Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference
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directorsblog.nih.gov
I have followed every advice, meditation (1yr), excercise (3*1.5hrs per week for 18 months), staving off screens after 18:00 (8mo), no caffiene, no sugar, no food of any kind, I also tried: too much food, cooling my body down before I go to bed, valerian root, sleeping pills, codeine, running before sleep.. absolutely positively everything.
Why? because there is a strongly negative view society has on me for waking up at nearly 9am every day, or staying at work longer into the evenings.
At some point I have to call it quits, it's not working.
(FWIW my brain "wakes up" at night, I get the majority of my best work done between midnight and 4am, and for 6 years now I have avoided being awake during that time for any reason.. but recently I let it happen for one night and the output was insane compared to my daily hours)
EDIT: Based on the comments here, I just need to have a kid.
I'm in the midst of a full diagnostic course including cerebral scans, a sleep study and blood analysis, but my neurologist told me there's a good chance that nothing actionable will be revealed and that the pill will remain the best treatment for the rest of my life.
I just wanted to say to you:
(1) I feel you, it sucks to feel that you're underperforming b/c your clock is messed up, and what further sucks more is that people, especially the internet, will tell you you're doing something wrong, when you're actually a disciplined guy that has tried everything.
(2) Get pro help if you can. Seeing my GP and my neurologist is the first time I've been assured that there's a good chance that this is something that's entirely out of my control, and that _actually feels good_.
(3) "If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain" - if you can't fix it just roll with it, that's what I've done at times. I've told a few of my bosses I'm a night owl, and they've fully respected it and given great freedom over my schedule.
You've got plenty of options with your skillset... If you wanted to f* off to the beach and code as a freelancer late at night I'm guessing you could also go do that!
I recall hearing a theory that having individuals with differing circadian rhythms within the same social group provided an evolutionary advantage as not all members of the group would be asleep – and consequently vulnerable to external dangers – at the same time.
Hypothetically, say local sunrise is 6 AM, and sunset 6 PM, a lark rises at 5 AM and retires at 9 PM, and an owl rises at 7 AM and retires at 11 PM.
If the lark wishes to be immediately productive on waking, they might generate noise, vibration, or odors in the owl's sleeping area, or may simply resent the owl for continuing to sleep while the lark has started working, and thus may wake the owl intentionally. If they have a task that requires cooperation, they could either wait 2 hours for the owl to wake, or go rouse them immediately. At that point, the owl has had 6 hours of sleep, and could probably function on that amount for that day. The owl, on the other hand, can work cooperative tasks immediately on waking, as the lark is already awake, and has no reason to ever awaken the lark prior to the natural conclusion of their sleep cycle.
The converse act to the lark waking the owl 2 hours early is the owl keeping the lark up 2 hours late, after which the lark will likely just wake later. Each has a 2 hour sleep deficit, but the owl would have been re-clocked by daylight all day, and thus it would be more difficult for them to retire early after being awakened early (unless the weather was gloomy and overcast). They would also desire to awaken 2 hours later than usual the next morning. But there the lark is again, waking the owl up early again. The lark can cause the owl to be chronically sleep deprived, and the owl cannot effectively retaliate.
So the owl can, at best, create rules that prohibit larks from disturbing others' sleep before "a reasonable hour". Commuting, artificial lighting, time zones, and daylight savings have all combined to make that "reasonable hour" less reasonable.
Daylight savings is a particularly execrable lark tradition. While the owl is sleeping, the lark changes all the clocks, and then wakes up the owl, waving the clock in their face, so the owl does not murder the lark immediately. And then the larks only relent when the evidence of the sunrise would reveal the ruse. Only the larks have any real incentive to redefine civil time to get the owls out of bed earlier. So when someone says, "your body-clock is messed up," the best response is, "your civil time is messed up," and then roll over for a few more zees.
This also applies to oncall rotations at software companies!
I try to sleep through weed (indica). I'm not to happy about it but that works more or less.
I've never particularly had a problem going to sleep once I'm in bed though, and have just struggled rolling out of bed within a reasonable timeframe (apparently a very normal symptom of ADHD, which I'm prescribed the dex for), causing me to stay up late to try and get things done, causing my sleep cycle to be pushed back even further. At one point during university, when I had nothing I needed to be awake and on time for, I was doing 20 hours up, then 10 hours in bed.
Now instead of taking 1+ hours to get out of bed and get going, it takes me 20 minutes. My brain just needs a bit of a jumpstart in the morning.
I can't recommend enough getting professional help for chronic issues like poor sleep patterns, if you're in a country where it's affordable. The worst that can happen is they say there's nothing they can do, on the other hand, it might be that it might be as simple as medication.
Fixed my insomnia on accident. Tried the 4HB diet. The supplements advice did it for me. Magnesium, calcium, and potassium. Overnight fix. Turns out, the culprit was my poor diet. Now, I only have trouble sleeping if I try to sleep less than 12 hours after waking. Best of luck.
As someone who was fortunate to fix a self-created sleeping disorder where I managed to completely f up my circadian rhythms, I wish I had known about TRE years ago. As far as I know it's not (yet) part of the usual list of sleep hygiene/CBT advice, but for me at least it's been the most comprehensive change I've made to my lifestyle that has benefited my rhythms and sleep quality.
I built an automated lighting system such that dawn in my house comes at 6 am and gets gradually brighter. In the evening, it gradually dims, going out entirely at 10. As long as my ambient lighting is the only thing on in the evenings, I reliably go to sleep between 10 and 11 pm. But if I leave my non-automated task lighting on, I don't get sleepy until hours later, which easily can lead to me falling back into night-owl mode.
I avoid that because my mood is much less even when I'm a late riser, so I'm not advocating that anybody necessarily follow my approach. But if people do want help going to bed on time and getting up early, I strongly recommend automated ambient lighting in key rooms that mimics a natural day-night cycle (but with little or no seasonal variation).
https://www.philips.ca/c-p/HF3670_60/smartsleep-connected-sl...
It's a sunrise and sunset alarm clock. I wake up at 5:15 AM on a daily basis and 20 minutes before, the light starts with increasing brightness. At 5:08 AM, I have selected ocean waves for the sound and at 5:15 the loud alarm comes on.
It's been a dramatic change for me with this. I would normally get 7 to 7.5 hours of sleep but would have a very hard time waking up and more often than not, would go back to sleep.
With this arrangement, it's been really wonderful. I now tend to be mostly awake before the main alarm comes on and I am able to just get up.
