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Comment by 013a | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to see more information about the assertion that there are innate qualities in people which make them Larks versus Owls.

I believe I am a night owl. On an average day, I don't get tired until 2am, and without an alarm clock I could sleep until 10am; by any definition this makes me a night owl.

But, I question how much of this behavior is environmental versus innate. I drink a lot of coffee (never after 6pm). I work on a computer all day (blue light). My hobbies generally come alive at night (video gaming, spending time with friends, concerts). I have a naturally addictive and obsessive personality combined with low self-control (when I get started on something, like a new work problem or video game, I can't put it down).

Is there research in the area of identifying actual biological reasoning behind why someone would be an owl versus a lark (genetics, etc)? Or do all of these studies just rely on behavioral self-reporting, which even the article says, is completely vulnerable to the very real problem that people really only know their behavior in the face of all of their vices, and that behavior might be different if the vices weren't there.

The reason I believe that's important is because it should be a factor in our response to this. Yes, people need sleep, and they need good sleep. But if a big reason why you get tired at 2am and thus wake up at 10am is because you're watching Netflix in bed until the minute you shut your eyes, we can't ask society to accept that starting work at 11am is fine.

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When backpacking in the wilderness for weeks, I like to sleep around 12-2am and wake up at least eight hours later. When I need to wake up early for a long period of time, I do it and it never stops feeling suboptimal. I appreciate the your point re: lifestyle, technology and sleep hygiene.

But I'm close to forty and it FUCKING PISSES ME OFF how seemingly everyone minimizes and deflects my concerns and observations about my own body. I function best when I sleep eight hours beginning at 2-4am. A consistent early schedule, plus daily exhausting exercise, minus artificial light changes nothing about my sleep preferences. Two plus two does not equal five.

That's interesting, I find backpacking to be one of those activities where you have to get up early no matter what type you are. You want to hike during the daylight (and for alpine starts, even earlier- before the snow begins to soften by afternoon), and you want to reach your destination with plenty of daylight to make camp, cook and eat.

Car camping is a little different, with electricity it's much easier to eat in the dark and stay up late partying.

I completely agree: even my can't-sleep-before-3am backpacking partner falls asleep before 11pm reliably when we were out. In a lot of places it's hard to sleep much past sunrise in a tent.

I am normally a early to bed early to rise type, and I find myself crashing early and hard when camping the moment the sun goes down.

Talking about "sleep hygiene" is still perpetuating this backwards paradigm based around expecting that people must wake up early to be productive. The early bird may get the worm, but the early worm gets eaten.

I've personally found that dark hours are more productive for mental tasks like programming. AFAICT not because of secondary factors like quietness or people being around, but simply that bright light undermines my ability to concentrate. After loading a problem into one's head, and getting "in the zone", one is supposed to interrupt what they're doing to go to bed at a "reasonable hour" to live up to someone else's expectations of what a productive person should look like? Give me a break.

The times I've driven across the country car camping, I've naturally fallen into waking up much earlier. And I'd much rather do physical tasks when it's light. But consciousness is not a scalar, and so it's inappropriate to extrapolate these patterns as indicative of some "true natural cycle" that's being distorted.

It seems to make evolutionary sense that groups benefit from night owls, etc., and so would develop them.

Unfortunately, my non-normal sleep not only doesn't qualify me for any subsidized treatments, recognized disorders, non-discrimination statutes, or not even sympathy from most people.

> I've personally found that dark hours are more productive for mental tasks like programming. AFAICT not because of secondary factors like quietness or people being around, but simply that bright light undermines my ability to concentrate.

It's more like the Balmer's peak effect: the brain is so numb that it can't lose the concentration.

Why are you using negative terms to describe something you seemingly have no experience with?

I wasn't talking about running on fumes at 2am to pounding pounding pounding techno music. I'll have days where I do not feel fully awake until it starts to gets dark. Given many mammals are nocturnal, I would presume there's some bona fide physiological reason for this rather than a deficiency of something else.

At any rate, there's a huge difference in stating advice in a personal-constructive way (for instance, I'm fully aware I presently need to detox caffeine cold turkey, and am waiting for the opportunity to do so), and pushing paternalistic "one size fits all" social mores whereby people on later schedules are assumed to just not be taking responsibility for themselves.

