What really bugs me is the self-righteousness of the early riser. There's definitely some kind of power dynamic going on. Perhaps the joke should be: How do you know if someone gets up at 5am? Because they tell you.
One is what you're talking about: the way people regard waking up early as virtuous.
The other is that, how early or late you arrive to an event sends signals about your attitude toward the event. Or at least it is interpreted that way.
For example, if you are very excited about seeing a particular movie or a concert and it has general admission, you will arrive early to get a good seat. Someone who is ambivalent about the movie will not make such an effort. Therefore, arrival time correlates with enthusiasm, and people know this, and they reason backwards.
There's also probably some stuff behind why people don't want to be the first to arrive at a party. Arriving fashionably late can show you only want to experience the best part of the party, which in a sense is a power move indicating you think you are more important than some of the other guests.
I think people sometimes have these perceptions in the business world too. If you have a later schedule, they're not sure if it's because you are aligning your work schedule with your productive hours or because you'd rather not be there. Ideally, people wouldn't make assumptions, but it happens.
Showing up early on the other hand often put's people who are not ready on the spot. If you regularly host parties who will get annoyed at people that show up 30+ minutes early unless they are willing to help.
However there was a reddit thread (or was it HN?) a few weeks back discussing this very issue and if i remember correctly being on time was considered almost rude in brazil as well as a number of other countries,
My friend basically sent out an invite to her party with staggered start times based on nationality. Spanish Greeks were asked to come two or three hours before the real start time, French one hour and Brits and Germans were given the actual time.
I like to sleep from 3-12 and I like to take naps at 18.
This has nothing to do with me being unable to do a job or being not intersted in it.
I worked for a bunch of people who gave me a hard time for not being awake at 9.
I was trying to make a distinction between perceptions of character and perceptions of attitude.
Though not everyone agrees, many people see waking up early as a valuable part of being self-disciplined and hardworking. That's a perception about character.
But that can't account for perceptions people have around events that happen in the afternoon or evening, and yet people still read things into arrival time for those events too. So there is a second factor in perception.
> This has nothing to do with me being unable to do a job or being not intersted in it.
I agree that it's absolutely possible for this to be the case. But perception doesn't always reflect reality.
Often people really do understand and just like to tease others who don't fit the mold. But sometimes people make assumptions, so basically I'm trying to be aware of what assumptions they might make and why just in case it happens.
Yeah, I wish it was different tho' :/
Being sanctimonious is annoying, but that sounds like she's getting the right amount of sleep
It's the same with people who go to bed really late as if it's some kind of achievement. Or people who sleep less. Or people who sleep more.
All of these things are simply facts about your life. They don't make you any more virtuous, interesting, blah blah blah, than the next person.
It feels like a much bigger issue to late-risers than early-risers.
That said, as long as it's working for you great! Just don't assume it's impossible to change if it's causing you problems.
If you stay up until the sun is nearly up then the eastern edge means the sun is up longer before you have to be at work. But if it’s N hours after you get home, then you’ll see more daylight on the western edge which might be more healthy for you.
For me I don’t want to move if the sun isn’t up yet. I need to move farther south so my winters aren’t as rough.
A main problem is - even when i've had to be awake at 9am every day (yes awake at 9am, not working at 9am) it causes me to fall really ill. Mentally and physically your body feels wrecked and it doesn't matter how tired you are, you wake up at night.
I now, after a decade, manage a sleep cycle that doesn't change every day by a few hours and I can just about function enough for meetings.
I can just about get to 1pm meetings and it's taken so much effort just to be able to get here!
I've written nearly 4 articles covering the different strategies i've used to be able to wake up early in the morning. I've slept through some of the most important things - which led me in my final exams to just stay up all night to get to 9am exams incase I wouldn't wake up.
What has worked is accepting that it is a genuine disability and problem. And as you say, adjusting my environment to suit my sleeping issues. Unfortunately, changing time zones doesn't work. But it's a nice theory (I've already tried this).
I'll be posting my articles soon which documents every strategy i've tried over the last decade, in hope it might help someone find a solution for them.
I personally know someone that lived on a 28 hour day for a while (6 * 28 / 7 = 24). He was able to keep a fairly normal workday during the week but over the weekend he was crashing in the day. It only worked because he was religious about managing light levels at home with blackout blinds and sunlamps on timers.
If your willing to try just about anything it might be worth a shot, but you end up making a lot of sacrifices and must keep a very tight schedule.
I've had shutters for my windows so no light could get in the evening, light simulation alarm clocks, only used the computer for a maximum of 8 hours a day and got rid of my smart-phone so I had an old fashioned phone, to reduce phone use. I don't drink coffee or tea. Melatonin, sleeping tablets, waking up every day at the same time and going for a run.
Fyi, waking up every time at the same day makes me ill because I still can't sleep early even if i've had a lack of sleep for several nights before.
You can't crash at weekends either. Because if you crash at weekends it messes up your sleep cycle completely and you'll start Monday having slept at 6am on Sunday night.
A tight schedule means you have to do it every day. Then there's the other problem that happens when you crash out - you're really groggy for days.
When I was in school, I'd crash out at 4pm on a Friday night and wake up at 7am the next day. I'd have headaches and feel so drained. And I'd still go to my weekend job.
It's not a lack of motivation.
If you know anything about this guy and the strategies he uses, please do share. Always looking for suggestions.
In my opinion the 2am is just a conceptual thing and there is nothing concrete about it - we change it twice a year and most people adjust fairly quickly.
Early risers speaking on the issue don't have anything interesting to say.
"But I was the only person here at 7:00pm when the server fell over."
Everything is 24/7 these days. It’s fucking ridiculous that we’re trying to have all of our employees in the office during exactly the same hours the same five days a week, and then outsource to a place 12 time zones away which can cover most of the rest of the day, except that you can’t even have a meeting without inconveniencing literally everybody. It’s stupid, wearing a clown suit backward.
We should have heterogenous shifts. Say 9 days a fortnight with the 9th being a weekend. 25% of the staff is available on any weekend day, and everyone has one weekday off per week, and some fraction of the staff is available for extended hours the rest of the week.
That might mean that Scrum and scrumbut don’t work but I’m perfectly fine with that.
I tried to convince him to either work out or do a side project in the morning, or take at least an hour lunch every day. I wish I could remember what he ended up doing but it might have been “work somewhere else”.
nocturnal - Done, occurring, or active at night. [0]
diurnal - 1. Of or during the day. 2. Daily; of each day. [1]
crepuscular - Resembling or relating to twilight. [2]
[0] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/nocturnal [1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/diurnal [2] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/crepuscular
I think it goes both ways because people want to justify why they are not at 100% energy. Partly to not offend others when you're being abnormally unenthusiastic. A type of social defense mechanism.
The virtue of getting up early dates from the days when everybody was a farmer. Farmers who got a head start on the work that needed to be done even befode the sun came up outfarmed late risers.
These days it is considered a mark of professionalism and respect for the job to show up for work on time or early, at 8 AM or before.
You are also going to be constantly having people trying to talk you into committing code after 2:00 (a perfectly reasonable time) but then getting pissed because you broke the build and went home.
Have people started talking about Core Hours yet? They will.