I know this is not a inexpensive option but there are other models without the bells and whistles.
one thing i have noticed being a night owl is that even during periods where i am sleeping "normally" (i.e., early) and waking up moderately early is that i still hate the mornings. i could be making this up, but it feels quite inherent to me that i do not like the climate and sunlight in the morning. the climate transitions that happen at night and also the light at twilight have always been extremely calming to me.
when i was younger, i would play basketball during the evenings and into the night. during the summer, i would also get up early and workout and practice, and it was always a complete slug, despite being well rested. the air and light just feels different for me in the mornings. also, when i wake up and immediately shower, like for a workday, it feels worse than when i sleep in on the weekends, am awake for an hour or two, and then shower.
i have no idea if that's really what's going on, but that's what it feels like to me.
Does the newer model mitigate this issue?
I'm pretty sure the biggest change which made me an early riser was my diet though. I stopped drinking sugary drinks and cut out carbs almost entirely after midday. Diet is mostly meat, some dairy (but lactose intolerant). I only drink water or zero-sugar drinks after midday too. I drink Coffee as soon as I wake and only up to midday.
I no longer work the same job, but I still wake up around 0430 every day and do a couple of hours programming before I go to the gym for an hour, then have breakfast at 0800.
Also stopped watching TV before sleeping. When I do watch TV in bed I feel like shit in the morning. Now I turn off the screens around 2000 and am in bed by around 2200. I rarely watch any TV anyway, but still spend a large part of the day at the computer screen.
You don't really make a switch from being a night owl. I thought I'd made switches multiple times too:
* Taking early classes in college * Deliberately cooling myself down and going to bed super early * Getting a puppy that forced me to wake up super early
Every single method regressed to night-owl schedule within 2 months. Not to mention my productivity and learning ability took a nosedive during the periods I was waking up early.
This is over a period spanning 15 years, so it involves multiple stages of life as well.
I tried a bunch of things, but eating at the right time helps.
If I eat too close to bedtime, I think my sleep is initially ok (food makes you sleepy), but it's possible it disturbs my sleep or I get acid reflux or something.
If I eat too far from bedtime, I wake up I suspect because my blood sugar is low -- and of course the body produces adrenaline when that happens.
Then one day I moved to a house that had no internet, and we would have to wait a month to have satellite put in, and we had no smartphones
After 20+ years of just thinking I had a sleeping disorder, losing internet access and living like a pilgrim caused my sleep schedule to naturally coincide with the setting and rising of the sun
Without any deliberate effort from myself whatsoever, I would get sleepy at like 9pm, and wake up around sunrise, wide-eyed and ready to start the day
I thought I had tried everything too, including screen limitations and so on. That probably didn’t work because just the awareness that I could go online if I wanted was enough to keep me awake, feeling like there was a party going on that I wasn’t there for. And of course I would cheat some days, and doing that even occasionally was enough to reset my progress to zero.
There’s probably some kind of “disconnection retreat” nearby you could try, where people get together in some remote place and stay off tech for 7+ days. Could be a fun way to see if this is the cause of your sleep issues.
I did an accidental retreat by attempting to climb the Cotopaxi volcano, in Ecuador.
Lodged at "Secret Garden". To our suprise on arrival, they had no wifi and we could not get cell tower signal. So we had to find other ways to be entertained. They helped: activities + daily group hikes and mountaneering trails that are bound to leave you ready to crash by 8pm. We are not big hikers, in fact we hike at most 3 times per year - but we found that the combination of peer pressure, adventure/adrenaline plus the need to do something kept us going on daily treks.
1-2 weeks of that and you could be forming a positive routine. At least you will be rested.
PD met an SRE from Netflix there. He successfully summitted the Cotopaxi. We hiked it... but did not try to summit due to difficulty + sleep deprivation requirement to make an attempt :)
But it's not the place for cerebral activity, where things works best after hours.
I guess in the end it's a matter of performing well under distractions or not. I often found that the reason for late night performance was due to the lack of interruption and all sorts of external stimulation that goes with daytime.
Now I wish I could find a middle ground.
But I started exercising during the pilgrim days, mornings, and the habit stuck but now I do evenings. I feel most productive now between 8am-noon, even with people around.
There was a job change too though, so can’t guarantee it was the exercise that changed things. Exercise was definitely a massive net benefit either way though.
I go really hard with kettlebells for about an hour/day. Very low-impact, no stress to the joints, loads usually not heavy enough to cause severe muscle failure. Cardiovascular/aerobic state is similar to running, climbing stairs, swimming, etc. The exercises are all compound, and there’s enough resistance to build a good amount of muscle too (kettlebells go up to 200lbs).
Flexibility too, most of the motions involve stretching from the hips in one way or another.
And all you need is a living room and a kettlebell.
I feel like I found the holy grail of exercising, so I take every opportunity to recommend it. Google Pavel’s Simple and Sinister routine if interested, or check out /r/kettlebell. I add overhead presses and standing rows, a lot of people add snatches and cleans. Always new things to try. It’s fun.
Personal anecdote, that won't help much. You'll still sleep at midnight, except that instead of waking at 9:00am, you'll have to wake up at 6:00am.
Kids are very luck-of-the-draw, too. You can get one who sleeps through like a champ, or you can get one that guarantees you won't have a solid night's sleep for half a decade.
So somewhere between keeping me from getting sick and just appreciating that as long as I pretended to be asleep they could get 2 hours of peace before bedtime, I would get spot-checked inconsistently. Got really good at listening for footsteps in the hallway.
Getting up early because of kids or dogs isn't a 'fix' for insomnia, btw. It's a coping mechanism. If you are too tired at 10 because the dog thinks breakfast is to be served sharply at 6:30 even though it's been 7:30 since they were puppies, you're not gonna stay up trying to invent a new compression algorithm. You're gonna collapse like a sad sack and make the most of tomorrow.
However, there often are constraints that require me to be up earlier (yes, a kid is among them), and I found the following helps maintain reasonable focus and relative ease of waking up early:
1. About 10,000 IU of vitamin D (at 190lbs), taken before 10am - as a replacement for significant sun exposure which I don’t have. This is significantly higher than the RDA, though still below the toxic levels (50,000 IU/day or so at my weight). The timing is important - vitamin D is apparently part of the body’s sunlight clock PLL. Gwern has some n=1 experiments and references.