> The early bird may get the worm, but the early worm gets eaten.

This makes no sense. All worms get eaten randomly because all worms have to surface at the same time. Earliness and lateness don't change the chance you will be eaten by the early birds. But the original phrase is true that the early bird gets the worm because it shows up in the window the worms are all surfacing and the late bird misses the window and goes hungry. Leave the original phrase intact and maybe ditch the added second part.

The point is a quip to push back against the culture of early risers lording their being up early over everyone else.

It doesn't really push back though because it doesn't make sense. Phrases are powerful because they are compressed versions of larger truths. This new version doesn't work as a phrase like the one it is built from.

It doesn't actually have to fully make sense per se, to invalidate the earlier saying.

The truth of the whole matter is that we're not birds, but distinct creatures who live technological lives because of our lazy ancestors who looked for better ways rather than just competing to do the straightforward thing first. If you can find some way to stuff that into a tight phrase, please do!

Delayed sleep phase syndrome is an ada protected disability, your employer must make reasonable accommodation. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but might be worth looking into.

Never heard of this, details?

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/14295-delayed...

Just goes to show that anti-discrimination laws are a ridiculous imposition of arbitrary social demands onto private contracts. We now have an enormous rule book on how people are allowed to exercise their contracting rights with other consenting adults, when the only rule that should apply is whether the terms are mutually agreed upon.

Please don’t be so reductive. Many of us out here are pretty happy that our employers can no longer fire us on the basis of things like sexuality, religious views, or because we got pregnant.

But that's not the premise. The premise is whether we respect the right of employers to offer people jobs that let them discriminate based on sexuality, religious views, pregnancy, etc, or we do not respect that right, and use the force of law to restrict the right of consenting adults to reach any agreement they want.

In a free society without these anti-discrimination laws, you could still find an employer that offers terms of employment that bars them from doing these things. The question is whether you're willing to tolerate other people choosing differently, and yea I guess some people like limiting other people's choices when they find them ideologically repulsive. I contend that people are only harming their society by rejecting freedom.

You're absolutely right. Any impingement on an employer's right to discriminate is ridiculous.

That's why we were much more free when we had company towns with company stores and company scrip and when attempts to unionize were countered by well-trained private police.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...

>>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...

Thousands of people die in the US every day. The most important factor for reducing the death rate is economic development.

Productivity, wages and life expectancy were rising much faster in the late 19th century, when the right to freely contract was not violated, than today, when we have hundreds of thousands of regulations instituted by nanny-states telling us what and we cannot do with other consenting adults.

Occupational licensing alone costs the economy over $184 billion a year by some estimates:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2018/12/03/...

And what is all this centralization and Big Brother control getting us? We have a highly regulated medical system, largely subsidized at the expense of the taxpayer, and captured by highly regulated opioid-manufacturing pharmaceutical giants pushing opioids to the vulnerable, through licensed doctors, and creating the worst opioid epidemic in history:

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/15/17355722/op...

>>That's why we were much more free when we had company towns with company stores and company scrip

In defense of the company town:

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in...

>>when attempts to unionize were countered by well-trained private police.

No, attempts to blockade company premises were countered by well-trained private police. Do you know what strikers did to "scabs" who crossed to picket lines? Replacement workers needed hired protection, so that their contract freedom wouldn't be violated.

>>The most important factor for reducing the death rate is economic development.

Don't forget not murdering people, please. I think it's very important not to murder people.

I wrote all that and this is the only response you have to me? I guess you have everything figured out, and there's no need to consider any viewpoints opposed to yours.

I don’t know that people are minimizing you. It’s just that your observations aren’t consistent with how it works.

Sleep cycles exist and aren’t innate. Your engrained behavior or schedule is something that sets your cycle, but is changeable. Based on what you’re saying, it sounds like from time to time you need to wake up early, and you do so by rolling back bedtime or compressing by losing sleep. (By accident or design) Yup — doing that will make you feel like crap.

You need to roll forward, not back. You can take a long weekend and roll your sleep schedule forward 6-10 hours at a time and sleep from 9P-5A without much “suboptimality”. There is lots of research about this in industrial and military contexts... “rolling back” your schedule is unhealthy and increases accident rates in workplace situations substantially.

