make the habit. And once the habit has stuck, you can try adding things back in.
The trick is very simple - if you want to wake up and have breakfast in 6 am, your last meal must be 14 hours before that - which is 4 pm on the previous date. No snacks, no dinner not anything like this. You will be hungry but you will find yourself falling asleep at about 10 pm. If you don't stay in front of a screen you can go to sleep easily. You will then wake up at 6 am - fresh, but hungry. Its important to have a quick breakfast or you will fall asleep again. Try to keep this eating/sleeping schedule, you can relax it a bit (i.e. have dinner at 6) after the first week.
People are of course different, so while 14 hours work for me, some people do it with 12 or 16 hours, but the idea is the same.
This tip/lifehack also works for jetlag: https://hbr.org/2009/05/a-fast-solution-to-jet-lag
You also have to be honest with yourself because discipline requires it. A lot of people make excuses for themselves. They measure their productivity and cite the news blurbs about sleep studies that confirm their bias. They tell themselves and others they can’t. But the reality is that if you’re not sedentary and actually go to sleep with lights and devices off instead of procrastinating you will adjust.
You also have to actually want it enough to deal with annoyance or discomfort. If you convince yourself that you’ll fail you will lay there in the dark for hours until you give in and pull out your phone or laptop. Without motivation you’ll read this and think “I’ve tried all of this, I need some trick or way to solve this that doesn’t require hard work.”
Looking back, it would've been easier if I cut way back on the caffeine, stopped work way earlier (rather than working at 8pm), and just worked on converting slowly by slowly changing my habits. Alcohol also impacts my sleep. I also found my eating and exercise both had huge impacts on my sleep. All these things should've been obvious, but I only noticed after they had to change for other reasons.
I took a job in my mid 30s that required me to get up around 6am. It took my 2 years to adjust, it was brutal. Then I had kids, this ruined sleep for nearly a decade. Then, just as they started sleeping in, I wake up with the sun, no matter what. Luckily I seem to need less sleep now.
So my advice would be not to try to make the transition by setting your alarm super early, because then you'll feel miserable and give up. Instead, focus on going to bed as early as possible. Leave the computer at a certain point (or at least use Flux), and pick up a book and read or something else relaxing.
If you can't avoid using an alarm, you could also try changing it. One thing that's helped me in general is a light alarm - 30 minutes before the alarm, it gradually starts turning a light on. Sometimes I wake up naturally to turn it off, and I feel better than waking to a blaring noise. The light alarm also doesn't use a standard alarm noise, it uses a noise like a flock of birds to wake me up. Another thing I've tried that's helped is a CD alarm, so that the blaring noise you wake up to is at least a pleasant song of your choice instead of annoying beeping.
I can’t recommend this enough. I suffer from horrible seasonal depression which only makes getting out of bed during the darker months that much more difficult. I bought a light alarm last Winter and it was an amazing switch. Rather than waking up in an awful mood from a blaring alarm I wake up a few minutes before due to the light about 95% of the time and feel a lot less cranky and depressed in the morning.
I've found trying to set my alarm in about 90 minute increments (from when I think I'll fall asleep) helps a lot. For me, that means basically either 6 or 7.5 hours of sleep on weekdays.
I also agree on the alarm. I use my phone, and have it set to gradually increase volume with a gentle noise - I change it occasionally, but typically choose something like birds chirping or piano music.. so long as it doesn't have abrupt loud sounds.
These two things have helped me significantly with feeling decent when I first wake up. I'm still not a "morning person" but I'm at my, let's say, "average" level of productive by the time I'm at work in the morning.
I've tried forcing myself, but it tends to be fragile. Go to sleep late just 1 night, have trouble forcing yourself to sleep the next day, sleep schedule gets worse again, get frustrated, give up.
What I've been having success with is a full spectrum LED light, which I use for an hour in the morning, and a blue light filtering goggles, which I wear from sunset. I can literally feel the goggles working as my eyes grow heavier a few hours from sunset, resulting in my falling asleep around 11-12 and waking up around 6-7.