2. Sufficient protein intake (between 0.5gr and 1gr per lbs of body weight - low end for sedantry, high end for very active). Don’t know the mechanism - discovered by trial and error - but makes a huge difference for me. If I don’t have enough protein, I can’t fall asleep before 3am regardless of how tired I am. (Well, except when I do a multi day fast and everything goes berserk, but that’s for another post).
Even with those, at times I am not constrained I will naturally nightowl.
Don’t trust me. Do your own research and n=1 experiments.
I laughed OUT LOUD at this!! I wake up at 11am/12pm every day, and yes there is a strongly negative view society has on it. I've been trying to wake up at 8am for almost 10 years now, instead my bed time has slowly moved from 2am, to 3am to almost 5am now.
however, I get so much done working straight from about 12pm to 8pm that its totally worth it to put up with the snide remarks about my schedule
My wife and I are both night owls, but having kids just makes it worse. We still go to bed at 2am, but now we have to get up at 7 to get them ready for school. Then every third night or so we crash out around 10:30.
It's a horrible way to live.
I'm a naturally night owl. I've had years of being more productive at the office between 5 PM and 8 PM than the entire time between 9 AM and 5 PM. For a while, a sudden burst of productivity was the thing that let me know I was at the office late.
Conversely, I also have a tendency to wake up with the sun, full of energy, when there's sun (and, living in Vancouver, that's about 50% of the time on average).
Then... I had a kid.
This morning, I was awake at 5 AM. Got up to go to the bathroom, went back to bed, started drifting off, and then what felt like a herd of elephants came storming into the bedroom, climbed into bed, went for some cuddles, and then just started thrashing around from being bored. Guess I'm awake now, then.
Sure they will get you to wake up earlier. Even if the kids themselves are night owls, you don't decide when school starts. But it is not so different from any other obligation.
Waking up early is easy, you just need a loud enough alarm clock. Doing so without being in a constant state of jet lag is the hard part.
I wake up between 8 and 10 daily (I have very flexible working hours atm)
I optimised my home for a short commute and have never had a job where arriving before 10am was required
I've had to take various contract gigs where I had to start my commute at 7, or be at meetings that started at 7, and it's terrible. Employment arrangements like this wind up getting a version of me that is at my lowest, least-focused, least-productive ebb, no matter how much coffee I pour down my gullet.
These days I still get my best, most focused programming work done between about 4:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. It's a constant strain because it means my time at home with my family is foreshortened every single weeknight.
Or if you live on the East Coast working Remote with a company in Pacific Time Zone.
The thing that finally worked for me was finding out the amount of sleep I ABSOLUTELY needed to function. Which was about 4-5 hours. My body wants 8, but I can make it through the day with 4 hours.
Try to only sleep this minimum about for several weeks, and eventually you will be tired enough to go to bed exactly when you want. For me that was a midnight to 4:00am schedule, and I was gradually able to add a couple hours sleep to that over the course of a year. Now I'm sleeping 11:30pm to 5:30am.
When I got into my thirties, I chose to embrace it instead of fight it. I worked at companies that were understanding of my chosen schedule. By every metric across the board I've been happier since then. The single exception was a period of time where I had to be up on a 7am international conference call every morning. The stress necessary to maintain that schedule was enormous, and came with consequences to my health. Never again.
I just don't think humans are meant to keep to a schedule. It requires massive amounts of stress to keep up.
Also sometimes this can be an early sign of sleep apnea if you fall into the other risk factors. CPAP + room air filter + blackout curtains + exercise changed my life. I can't sleep later than 6:30 AM if I wanted to now. Used to be a very hardcore night owl and now brain shuts down at a reasonable time at night with no pills.
It's amazing how true this is. My first day in the military they woke us up early with an air horn and we immediately started running and doing pushups. Like everybody else, I was disoriented for a few minutes.
After doing that for weeks it was fine though.
I have switched away from routinized, schedule-based sleeping, and towards going to sleep when I am tired, waking up when I'm ready, and listening to my body for what it wants.
When it's cold, gray, rainy, short days, I sleep more on average. When the weather is warm and sunny, I sleep much less. If I'm feeling down or like I'm coming down with something, I let myself sleep as much as will fit, sometimes 16-20 hours or even more.
On occasion I do scheduled things, and I try to anticipate it and steer the day before, sometimes resorting to an alarm.
I now wake up at around 0355 every weekday. I'm still as tired in the night but at least my day feels a whole lot better and while I'm still tired at night like before it hasn't gotten worse, it might even have improved a bit.
I'm wondering if - with todays technology for remoting and asynchronous teamwork - if some companies will test if they get better results if they let certain people work at night?
(Been living like this for 4+ years now so the novelty should be gone by now and I still enjoy it.)
I have three kids and spent 11 years in the military waking up a 5 AM. That didn't reset or change my natural rhythm.
My answer is that you need to find a job/lifestyle that fits your natural cycle. It's not perfect but I get to set my own schedule for the most part and it's working ok for me right now.
In high school, I was sleepy during the morning lectures, but people just assumed that I was bored or partying too much.
In university, I simply didn't have many lectures before 10 AM. Plus there actually were lots of late-night parties going on.
Now that I'm working, I told people that I like to enjoy a peaceful morning with my family and it seems nobody really cares if start working at 10 or 11.
That said, I noticed that bright lights work wonders for helping me to concentrate. I bought a lot of those 1800 lumen IKEA LED light bulbs. They need 20W each, so you can connect 3 of them where normally one lamp would be. And that makes my living room bright like a sunny day at the beach :)
Kids mess everything up in regard to sleep. It won't put you on a schedule :-)
Personally what worked best for me is just to wake up at 6am for 2 weeks without nap during the day.
Most people try to adjust their sleeping time to match their waking time, but they've got it backward. Set your wake up time and listen to your body for when it's sleepy, then go to sleep and wake up at the same time the following day.
The "have a kid" is just a way to force this behavior because they will wake up early every day over a long period of time.
Well, that's a good question since I assumed that the answer was obvious but putting it down is important:
I wanted to:
A) Not spend hours trying to fall asleep at night.
and
B) Have energy in the Morning, not feel groggy all day after forcing myself awake.
--
When I was in my early 20s and had long vacations my body fell into a natural sleep cycle of 4am to 12pm, when I woke up I had enough energy that I actually _wanted_ to do things and the energy lasted until I fell asleep in the night. Now I'm just groggy and tired and procrastinating all the time.
Of course, I'm _really_ conflating things because; Vacations are inherently less energy consuming, waking up naturally is going to make you feel more energised too and, obviously, I'm falling asleep naturally also.