As someone who had similar habits, I’d respectfully suggest that you consider changing it. Living your life out of cycle with the world is bad for you... you experience more stress as a result. It made a measurable positive medical impact on me.

Curiously the book Why We Sleep says the exact opposite: we all have natural sleep cycles that differ and it's genetic, impossible to change. What I've noticed is that it's possible to keep a consistent schedule and overcome all of that inertia, but if you slip up you'll find yourself back in your natural cycle. Interestingly, the cited reason for this is that evolutionary, it's an advantage to not have everyone asleep at the same time.

> Sleep cycles exist and aren’t innate. Your engrained behavior or schedule is something that sets your cycle, but is changeable.

How do you know this? Not trying to be snarky, I'm just wondering if you have any evidence for this claim.

This article (which I was reminded of by this thread) gives an overview of sleep for teenagers, and it isn't radically different for anyone else either:

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/sleep-and-tiredness/why-are-tee...

I expect that there is variation within the general population with regards to body clocks.

This would still be consistent with there being genetic (or otherwise hard to change in adulthood) factors that make a person function better with a shifted sleep cycle. It's not at all clear that it's all environmental (like the post I replied seemed to imply) and I find it irritating when people make such sweeping claims without evidence.

That's an entirely reasonable thing to be irritated at.

A lot of scientific and medical literature disagrees with you. You also assume a lot about their habits and what they've tried.

Studies of chronotype consistently show a near-normal distribution skewed toward later hours.[1] This is partly heritable.[2] Genetic studies have found markers for chronotype near genes known to affect circadian rhythm.[3]

Delayed sleep phase disorder may be a distinct condition or just the tail of the chronotype distribution. Either way, it exists. It usually responds to treatment, but relapse rates are over 90%.[4] The world isn't asleep by 9:00 every night. Even a day in bed sick can cause a relapse.

"Rolling forward" may increase the risk of non-24-hour sleep disorder in people who have DSPD.[5]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5479630/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363835/

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18760498

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9562922

[5] https://www.circadiansleepdisorders.org/info/N24chrono.php

The way you feel about your own body isn’t science.

I think the reason I’m a “night owl” is that my experiences with morning during childhood were all negative.

Morning was when I was forced to wake up to go to school, it was when I’d have water thrown at me if I slept in on the weekends, it was when I’d have to get up early to help my father with the boat.

At night time, I was left alone. And night time still brings me comfort. I suspect morning people had more positive morning-related experiences than I did during childhood.

This is very possible, but also there could be multiple reasons.

I don't drink any coffee and have a lifestyle very similar to OP's, and usually can't fall asleep before 2am. It strikes me as improbable that people with similar lifestyles would have different sleeping habits. However, some of us may have developed these habits for the very reasons you mention; I for one had a terrible time at school.

I'm fortunate to have had parents who let me sleep in on weekends, and I definitely felt like a night owl in my teenage years. Now in my thirties I seem to function best in the morning. Typing this at 7am on boxing day - I've been awake a while already without a reason at all.

Keep in mind that your circadian clock changes with different life stages. Teenagers have been shown to have circadian rhythms that run a few hours later than that of adults.

One example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2820578/

"forced to wake up to go to school" implies you were a night owl back then too.

Kids have to wake up very early in America to go to school. 8am start time means you typically have to be ready to walk out the door at 7:30, and that's a pretty good scenario. If you have a longer commute to school, you might be getting up before 7am.

It's pretty tragic, imo, and it's one of the biggest reasons I want opening hours to shift later.

It's also staggered by grade level. My elementary school started 8am, middle school started 9am, and highschool - the one with the longest commute for most due to there being less and larger schools - started at 7:40am. On that last one, buses dropped us off around 7am, so I had to be out the door by 6:25am.

Here in Europe lessons start as early 7:15 to 8:00, so that's really a good scenario. On the other hand, some other days of the week start as late as 11:45

There are many studies.[1]

Large-scale genetic studies have found markers associated with self-reported "morningness".[2][3] At least some of these markers are near genes known to affect circadian rhythms.

Observational studies control factors like caffeine intake and light exposure.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10448

[3] https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/jo...

I've been an owl before kids and a lark after my kids were born.

