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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

I'm confident you could work in the morning if you readjusted your sleeping habits. And there are a ton of jobs out there that start later in the day or have flexible work hours.

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> I'm confident you could work in the morning if you readjusted your sleeping habits.

This subthread is about the possible/probable genetic reasons why some people have more trouble adjusting their sleeping habits to that of everyone else. Saying that he just needs to adjust his sleeping habits is not really helpful.

I was a night owl from the time I was 16 until 33(sleep 2-3-4AM until 10AM-11AM-12PM), and then I adjusted my sleep cycle to be an early riser(sleep 11-6). It took about 4 days before I felt physically right. The hardest part was lifestyle adjustments around the differing hours. I don't believe I have any kind of special power.

OP sounds depressed with a self-defeatist mindset. He considers himself unemployable because he is a night owl. I don't know if telling him 'It's okay, it's not your fault' will help his situation. And I don't think what I'm doing is similar to telling a paraplegic to just try really hard to walk - is there any science that these 'hardwired night owls' can't actually change?

Without clocks I will naturally go to bed between 5a and 7a and wake between 1 and 3p. I've had a "normal" schedule for most of my life, and have gone long stretches (months) where I was in bed every night by 10p. It doesn't stick. Without alarms and diligence, I will always revert to my natural schedule within days.

Sure, that's fine. It doesn't need to stick, because clocks will continue to be available. I'd rather be employable and have to use a clock to wake up, than unemployable but in a 'natural' state(to use the false dichotomy presented by OP)

Also, I'm curious what your natural bedtime would be if you not only removed clocks, but also removed TVs, screens and other artificial lighting. It seems unfair to say you would do something 'naturally' without clocks, but not without all the other technology that is actually causing you to stay awake at non-natural hours in the first place.

I was fired from last job just because I couldnt stick with morning schedule and basically "had my own". I was supposed to be at work by 10am (LOL, we had standups at 10:45), and I just couldnt do it. Sometimes I came to work at 9, sometimes at 11:30, until they were fed up with this. I felt physical discomfort from this - vomited twice in the morning (I suppose it was from stress) and developed tick in the left eye after just 3 weeks into office.

I'm unemployed now (last 14 months), and I've given up so that I don't even look for job anymore since I don't think we'd be compatible. Saves my time and employers money.

Yes I'm slow-starter - it takes me from 1.5hr to 2.5hrs in the morning to start my day. Now I usually wake up at 7:30-8:30 because I'm happy owner of six parrots and they need maintenance and to make a lot of noise :)

All this combines with my inability to stick to just one single thing to do. I have to change stuff I do very often, which leaves many of my projects unfinished. From this reason I usually find myself very unhappy working on some project for longer periods, especially if those projects are too complex to even start contributing - because of this I then usually used to start working on something different in my "free time" (in member of local hackerspace) and my productivity (if there was any) goes away. This allowed me to acquire quite a lot of different skills and knowledge but left me uneployable.

Or maybe I just haven't come across a job that really suits me and be appreciable, yet

Why can't you wake up at 7:30AM, be with your birds and start your day for the next 1.5 hours, and then get into the office before 10AM?

It sounds like you have other problems that are preventing your employment that are not related to you being a night owl(I don't even think you're a night owl...you self-admittedly wake up at 730-830am).

I would doubt genetic reasons until he tries without all the modern light/darkness. It’s insane how quickly my sleep schedule changes when I sleep in a tent and the sun is unavoidable at literally sunrise... I match the sun schedule pretty quickly, and then get out of it really quickly (1-3 days).

I think walking around outside all day and not having to concentrate really hard sitting in front of a screen also helps a lot.

I absolutely don't believe in the genetic reasons because for me it tends to shift every few years. Let's take out childhood and puberty and only see my adult life. I can go years on 6h of sleep and everything's perfect (usually sleep 9h on the weekends) and then there's years where I absolutely need my 8h to function. Sometimes it's easy to get up at 6 sometimes I could sleep in to 9 every day. It has nothing to do with summer or winter, that much I can tell. I am not a morning person, but compared to other people it's fine.

So yeah, maybe there is some reason I've never discovered why it shifts so much (eating habits, weight, general mood) - but I can only say it shifts every few months or years and hasn't significantly changed since I am an "adult".

My hours of efficiency are not like in grandparent, and after I'd tried a lot of things with switching the sleeping time, the only conclusion that these hours are tied to internal clock of what is day/night (1 to 10 a.m. for me, varies a bit in winter/summer). I know two ways around: constant jet lag or submarine mode, and can't go for any of them.

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