Normally I need to be up at 7am in order to get to work so I have to make certain I'm in bed, in the dark, and reading in dim light by 11pm (midnight at the absolute latest) if I hope to fall asleep at a reasonable time for a 7am rise.
It's not ideal, and as you mention, I typically spend much of the morning groggy and slow, but it's preferable to my late teens/early 20s when I followed my natural rhythm and missed way too many classes or came in late to early, low-level jobs.
I even made sure it wasn't some sort of sleep apnea causing problems but I'm clear on that front and I feel fine when I am able to keep my natural schedule. When I have a couple of weeks off I let myself drift later and get a lot more stuff done.
Chronotypes can only be bended so much.
Sometimes I wish I could work nights, but I did work from home like that and sleeping during the day is also pretty bad. Especially during winter, not seeing much daylight can mess you up.
Going to sleep at 2-3am and waking up at 10-11am seems like it would be great.
I'm curious as I have a few friends with a similar problem (I.e. struggling to wake up early for work). But they often party hard the week-end and wake up between 11am-3pm, so it's hard to tell if that's the reason it's so hard for them.
At first I did go to sleep between 9:00 - 10:00 pm every night without fail. That seemed to help the transition. Now, I can stay up later if I want and "sleep-in" until 6:00 am.
No neat tricks or anything for me, just fear of losing my job and the disaster that would cause.
How did you manage to go to sleep? I find that if I go to bed early all I do is lay in bed until 3am wide awake anyway.
About 8 years ago, my co-worker said he used to have the same problems until he got a CPAP machine. One sleep study and CPAP machine later, now I fall asleep easily and rarely dream. If on the rare occasion I can't go to sleep, I just accept it, get up for an hour or two, then go back to sleep knowing that I'm gonna suffer a little that day. Definitely the exception though.
It's midnight here, I just had dinner with my gf, and after kissing her goodnight I'll come back to work, until about 4 am. Tomorrow I'm coming to office for the meeting at 5pm, so I'll have to wake up about 1pm. I'm delivering the product on time, cheaper then expected, and nobody gives a flying fuck where and when I'm doing it.
Just seemed absolutely effortless for everyone else to be sleep at a sensible time and turn up to work on time and here I am setting 30 (Not exaggerating) full volume alarms on my iPhone and a backup physical alarm elsewhere in the room and still sleeping through it all on occasion.
Really just thought I wasn't trying hard enough or maybe I should just get better at forcing myself to sleep until I came across Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder [1][2] which seems to describe it.
Honestly my only real solution has been finding a job where they're not fussed if you show up between 15-45 minutes late almost every day and my job starts at 10. Think if I were in a normal company it would really just be starting an egg timer until I happen to show up late too many times in a row to raise a red flag.
Advice intended to help normal people wont work if the system you're trying to affect isn't actually normal. That's the most frustrating part of all this and why people just think you're not trying hard enough or you're just a bit of a screw up who hasn't got their stuff together.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder [2] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/2/27/17058530/sl...
Waking up at 6AM while being rested means having to go to sleep before midnight but 10pm to 1am for me it's the best time in the day, quiet, alone quality time. Take that away and then it just feels like a never ending (rat) race of waking up, go to work, come home, eat, go to sleep. I'd hate my life if that was all it was left.
Don't. If you haven't figured out your sleep issues, having a kid will make them way worse.
Sorry to say that, but in my case it did not help, made things worse instead. Seriously. It forces my body into unnatural rhythm and feel sleepy most of the days. Even if I get 7..9h of sleep.
Oh, how I love those productive hours from 22:00 till 03 in the morning and waking up between 10 and 12 next day fully rested!
That did work quite well for me for the first year or so. Now with a two year old I’m back to staying up until the middle of the night and then being painfully tired when the child decides to wake me in the early morning.
Nope. Father of two here. One is grown. Other halfway through high school. I’ve been single most of their lives. Neither of them changed me being a night owl. I’ve raised them on a few hours of sleep each night—regularly awake till 3-5a to get those crazy productive hours in when the world is asleep and my brain is awake, and still took them to and picked them up from school daily (though my high schooler recently started driving; the adult child didn’t want to drive until after high school). I do usually get a short afternoon nap in, though.
I'd say I'm in pretty good shape, and I gym around 5 hours a week and play sport another one hour, so that's 6 total.
I exercise 3 times per week roughly 90 minutes. each time.
> FWIW my brain "wakes up" at night
This suggests to me that researching Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome might be helpful.
You mean there are sleep specialists who can do more than schedule a sleep study and then say that it was inconclusive because you couldn't fall asleep during the study?
They said my sleep quality was fine, but a bit less than normal which is fair because it was at a lab not at home. But no, that's pretty much the amount I get anywhere. Suggested I lose 5-10kg and see how I go. Seemed like a boilerplate response.
Funny though as I write this I'm actually waking up very early, but that's because this week I flew somewhere 5 timezones earlier. Not sure how long this will last.
Took some serious effort to shift it back to something like 1030/11pm. So no, not necessarily a kid based on my experience.
And to clarify, we go to bed when she does.
Saying you did "meditation" for a year doesn't tell us much, just the same as you saying you "exercised" for 4.5 hours a week doesn't tell us much. Both of those terms can mean a great number of things qualitatively speaking.
Counter-intuitively you could warm yourself 1-2 hours before bed with a hot bath or sauna session. This triggers the body to bring blood closer to the surface and extremities to shed heat, in effect "helping" the body cool itself as it approaches bedtime.
Based on these observations I think maybe you haven't tried "absolutely positively everything". And even with all the environmental and body things you've tried, the mental aspect cannot be understated.
EDIT: based on some of the replies about temperature. The hot bath method because it will help your body cool in a physiological way while a cold bath will do the opposite. A cool environment will do the same while a hot one will do the opposite. So hot bath 1-2 hours before bed and lower the room temp for the best of both worlds. Some people go further with chilled blankets such as the Ooler.
Meditation itself was 'mindfulness', some of it was guided, most of it was not, guided meditation was once a week (I'm not counting the yoga, which was also meditative), I spent 5 minutes in the morning, 5 minutes at lunch, 15 minutes when I got home and 5 minutes before bed. (and I'm pretty well disciplined so I stuck to that routine).
The reason I say I've tried everything is because I've seem therapists/psychologists and taken their recommendations on board, I've researched and taken more information on board and this is not the first thread where "night owl" information has come up, and I took information from there too. And, like I said, I'm rigorously self-disciplined; so I'm able to stick to things... But, I will happily take your advice on board and try that. Since I don't care about whinging, I care about results.