In my experience, it has to do with routine and much nothing else. If I force myself sleep everyday at 10:00 PM and wake up at 5:30 sharp, I find in about a week that my sharpest time is the hours after I wake up and before my kids get out of bed.

When I have the luxury of choice, I stay awake and I find that I fall into focus post 11:00 PM when all is quiet and that deadline a couple of days ahead starts bugging me.

I was about to report the same personal experience, so that's twice the amount of anecdotal evidence in favor of the environment/habits and against inner causes.

As somebody with a pretty severely delayed circadian rhythm, I believe from my experience that you actually just have a normal cycle.

With the abundance of electric lighting etc., everyone can be a bit lazy and go a couple of hours later than their normal cycle. But, if you actually were a night-owl, you’d be basically unable to force yourself to sleep at 10pm - at least, not until you become sleep-deprived enough (and not even then sometimes).

This is one of the biggest problems people with actually delayed circadian rhythms have - people with normal rhythms (innocently, but incorrectly) believing that their experience means that it’s just a preference and routine/discipline issue for everyone.

Surely people can hack themselves a routine to wake up early. But like you said, when having the luxury of choice you would likely start drifting back later again. I think that's the innate part people refer to when talking about larks vs night owls.

It's not uncommon to not even be able to force yourself to sleep early, however. I've only ever managed to do that through severe sleed deprivation.

For example, if I have a week when I have to wake up at 7 each morning I will only begin to fall asleep around 22 around Thursday/Friday. Up until that I've just fought my natural cycle: I can not force myself to fall asleep but I can force myself to get up early. So, I get less and less sleep until I practically fall asleep sitting. Now, if I continued the 22-07 rhythm I'd eventually stop being a zombie and become productive again (done that, too), but as soon as I finally have the luxury of choice again I'm very soon back at going to sleep after midnight, on the next day or so at the latest.

>I drink a lot of coffee (never after 6pm).

This is insane to me. I've drank a lot of coffee before (6+ cups per day), but if I ever drink caffeine past 2PM I don't sleep until after 2AM. Have you experimented with your caffeine intake? I highly suggest it. Once I found the correct dose (1-2 cups before 10am, no more til the next day) I've found myself to feel much, much better.

It depends on your tolerance. Caffeine has a half-life of 12 hours, so if you drink coffee at 6 PM, good luck sleeping before 6 AM. Unless you have a very high tolerance or are in an already fatigued state.

I think there is a lot of variation in tolerance and time horizon for caffeine. I can take a 100mg caffeine supplement (I don't drink coffee) at 3pm and go to sleep easily by midnight. And this is something I do, at most, 1 time per month. In fact, I sometimes am able to go to sleep easier either due to the crash or the fact that my activity level will have been higher the rest of the afternoon and evening and I'm just exhausted by midnight.

In my experience coffee does nothing to my ability to sleep, just allows me to focus better. I realize I’m in the minority but I literally just drank a cup and am headed to bed.

Tolereance is one thing, but sensitivity is another factor to consider, I think. Tollerence is a pure function of the frequency you put a substance in your body. I'm sure my caffeine tolerance is off the charts, as I drink 4-6 cups of coffee (no sugar, sometimes cream if its crap coffee) a day. But my sensitivity is also very low. My whole life, even before coffee as a kid drinking soda, I have never felt stimulated from caffeine. I sometimes wonder if I'm immune, haha. I could literally drink a cup before bed and be fine. So why drink it you ask? Because I think it's delicious, and I belive there to be myriad other health benefits to coffee.

>I sometimes wonder if I'm immune

Why not find out? It would be awful if you went your whole life consuming something that didn't do what you that it was.

They already explained that they're in it for the taste.

I'm about the same. I frequently drink 4-5 double shots of espresso when my little one sleeps at around 11, and I head to bed an hour or two later.

I wonder if there is some bloodwork or something that could prove/ disprove this hypothesis, haha. I don't care about the stimulation, I think coffee is legit healthy for you(as long as you don't add sugar). There is some evidence coming out suggesting the complex blend of chemicals in coffee might hold many beneficial compounds.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15779133

Yup, same for me and I’ve noted my dad as well. We can happily drink a cup of coffee before going to bed.

I don’t really notice being more alert with caffeine, and drinking coffee seems to just be out of habit mostly.