Admittedly I've only done this for the past 3 weeks after reading about the full spectrum LED light from https://blog.samaltman.com/productivity. But it doesn't get easier than turn on light, put on goggles.
Up until my mid 30's I was a night owl. Over the last few years that's started to transition to more morning hours.
In the last few years, I've been forced to get to work by 9:45am due to team standups. Also, my girlfriend-at-the-time was waking up around 6:30-7am to exercise almost every weekday. And I don't really go out partying at night anymore so waking up at 7:30am and not feeling miserable is doable.
Keeping the consistent weekend schedule is the key. I've been pretty driven to continue my CS education and self-teaching and so having more time in the day to continue that goal motivates me to get up early.
The surprising thing is that I cannot tell you how this affected me because it did not. I did the switch a few times easily. Now that I think of it, I have never been bothered by time zones either (I used to constantly travel worldwide east and west bound for a few years).
I never had problems to sleep (neither in time nor quality)
This maybe means that some people are not impacted to much by dlrrp cycles and that just giving a try to something else may be a great experience (I loved my owl cycle, though I had obviously zero social interactions at that time)
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180424-what-i-learnt-by-li...
Also, I second “hiking the AT”. You don’t even need to hike the AT, just find a 5 day/night backpacking trip. It’s like a reboot for your circadian rhythms. A slightly costlier reset is to fly east 6 or 7 time zones and spend a week there! But no matter what, after you do a reset, you need a good plan for holding on to your new schedule. That’s where the morning daylight comes in...
http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/some-photos-from-the-...
When I came home, it seemed normal to wake up at 5 AM. And I stuck with that pattern for several months, before I started to shift to a later schedule again.
( I never drink coffee )
In my current environment, I find more peace and quiet and escape from worry in the evening/night.
Also, I currently have some health issues that often mitigate somewhat -- slowly -- through the day. (My current environment seems to exacerbate them.)
Countering this is a tiredness that hits with sunset.
When I'm somewhere else -- and also with other activities at hand -- being a morning person is not a problem.
So, my suggestion: Don't just look at yourself and/or your psychology. Evaluate what other factors may be influencing this.
My nickname is Sleepy (the brazilian version Soneca") due to sleeping almost every class at highschool, which was from 7h30am to 12h30.
Later I would work much beetter later in the afternoon and sleep until after noon on weekends.
Then I noticed after my 30s that I was becoming a morning person.
Today I wake up with the sunlight (something unimagible for my younger self). And I am very productive in the mornings, working on my own project from 6am to 8am everyday before going to my day job
The quality of my sleep has improved greatly and I actually feel rested / awake in the morning. 8AM-12PM is now my most productive time and I am still in disbelief that I have switched over.
The rest will basically take care of itself.
Camping has a few things going for it. First, if you do it right, you won't use your devices much. Second, you might be surprised how quickly your body will adapt to defining your days by natural light. Third, I can't think of anything more relaxing than sitting around a campfire at night.
Depending where you are located, I can recommend some weed oil to kind of force yourself to sleep, take it one hour before you want to sleep and you will have a hard time staying awake.
The way to transition is to pick time for bed, and for waking up. It will probably suck at first. You'll have a hard time falling asleep and/or a hard time waking up. If you wake up consistently at the same time your body will adjust.
https://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3531_60/wake-up-light
It also dramatically improved my depression.
In college, I worked a third shift job, from 8pm to 430am one or two times a week. Staying up late was pretty much the way I did stuff.
Immediately after college, I started a job as a baker; work began at 7am Tuesday through Friday, and 4am on Saturday. I quit baking after two years, but I still wake up around 6am every day, even with no alarm set.
I used to be such a nighthawk that I'd be waking up daily at 7 pm. Getting old naturally fixes that too.
People elsewhere in this discussion have mentioned exercise. I've definitely found that having these guys helps force me to get out and move. Especially the sheltie; if we haven't gone for a walk for a day or two, I'll be working at home and she'll come up and jam her nose into my kidney, over and over. Motivation!