I use an Oura ring for this but I bet there are cheaper methods, perhaps with a heart rate chest strap, though there's an additional bonus with the ring in that it tracks sleep phases as well.*
*to some degree of accuracy (~66%?) I use it directionally only since the values have big error bars.
EDIT: the one I use is paid on Glo.com. Found a free one that seems similar https://youtu.be/F0jwdoSWsio
Edit: Fixed phone’s stupid autocorrect.
The more I look forward to a new day, the later I fall asleep. Causing the new day to turn into a total disaster as I walk around like a zombie on 20% of my usual energy level.
That makes me even more anxious to go to bed, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Only half joking, it definitely works for waking you up in the morning (unless you like being fired) and going to sleep earlier (because you're tired).
You will likely feel tired until 11am-1pm or all day, but you'll be "normal" in other people's eyes... yay /s
It's envy.
What if you end up making the kid also the night owl :-), and beyond that, I wouldn't want to rely on the most expensive solution!
I don’t know, my sister has 4 and still is a night owl, i can confirm it’s familial because my mom is the same and so was my grandma as i am.
My 3.5-year-old wakes up at 9AM, takes 1 nap, and goes to sleep at 1 or 2 AM.
Most kids are on an earlier schedule, but don’t count on it.
Or a sick relative you have to take care of, or a physically draining job.
They make you sleepy on demand.
I was a night owl my entire life until my last few years of college, when it got difficult. Then I was able to transition to being an early riser in a couple of weeks, and I carry that experience many years later.
Waking up early does have a practical advantage: your free time is before you go to work, so then you have energy to do important things.
This doesn't make any sense to me. I have zero energy or drive in the morning, it's a struggle to do anything. My brain turns on at about 11am - I can be active before that, but serious creative work or figuring out something that requires mental effort is going to be much less effective than if I waited until later in the day.
It doesn't even really matter when I wake up. I can wake up at 6am and be a zombie for 5 hours, or wake up at 10:30am, shower, and be ready to go for the day. Sufficient application of caffeine helps a bit if I need to be fully on before that, but the quantity necessary to do so is not sustainable.
I'm not able to do anything productive after leaving my office.
You read the same thing whenever there's a discussion on clinical depression. People push their anecdotes about mindset changes but fail to acknowledge they were never clinically depressed in the first place.
Is there an established strict definition of "night owl" that supports this conclusion? I always thought a night owl meant anyone who for whatever reason prefers to stay up late and sleep in, which doesn't really presuppose a genetic cause.
"Circadian rhythm sleep disorders are characterized by a persistent or recurrent pattern of sleep disturbance (difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep and excessive sleepiness) due to alterations of the circadian timekeeping system and/or misalignment of the endogenous circadian rhythm and the external environment." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3523094/
Key part of this being "persistent or recurrent". In other words, people who have been struggling with this for a long time and have it reoccur after trying out different strategies.
Adding a distinction could help. Perhaps "voluntary night owl" vs "involuntary night owl".
The key part is that it's related to the circadian rhythm and time keeping. That it's persistent and recurrent doesn't in itself distinguish it from other sleep disorders that may cause delayed sleep schedule, such as sleep-onset insomnia, or "bad habits" as you call it.
> Adding a distinction could help. Perhaps "voluntary night owl" vs "involuntary night owl".
If you want to address people affected by e.g. DSPD, and not "night owls" in general, it is perhaps just better to simply address them as such.
That certainly fits the description of "night owl," but I don't think there's anything clinical about it. My particular manifestation is more of a lifestyle choice, and based on what I observe in the tech field I'm hardly alone in making this choice. Folks who do have a sleeping disorder causing night owl tendencies to manifest (especially when they'd prefer, socially, to rise early) are in a different boat altogether, and I'm... honestly not qualified to classify them. It's an interesting space.
A personal example is shortness of breath. My friend and I both had that when we were kids. However, I had it because I got bronchitis for a bit. He had it because he was asthmatic. Imagine if I said "Oh, I don't understand what the problem is. All I did was rest and it went away". Well, that won't help my asthmatic friend, will it?
For me, it was about establishing new habits, setting up an environment conducive to sleeping by midnight, and having some external pressures like a work schedule, etc. I've heard this validated by external testimony as well.
Can't say there are no biological factors at play that impact individual inclinations, but it's a bit hard to believe that we're hard-wired for one over the other.
How is this harder to believe than the huge amount of other human characteristics that are directly affected or even effected by the genes?
Now the idea (somewhat supported by the article) is that night owls have a natural cycle longer than 24h. It means they are in a constant state of jet lag. The (unrealistic) solution to get in sync with the rest of the population would be to always go west.
Early birds are in the opposite situation. They have a natural cycle shorter than 24h. It is just that for some reason, waking up and going to bed early is not seen as a problem in our society, while the other way is.
It doesn't last.
guess what? drinking 6 cans of redbull per day fucks up your sleeping schedule.
It took a long time to find a balance of forcing to sleep and forcing to get up. But now I have to be very concious, if I have a late weekend I am out of sync for the rest of the week.
People say its a lazy thing, but its really not.
It’s really hard and it limits greatly my employment options. I’m sure my career has been severely impacted by it, since most management positions require lots of early meetings. I am an engineering manager now, but it’s hard for me to enjoy my job, because it often requires early meetings. So it’s hard to really be good at it and progress in the career.
My perception at workplace is that most managers are early risers, and people who stay forever at senior engineering level are the night owls.
A few times, when critical bad shit happened after 5pm and I had to stay at work until midnight, I felt like I was the competent and motivated person that got me into that position to begin with. There was no way my bosses were going to let me saunter into the office at 1pm, after all the client meetings had already wrapped up... I definitely tried to convince them though lol
Even as an early riser, I think the virtue part is horseshit. Not everybody has to be the same. Indeed, my (entirely unsupported) theory is that sleep schedule variation is natural and useful. In the wild, it's safer for everybody if somebody is always awake keeping an eye on things.
The Book of St. Albans, 1486
One thing I read from a fellow insomniac though was that sometimes when you just can't sleep, laying down on your bed helps vs walking around or being on a computer. Even if you don't fall asleep, and sure enough it does help.
I mean, I still feel horrible overall. But better than when I spend the night out of bed.