If I drink too much I notice my heart beating a bit faster and a slight anxiety feeling.

I generally drink two cups a day

This might sound insensitive but it's possible you're not aware of the effect. For a while I also thought I was not stimulated by caffeine, but I realized I just didn't know how to recognize the effect.

Edit: I would add that being high on caffeine doesn't necessarily mean I have trouble falling asleep.

So how do you recognize it?

I don't know by which method to begin to recognize it. In myself I started to notice slightly more fragmented thought patterns; proneness to having more new thoughts interrupting the current line for thought.

Yeah it's possible, but I'm sure it is having some type of an effect. I don't doubt stuff is happening at the cellular/ chemical level. It is just so difficult for me to even perceive. It could be changing my conciousness more dramatically than I realize, but as far as the purely physical effects many people report (becoming jittery/ restless, trouble sleeping) they are just not there for me.

Do you not feel "more awake" with the ability to focus better, etc.? I find that as long as I'm focused on a task the effects of caffeine are negligible; it helps me stay focused. As soon as I go interacting with people, the effects become really visible and a hindrance. My mind is a bit too fast and fragmented for these slow and broad interactions.

Do you have ADHD? I do, and I can drink caffeine and go straight to bed, and it does help a little bit with focus (Adderall helps a lot more, of course).

Stimulants tend to calm the ADHD mind, and can stop racing thoughts that make it harder to sleep.

Never been diagnosed, but I definitely suspect it. I show a lot of the classic signs, just not quite as severe as people I’ve known that were diagnosed. I started drinking coffee when I was a kid, though, so I tend to joke that I have been inadvertently treating myself for ADHD all this time :)

You should go get screened! I just finally got diagnosed at age 38, and it's shed so much insight into my life. Plus, medication can really make a real difference.

I think it’s more like half that. So 100 mg of caffeine (one cup of coffee more or less) at 6PM is the equivalent of 50 mg (two cups of black tea) at midnight. A coffee at lunch (100mg @ noon) is 50 mg by six and 25mg by midnight.

Still not great, but a 12 hour half life would likely mean no one would start drinking coffee because you’d never be able to sleep while building up a tolerance.

I thought that’s what college was for — a once-in-life-time 4 year contiguous block of time for building caffeine tolerances.

I can wake up, drink a can of red bull (10 years ago for reference), and go right back to sleep for another 4 hours, no problem. I haven't noticed a strong correlation between coffee / caffeine and sleepiness.

I have however found a really strong correlation between eating and sleepiness. If I don't eat by 8pm, I'm almost unconscious by 9pm. If I sleep then, I'll sleep until 2 then have a hard time sleeping again until 6 or so. Whereas if I eat by 8pm, I'm awake until 2am or thereabouts.

you can build a tolerance to caffeine, if ingested regularly. you would need to exceed your regular dosage to measure an effect.

Caffeine has a half-life of 6 hours.

yup: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK223808/

I drink a lot of coffee up till the late evening or night and it doesn't seem to affect my sleeping patterns at all. I can easily fall asleep soon after finishing a cup, or having had several cups during the evening. It's just that I fall asleep if it's the right time: I tend to go to sleep between 24-02 and wake up between 09-10. But even with coffee, I sleep like a log during that time.

Now you could say my rhythm is "late" exactly because of the coffee.

But I only started drinking coffee towards the mid-20's. I didn't drink a drop until I was 20. But I remember staying up similarly till 24-02 as a teenager (when school mornings allowed that), and I remember vacation season when I was 10-12 years old (didn't have bedtime during holidays), and I happily stayed up way past midnight each day, both during the summer (longer days) and Christmas time (shorter days).

In my experience, coffee doesn't really play a part in my sleep. Thus, while coffee does keep some people up it's not a universal rule.

Why do you drink so much coffee?

Because it tastes good.

I mostly only ever drink good coffee which means I generally only drink coffee at home which is where I can make good coffee.

Usually I drink one pot (which is 10 cups on the coffee maker's scale but which comes down to 5 mugs) throughout a single day. But, it varies. For example, today, only two mugs now that I counted.

See “Internal Time” by Till Roenneberg, which is a very accessible book by a researcher in this field.