I got a cat that wakes me up every morning at 6:30 am. I used to hate it but now i don't mind it :D.
I've always been a night owl, and by always I mean that I remember anecdotes about getting up in the middle of the night of a Saturday to read or to do something, going back to when I was like 8 years old. Like you, I've realized that my mind just works better at night (but my mood is better during the day. YMMV).
When I was studying my first degree, and during my first job after that, I had a horrible sleep schedule. More like I didn't have a real sleep schedule. I would sleep an indefinite amount of time, between 4 and 7 hours, and then have a mini-crash each weekend, sleeping until 1 or 2 pm. During my first (part-time, mornings) job, for a few months I slept twice from 4 to 8: once at 4-8 am, then again at 4-8 pm. It was way worse than it sounds.
About 6 years ago I decided that I had to take care of my sleep, and I devised my life hack: I would sleep just after work, instead of just before work. I've been successfully doing this since then. So, the guidelines are:
1) go to sleep as soon as possible. This means going to sleep at an apparently insane time. Lately I'm going to the bed at about 6 pm.
2) sleep as much as you want without looking at any clock. Sometimes I get up at 1am, sometimes I get up at 3:30. Get up only when you are confident that you don't need more sleep. Don't worry, you will still have a few hours with three juicy bonuses to mental activity (completely rested + night time + silence). If you're anything like me, your productivity be tremendous.
3) Most chores can be done during this night time. Most notably, it's a great time to cook; just be careful about noise (avoid blenders, and if you're cleaning, avoid the vacuum cleaner). Other chores, like buying groceries or anything noisy, will have to wait until the weekend.
4) For obvious reasons, social life will also have to wait until weekends. You might not get a lot, with this schedule; I've never had much and I'm accustomed to that, so this is not a problem for me. But this is probably the greatest deal breaker for most people.
5) Follow the same sleep schedule every day, including Saturdays and Sundays. This is very important, and it requires discipline.
6) Ideally you should also have a job with sane hours (and finishing at the same time every day), which again is not available to everyone. Plan your meals accordingly. I have two meals a day, one just before work and another one, lighter, just after work and before going to bed. You might have a different plan, like eating once when you get up and then have lunch halfway during your work.
The key is: regardless of whether you are a lark or an owl, go to the bed at the same time every day, try to sleep 8 hours, and try to make them continuous. There is this myth about people having a noncontinuous schedule during the middle ages. I'm a little sceptical; but above that, I've realized that, for me, the only thing that really works is a continuous sleep.
Other tips:
1) Avoid caffeine. If you follow this schedule, getting up and needing coffee immediately will be a thing of the past. In fact, if you are still tired after 8 hours, you can just sleep 1 or 2 more, since work is still a few hours away. I've found that an excess of sugar also works against this schedule, but again, YMMV.
2) No alarm clocks either. You will wake up naturally when you are fully rested. Also, turn off your phone just as you arrive home.
3) Melatonin is your friend. You might notice that some days your body is not ready to sleep. If this happens to you, start taking melatonin about 1h before going to bed.
4) As much as I dislike it, exercise helps a lot. Something as simple as walking around your house with the blinds closed might be good enough; the ideal condition would be to do something during the day that tires you a little, like an 1h walk or a short visit to the gym.
The biggest problem is setting up the schedule. In order to do this, go to bed two or three hours later each day, until you are going to sleep at the desired time. I usually reserve the latest 4 or 5 days of each vacation period to do this, but of course this might not work if you don't have many days off during the year. I live in Europe, so I can afford three 10-15 periods during the year (mind your bank holidays and weekends and plan accordingly, of course).
I always say that the cons of this schedule are obvious, but the pros, while not obvious, are also there and they are great. No alarm clock; sleep as much as you want every day; the best hours of the day are for myself and not for the job (but you will still be very productive at work since you will be well rested); and I get easy access to some underrated pleasures like going to the beach just before dawn.