The common refrain is to avoid it because you'll associate the bed as a place of not-sleeping, but that ship has sailed for most of us anyway. The same book said "rituals" (such as getting up and reading a book instead) can be harmful as the habits become normalised and become just one more required step to sleep, instead of an occasional help.
I never read the book you mentioned, but I do this almost every morning, as a way of mental preparation for such a simple thing as getting up. It sounds so stupid saying it out loud but I completely live this.
https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B00LT8ODM8/ref=pe_1007802_16638...
Reviews are mixed, it's written in a worksheet format to help you get a grip on your thoughts and habits to change or accept them as necessary. Didn't help me a lot but it helped a lot of others.
There is certainly some form of habituation and I mostly don't need a clock. But I am still considerably more grumpy on week-days after waking up.
Throughout my teens and twenties (I'm in my 40s now) I indulged this tendency and it served me well, often staying up for multiple days without realizing it and the productivity was incredible.
Since then I've become more interested in preserving/improving my health and how such behaviors may be harming it, so I try to keep a regular sleep schedule and it does seem to be better for my general well-being.
The down side is, I am never anywhere near as productive as I've been in the "sleep is for the dead" mode of operating. Occasionally I'll revisit that mode to get something that's been dragging on finished, and it's always incredibly effective.
I wish I understood why long waking hours seem to stimulate my mind and coerce myself into the deep flow state.
Colleagues have recommended I try Adderall in the past to enter that mode at-will with a pill, but I've always been averse to becoming dependent on a pharmaceutical to do something I can already do naturally.
I wonder what's more harmful to self: regular sleep deprivation or consumption of amphetamines in the daytime?
Something about the nature of constantly being "on", whether that means online, or simply fulfilling some sort of obligation to others or even yourself, seems to sap away at what really makes us human. Of course, if you take away those obligations, you're left with nothing. So I imagine there is a balance to be found. And our society is very bad at finding it.
As far as sleep deprivation goes: it's fascinating what happens to our brains at night. Studies show that REM sleep prunes and maintains new synapses associated with development and learning[0], but other studies show that this effect might be amplified with sleep deprivation[1]. If intermittent fasting can cause one's body to behave differently in a fasted state, perhaps intermittent sleep deprivation could cause effects that in moderation are not wholly negative? I really don't know, but anecdotally, I've noticed myself able to sometimes get some huge breakthroughs in the late night hours. This has been happening less frequently as I age and become more proficient at a lot of things I do, though.
My personal theory on this is that something dream-associated is still switching on from a purely hours-awake scheduled mechanism.
Dreams are inherently creative and cerebral, and it feels like I'm just tapping into some of that by staying up late and working while my brain is wearing pajamas.
I don't know if you've ever dabbled with more extreme forms of sleep deprivation, but at a certain point, in my experience, a full-on wakeful dreaming state is entered where fully featured dreams are playing in the visual field while the eyes are still open. The brain definitely has the ability to essentially dream while awake. Experiencing those things made me start suspecting sleep deprivation was a way to tap into the dream world for productivity/creativity/focus advantages.
The stuff I've read about sleep being when your brain bathes itself in spinal fluid convinced me this was probably not a good long-term strategy for preserving cognitive health.
I’m really scared that I’m going to cause myself to develop early onset Alzheimer’s or something. Even then, that fear looms nowhere as large as the anxiety of going to bed before 1am.
Maybe it’s an existential thing. When the world’s light goes out I start thinking about death, and then the idea of sleep being the “little death” overwhelms me. Next thing I know I’m passing out just as my wife is getting up for work, but I feel so much safer laying down to sleep when I hear the world stirring and birds chirping. It’s almost like my body stays awake to make sure everyone else is safe while they sleep...
It'd be nice if we understood the actual causes of things like dementia and alzheimers so we could make better informed decisions regarding behaviors like sleep deprivation. Even if we couldn't cure those conditions, just understanding something like "it's 50% more likely you'll lose your mind if you don't sleep 8 hours most nights" would be super useful.
If you truly feel fantastic staying up for days on end, and then sleeping extra for a while ... I know at least one hyper successful person who uses to be the same way.
She eventually outgrew it, and stopped.
I am skeptical this harmed her long term.
Now, lots of behavior makes you feel great and is in fact terrible for you ... but even obvious ones like drugs tend to be felt in subsequent days, same with that awesome tasting cheeseburger, etc.
So I think it’s worth it to at least entertain the notion it isn’t as harmful to pull all nighters for you as is commonly said.
Now I wake up by 7 before my alarm even rings.
All it took was getting into the habit of trying to get a little person to sleep by 10 in the evening and falling asleep with them.
I'm still at my most productive at the end of the working day however and early morning is still not great.
I've tried to stick with this program, or at least a version of it, but ironically it's kind of harder now that there are two of us again.
This.
I regualrly slept between 1-3am for many years. After having a baby (6 month old), I'm ready to sleep whenever, and definitely can't stay up past 11. Huge win in terms of sleeping early and waking up early.
Have a baby. Fix your schedule.
But my point still stands, I can adhere to my new schedule pretty effortlessly when the situation is right. Which makes me personally question how much of being a night person is nurture.
Most of the night persons I've encountered have a pretty consistent schedule of staying up at night, which isn't what should be happening if they fit the profile of the kind of person that the linked study examines. A person like that should have, when situations allow, no schedule because they function on a non-24-hour cycle.
It made me realise that it's all just a number. In other words if you don't like getting up early, then go to bed an hour or two earlier. It has exactly the same effect. In countries with daylight savings we adjust our schedules by an hour two times year and no one makes much of a big deal. Its the same as that!
Now with a baby I'm usually sleeping by 10 and up at or before 6. I kind of like it though. Now the before-lunch period is the productive time.
There is no job, hobby, or other calling that could turn me into an early riser like raising children.
[Father's testosterone levels drop considerably starting a little prior to birth of their children (and when taking on care of young children) reportedly. Mother's hormonal changes go without saying, I feel.]
Just FWIW none of my well-spaced in age children fixed me. But having a fluid sleep cycle often meant I wasn't bothered. Sometimes I'm super awake at 4am, sometimes 6am, sometimes I'm ready to crash by 4pm, sometimes by midnight.
What killed me was having to work a second job during the night-time with our first kid, not fun.
In short, still broken sleep cycle, almost exactly like my mother has been through her life AFAICT.