If I remember correctly, the book gives some good evidence of a potential genetic basis for chronotypes, although not to the level of identify particular genes.

Your case may be a bit extreme, but certainly describes me in my early 20s (not coincidentally, also the peak years of night owlism). But there are much moderate Night owl/lark situations. My kids school starts at 8a. Some in our area start at 720a. In order to reliably get my (young) children to school on time, I need to be up by 645a. This means my absolute last moment to be asleep for 8h of sleep is 1045p. No matter when I climb into bed, I have trouble managing to fall asleep by them, and I’m regularly in bed before 10p, and I have data from various fitness trackers to back this up. 1115-1130 is really the norm.

Which is a long way of saying that there are definitely people with strong, biological driven sleep preferences. Modern screens and lights can exacerbate these tendencies, but assuming that people can just “fix themselves” ignores the body of evidence.

We also have to be up by 6:45am to get our son to school, but after he's on the bus at 7:30 we typically go back to bed for an hour and a half. Would that not work for you?

We did this too. But it was ever so sad ripping the kids off their beds and sending them off to school in those inhuman hours while you knew you could fall back to sleep afterwards yourself.

I've tried to let them know they would be right in sleeping in longer and it's the school schedules that are wrong and perverse, from their/our perspective. And during the weekends all time in the morning is sacred: nobody can talk normally until everyone has woken up.

Little kids naturally wake up earlier.

Like most of human biology, this is generally true but has significant variation. My preschooler has always gone to bed later and woken up later than my kindergartener, and neither of them naturally get up before 730a.

The book "Why We Sleep" talks about how all animals (and plants) have circadian cycles, and the low point of the cycle is marked by a low body temperature. They have done cross cultural studies and can see that the circadian cycles of teenagers are later, and that the cycles change throughout life. Regardless of your sleeping habit the circadian cycle seems to hit it's low temperature point at the same time. Thus, if you start going to bed at 8 PM every night your low body temperature will still arrive at the same time, regardless of your sleep habits.

Take this all with a grain of salt, because my memory of the book is not infallible. It might give you a place to start researching how much of our sleep behavior is innate vs environmental as you ask. It's certainly not a new idea to sleep researchers, I bet there is an answer out there.

As for the "Why We Sleep" book. I found it well written and it is well reviewed by many, so you might be interested in it.

They also mentioned in the book a theory how humans might have evolved differences in schedule to optimize for keeping watch of the camp for longer, leaving the tribe protected for more hours.

Group selection isn't how evolution works.

It is actually very close to how it works. Evolution works by mate selection, and that’ll be heavily affected by group selection, since that alters the available choices of mates.

I have delayed sleep phase and no amount of sleep hygeine (both valid and crazy hyppie nonsense) has helped. All the suplements in the world didn't help. I've done it all, no screens, special bulbs in my lamps, all of it. My therapist told me my only option was sleep medication or just finding a job that would let me use my natural waking time of 9 am.

I managed the later and my life is amazing. I get a full 8 hours of sleep every night. The best way to explain my sleep schedule is count off 5 hours from sunset, that's about when I start to feel tired. Count off 9 hours from there, that's when I'll probably wake up.

Summer is pretty obnoxious with how late I get to sleep. Winters I can maintain an almost normal schedule.

It probably makes sense that we evolved a variety of offsets (both late sleepers and obnoxiously early risers) for our circadian cycles. It creates a natural subset of tribe members that are alert during some of the natural sleeping hours of the majority. The fact that such owls are more mentally stimulated or creative might be selecting for skills that were productive during the dark hours and furthered survival such as repairing or improving hunting weapons, baskets, and the like.

As we've outgrown most of our survival pressures, it'd make sense for those genetic minorities to be more freely distributed and for the circadian rhythms of the population at large to drift and become more mixed since it no longer matters if a majority of your "tribe" has a suboptimal rhythm.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090623150621.h...

https://www.livescience.com/53624-morning-person-genetic-inf...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00652...

I didn’t read all of these (and their references) in great detail, but there seems to be studies suggesting that chronotype is genetic. Some studies seem to be more reliable than others (ie as you said, some seem to rely on self reporting, but others seem to rely more on genetic testing or other things).

But this isn’t even close to my area of expertise so take with a grain of salt and read up on it yourself.

Same question. I'm not convinced that people are inherently Larks or Owls.

I used to sleep late for years. 2AM was average bed time for me. Sometimes even up to 4-5AM.

Then I worked to change my habits. Now I'm up by 6AM on most days and I feel more productive than ever.

What were some of the strategies you used to change your habits?

The biggest one was simply going to bed earlier. Every 3 days, I shifted my bed time by one hour. Within two weeks, I was going to bed by 11PM.

The hard part is telling yourself that you won't do any work past bed time. You have to have a hard red line. Takes a bit of discipline but it's just about 2 weeks of effort before you switch to a new habit

I also used to stay up later and sleep later. Earlier this year I changed to a much earlier schedule. I didn't really have a strategy, just a process.

First, I decided I wanted to get up earlier and be more productive. From experience I know I need ~7 or so hours of sleep, and I want to get up between 5-6am. That means in bed no later than 10pm.

Next, set an alarm and get up. That part is simple.

IMO, working out first thing is one of the key components. I go to a gym now, but am buying things like kettlebells to do quick workouts at the house.

Finally, do it every single day. It's going to be hard if every weekend you keep sleeping until noon. This means on Saturday and Sunday, get up early and workout. I also have a social life and do adjust with life events. If I have something going on and am up until midnight on Friday night, I will set the alarm for 7am.

I should also note that I have mostly stopped drinking alcohol.

The hardest part to change was the habit of staying up late just wasting time on my phone, watching TV, or playing video games. For me it was mostly non-productive time. Even if I was productive, it was only partially productive because I had already been up all day.

Now I crave that super productive time early in the morning after working out. I'm wide awake, with no interruptions, ready to go.

There is also a bit of a psychological trick to beat procrastination baked in here. I wouldn't get up at 5am to play a video game or otherwise waste time. I pushed away from a comfortable pillow this morning, so I should make it worthwhile.

I agree with this. I don't believe anybody has a 'natural' cycle. I think it's all a function of habit. You can train your body to get used to whatever cycle you desire or need (ie. To get to work on time).

I've gone through night owl phases in the past, but I always felt like it was by choice, and I had the luxury of no desk job. I guess it felt fun or something. I've also gone to bed at 9 every night when I worked at a golf course & had to be there @ 6am. When I was in a rythm, I would wake up on time every morning with no alarm. And for months after I got a different job I would still wake up at 5am even though my alarm was set for later.

So I would agree with the idea that if you rely on the alarm your doing it wrong. If you practice a consistent bed time, and get your full requirement of sleep, you will wake up naturally just from good habits, be it early or late.

Our bodies are very pliable, and can be influenced one way or another with consistent practice.

Many studies have found otherwise.[1] Delayed sleep in adolescence has even been observed in other mammals.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype

That's interesting. To be fair, I've for sure been speaking from intuition alone. I'm interested to look more into the real science of it. I'm sure there is a default mode we are prone to just based on being human. My main point is that it is that our chronotype is pliable. We can shape it and mold it it we want to.

The article is suggesting there is a natural progression correlated with age, that shifts from advanced -> delayed -> back to advanced. This does not help convince me against my hypothesis that cronotype is fluid and not static.

Intuition can be valuable, but I think we should distinguish opinions from facts. This is something that affects people's health, jobs, and relationships.

Chronotype, sleep phase, and when people actually sleep are related but not the same.

The Wikipedia article and my other comments go into more detail about the research. I singled out delayed sleep phase in adolescence because it's been observed even in other species. It seems counterintuitive that this would be so consistent if there were no reason for it.

Sleep phase shifting with age doesn't make it infinitely pliable. You can influence libido, but the difference between 16 and 60 is mostly biological.

Your opinion is fine, but almost certainly wrong. Everyone has a natural cycle. I think the problem is that we have so many problems with our sleep that are even greater than the impacts of the differences between one cycle or another.

I just think our bodies are able to adjust to the inputs we give it. It's difficult, no doubt, to shift the schedule our body gets used to sleeping on. But with discipline, I think anyone can shift the schedule from early to late or vice versa.

If you're saying we all have a natural 'early' or 'late' cycle, how would that even work biologically? What would determine that? Is it hardwired into the code of our DNA? Even if this is the case, you would be handed a certain natural 'cycle' from your parents. But we know that gene expression is not static. We know many gene expressions change fluidly throughout our life depending on our environment/ behavior.