- Started working out 1-2 hours per day (trail hiking/running)
- Stopped reading my iPhone in bed at night, now I just read my backlit Kindle
- Company switched to all-remote (used to commute to SF)
- Had a daughter (~9 months old now, so not coincident with the sleep switch)
- Almost all of my job responsibilities are management now (previously I was still doing more IC-like work)
- Cut down on sugar intake
If you asked me 3 months ago, I would have sworn I'd be a night owl for the rest of my life. So, this is quite a (pleasant) shock to me. Posting this in case it's helpful to anyone who's a night owl and thinks it's impossible for anyone to switch.
Not coincident, but helps a lot. Anecdotally, in my circles, the switch happened when folks had children or when they joined the military.
For the first 2 months or so I was able to sleep early and wake earlier. Now I've got used to the exercise - that's my theory - I've shifted back to being more wakeful at night. Which is fine for work hours as that's flexible (but perception of early risers is that late risers are lazy, so still a little problematic). But, I'd like to shift my pattern to match my kids' schedules better.
This is what does it for me. Refined sugar in most forms, and excessive fruit will keep me up at night.
That having been said, I'm not productive in the mornings. I don't write good code, or create good solutions before 10 am still. Early morning have become my time to catch up on administrative work, or reading.
I think you mean your front-lit Kindle. The iPhone has a back-lit screen.
* General category of "Circadian rhythm sleep disorders": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm_sleep_disorde...
* "Night owl" a.k.a. "Delayed sleep phase disorder" (often related to teens & adults) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder
* Extremely early riser a.k.a. "Advanced Sleep Phase Disorder" (often related to the older people) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_sleep_phase_disorder
* Sleep/wake cycle "a day" significantly longer than 24 hours: "Non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake...
Note that in additional to issues directly connected to sleep disorders, there are often significant impacts from cultural/societal attitudes to when individuals sleep that lead to secondary effects (e.g. shame, guilt, depression)--particularly for people who are unaware that sleep disorders exist and have not yet been diagnosed.
(Similar dynamics affect people with, for example, executive function-related disorders such as ADHD/ADD. Additionally, interactions between sleep disorders & ADHD/ADD mean that aids such as supplementary Melatonin need to be taken at different times and/or e.g. smaller doses.)
I am not a doctor, nor a sleep specialist but I do believe people (& their families) who are affected by sleep disorders deserve to be informed and not subjected to the feeling that their inability to sleep at a societally mandated time is a character flaw or evidence of them "just not trying hard enough".
Do you have more information or links about the interaction between ADHD and sleep phase disorders (specifically non 24-hour sleep-wake disorder), as it relates to melatonin?
My natural sleep cycle seems to default to a 28 hour day (eg I go to bed slightly later every evening then morning) which makes interfacing with reality pretty difficult. This seems to be something shared with a number of geeks I know.
I'm pretty sure 28 hours isn't quite what my body naturally wants, but it's a lot closer than 24. After a week trying to stick to a 24h cycle I'm basically a walking zombie.
They tried to put me on melatonin when I was a kid. First dose sent me to hospital with an allergic reaction. After that we were pretty hesitant to try other remedies. My life was miserable until I went onto the 28h cycle and I realised it was possible to NOT be tired all the time.
Don't listen to all the "oh, you just aren't doing X right" people. Find a solution that works for your body and your life.
I'll share the anonymized results in a week or so. My motivation is more social than scientific.
I take 1 mg in slow-release form, 2-3 hours before desired bed time. My bed time is still pretty variable, shifting 2-3 hours back and forth but at least it's not hopelessly drifting forward every day.
I do sleep a lot, 9-10 hours (no alarm clock), which could be because of melatonin (1 mg is a rather large dose). See here for a lot of details about melatonin dosage and timing: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th...
Relevant quote for non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder:
And what about non-24-hour sleep disorders? I think the goal in treatment here is to advance your phase each day by taking melatonin at the same time, so that your sleep schedule is more dependent on your own supplemental melatonin than your (screwed up) natural melatonin. I see conflicting advice about how to do this, with some people saying to use melatonin as a hypnotic (ie just before you go to bed) and others saying to use it on a typical phase advance schedule (ie nine hours after waking and seven before sleeping, plausibly about 5 PM)
People that say they "changed from night owl to early riser" (or vice-versa) have never been night owls in the first place, but something else was the cause (diet, screen time, etc).
Chronotypes are genetics-based so no amount of wishful thinking will make you a night owl or an early riser (though obviously you can try and force this with alarm clocks / melatonin... to your own risk).
Another book worth mentioning is Why we sleep by Walker. It has it's flaws but overall does a good job at explaining the importance of sleep.
[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Internal-Time-Chronotypes-Social-Yo...
> Early birds and night owls are born, not made. Sleep patterns may be the most obvious manifestation of the highly individualized biological clocks we inherit, but these clocks also regulate bodily functions from digestion to hormone levels to cognition. Living at odds with our internal timepieces, Till Roenneberg shows, can make us chronically sleep deprived and more likely to smoke, gain weight, feel depressed, fall ill, and fail geometry. By understanding and respecting our internal time, we can live better.
I naturally woke up at 10 am and didn't really like mornings, and my most productive periods were definitely 1-2am. Thats when the most exciting coding solutions seemed to come to me.
Then I started going to early martial arts training. Since I wanted to go before work, I had to wake up at 7:30. For about 8-9 months it was quite unpleasant, though the training sessions themselves were fun enough for me to want to continue.
But then something strange happened. I vividly remember the day I "switched". It was spring time and we just started getting our training sessions outside. It was intense enough that the guys decided to go shirtless and take in the morning sun. And at that exact moment, basking in the sun at 8am, during a demanding physical exercise I thought to myself - wow! this is so exciting, fun and natural. It felt a bit like a Chinese kung-fu movie. A very energising experience.
And from that exact day I start feeling sleepy at 11pm and wake up at 7:30 consistently each day and would feel awesome in the mornings.
This is I know very anecdotal, but at least I know it's possible. And the recipe seemed to be lots and lots of sun, outdoor activity and a very positive emotional feedback. This I think might be the biggest reason. Currently the most positive feedback we usually encounter is in the evening - late night YouTube / tv / internet / books / friends / family, ... even intercourse. Quite a lot of the stuff we look forward to happens in the evening. It makes sense that our bodies adapt to make us most alert when it senses we get the most bang for the buck. But if you reverse that and attempt to do the stuff you really like early, your body might adopt, albeit slowly.
Found a form of exercise I was excited and willing to get up for, now I wake up around 5:45 every morning trying to drag my “early riser” wife out of bed to go start the day.