So even if I was born with a proclivity to stay up late, I would still expect to be able to change that though concerted effort and practice.

studies have shown that our circadian rhythms persist even when completely hidden from any trace of light whatsoever.

They have physiological effects. Lowering of core temperature, for one.

I'm also probably a little conceited when it comes to sleep habits :) I feel lucky to not have any trouble falling and staying asleep.

I definitely have sympathy for people with sleep problems/ disorders. When I was in my early teens, I had horrible troubles going to sleep. I would lay in bed, sometimes hours, without being able to fall asleep. I grew out of it for whatever reason as I got older. This is interesting now that I think of it, considering the wikipedia someone posted below on chronotype, suggesting adolescents tend to prefer delayed sleep.

But the reasons adults or children have trouble with sleep are complex and difficult to identify I'm sure. I don't envy anyone with sleep problems.

Chronotype does have a significant heritable component. Studies have even identified specific markers near genes known to affect circadian rhythm.

Most people can shift their schedule up to an hour without too much trouble. They can also force themselves onto almost any schedule with strict habits and/or medication. That doesn't mean they adapt. One illness can wipe out months of routine.

Sleeping later is easier than sleeping earlier for most people. Bright light delays your sleep cycle.

Intuitively, it makes sense that people would have different sleep cycles. A pack of animals is more likely to survive if one is awake or sleeping lightly.

My experience is exactly the same, I had a lot of different sleeping schedules over the years (usually late to very late). Currently waking up at 6AM is also the new normal for me.

It just can be really hard to change it if you are not forced to do so but after some weeks you adjust. It's especially difficult to switch from late to early in my experience because constantly staying awake longer is easy (especially with all the "modern distractions") but getting out of bed too early is really a pain so you often don't do it if not forced to.

You say you are more productive than ever. Is it possible that you are actually a "lark" and that you forced yourself to stay up late, because of social pressure or simply because that is when you were able to do the things you wanted to do, but now you have found your preferred sleeping schedule?

> we can't ask society to accept that starting work at 11am is fine.

Why? You gave no rationale, just asserted it.

What's wrong with sleeping 2-10? Why should society accept that rush hour is acceptable?

A 6pm caffeine cutoff is really very late. Most people would cutoff no later than 2 or 3. Not saying you’re not a natural night owl, but your approaching to caffeine is very likely not allowing you to get a clear picture of your natural cycle.

I can drink coffee after dinner and go to sleep almost immediately and feel great when I wake up. Coffee does literally nothing to my ability to sleep. It depends on the person.

I thought caffeine was only active for 4-5 hours, unless you have a particular gene mutation that causes slow metabolism?

That’s the half-life. After that time it will be half gone, so the remaining half will still be active for a while.

> I have a naturally addictive and obsessive personality combined with low self-control (when I get started on something, like a new work problem or video game, I can't put it down).

How much of this is environmental vs innate? Even your hobbies could be argued to have a genetic component or perhaps how strongly blue light affects your rhythm.

It's unlikely it's entirely "innate" (i.e. hereditary), but it's also unlikely that it is something that is easy to change.

Supposedly genetics plays a part in whether someone is a night owl or early riser.

Ive always been in the night owl camp, however an interesting experience I have had was when I went on a full 4 day water fast. By day 2, my circadian rhythm completely reset and My 12-8 sleeping schedule became 9-5.

As soon as the fast was broken with a dinner around 7pm, I became wide awake beyond 12a rether than getting tired at 9p.

Dr satchin Panda has been researching body clocks and food and has pointed out that the ingestion of food starts the liver’s clock and kicks off bodily processes tbat start the clock. So it seems that food plays a very large environmental role in our sleep schedule.

I am currently reading the book "why we sleep" by Matthew Walker, and it is a fascinating scientific look at the reality of sleep schedules by an expert in the field. It sounds like you would be very interested in this. You should check it out.

But, I question how much of this behavior is environmental versus innate.

Is this as such an interesting academic question or would you actually want to be a early-riser instead? If so, why?

check my reply to the OP about the Why We Sleep book. I really appreciate your comment and recognize myself in a lot of it.

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