Was a complete night owl before, and my wife was constantly reminding me that it was late and time to call it a day.
Not ideal for a 9-5 job with kids. I'd also need a nap around 5:30-7 or so, also not wife-compatible to fall asleep at 5:30pm for an hour.
I started using a SAD lamp and it makes a huge difference, 30 minutes in the morning, I just browse my phone in front of it. It feels like a cup of coffee and a 30 minute nap.
The biggest is not needing the evening nap followed by actually being tired at midnight, and the ability to fall sleep between 10pm-midnight if I need to get up early. It makes a major difference to me, it has about a 2-day effect, I can skip the 30 minutes for a day or two, but after day 3 my clock resets.
I'd get a 4pm boost at work, I could tell the time by how productive I was being. Same thing with midnight, I'd sit on the couch from 9-midnight, and then find myself cleaning up exactly at midnight. With the light, everything is 2 hours earlier, 2pm work boost, and 10pm boost at home.
I have one of the larger lights, don't want to be accused of shilling.
The big one I have is the 4th one on this page. https://nymag.com/strategist/article/best-sad-lamps.html
Trying to take those hours from the morning doesn't really work, because there is the hard-stop deadline of having to get ready to go to work, and the chances of somebody else interrupting me and fucking up what I'm trying to do is almost certain, whereas once the world is asleep, I'm relatively free.
I found that this resulted in my naturally waking up refreshed near sunrise.
I also found that I started doing segmented sleep [1], as was common in pre-industrial times. As with getting up near sunrise, this was not intentional. It just happened.
[1] https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/what-is-segme...
Sure there's those "sunrise lamps", but nothing compares to the real thing.
Go to bed with your blinds open or get ones that are translucent.
Never could concentrate much during daytime, once my surroundings wake up my productivity goes down the drain.
One thing that works pretty well for me when I'm allowed to set my own schedule is taking a 2-3h snooze in the afternoon/early evening. Then I can go on and work until 3-4am and still get up early without feeling like a zombie.
My problems falling asleep are not due to being tired so melatonin and various things I've tried (like drowsy allergy pills) don't work. My mind is too active, and it prevents sleep. Even to the point where the 'sleep' part proceeds, my mind is racing, and I start to dream (hallucinate) while half awake. Then I will see a spider or something that is not there and snap wide awake, full of adrenaline. Repeat until about 2 hours have passed and then maybe I can sleep.
So rather than pills or treatments to induce sleepiness, is there something that reduces mind chatter? I know some people talk about meditation which is something I'd like to look into. My mother also has sleep problems and has been diagnosed with ADD in her 60s (along with my sister in her 30s). So that's another potential avenue. I use a white noise machine which is required as a baseline (tiny noises distract and awake me out of all proportion), rather than a help.
Turns out it's already on my phone from before! I guess it's time to give it a proper try.
Then I realized I just didn't have anything to look forward to in the morning.
So now I work on some interesting problem for 30mins at 7am and waking up earlier is a lot easier.
In the past couple years that has been completely stood on its head. Now, I regularly collapse into bed around 10 in the evening, and wake up – very reliably – between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning. I haven't set an alarm in the past two years, except once in a while when I have to get up early for something important. And even then, more often than not, I wake up before the alarm goes off.
I am not sure what triggered this change. Perhaps it's age related (I am 66 years old). But really, I have no idea. The change is easy to live with, though, so it doesn't freak me out; but it does make me wonder what happened.
I did used to do a 9-to-5, but what ended up happening was that I slept less and struggled to keep in control over the weekends. Luckily the people I live with would wake me up (just by carrying out their own routines).
These days I typically sleep ~4 hours a night to keep some osrt of schedule. As others have mentioned, diet, exercise, etc, etc, no change seems to break this habit. To the surprise of many, I am also able to remain productive for all but a few of the last hours - some days I have commit streaks spanning something like 18 hours.
You may wish to look into "Non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder".
(I was looking here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake... )
https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/12/16/writers-wakeup-time...
There's also this:
https://www.fastcompany.com/3031754/the-sleep-schedules-of-2...
I am neither one of those? I hate waking up early and I dislike going to bed late. My preferred hours awake are 8:00AM-10PM; I found this to give me the most optimal amount of physical and mental energy throughout the day. Not sure why 10 hours of sleep works best for me, but I've experimented with that number and always come back to it.
Side note: I do have sleep apnea and sleep with a CPAP, but my AHI is below 3 on average (down from 43 before treatment!).
Do you wake up feeling well-rested? I know that when I used to always sleep 10 hours/night, I still wanted more sleep when I got up.
Somehow I managed to change that, though, and now I wake up after 6-6.5 hours. And I feel more well-rested than I did before after 10+ hours. I'm not completely sure of the reasons, as I wasn't seeking it out, but the timing correlates well with starting to exercise regularly. Finally getting a mattress that works for me might also be part of it.
At any rate, the main thing is that it happened. I didn't really know it would or could, which is why I didn't aim for it, but I'm glad it did. And I'd hope for the same for anyone else in a similar position. Sleep quantity only goes so far to make up for quality, and life is too short to be struggling to get proper rest.
Only after about 10 hours yes. I get by with 8 hours, but feel exhausted by around 8PM. Anything less than 8 hours makes me feel physically ill, irritable, and nauseous for most of the day. More than 10 hours makes me very sleepy. I told my sleep doctor about this, but she just shrugged and suggested some people need more sleep than others.
However, the most productive times in my life have most definitely been when waking up and getting to work early. I don't like working at night, just slacking off.
I've read a lot of articles in this vein, but I never see myself quite represented.
Anyone else in a similar boat?
Of course there is a limit though and tend to eventually crash. Which is not healthy at all either.
I started waking up earlier because I realized I had a much better work day if I did something I enjoyed before working. I start work at 10am, but I wake up around 7:30, walk the dog for ~2 miles, then relax and play a game, lift, do some blogging, read Hackernews etc. It's made my work day far more productive, I will say that. I also have a little one on the way so starting to acclimate my body to waking up earlier is better done sooner rather than later.
I recall reading a while back an article that stated people had more productive and overall positive work days if they did something enjoyable before starting work. I work from home most of the time and so it became more important than ever for me to actually _use_ the time I wouldn't be spending commuting. I definitely recommend it to everyone, particularly those who don't have a commute to "wind up" and decompress from their work day!
However, it's now an effort to stay up past 10-10:30, and I wake up consistently around 6am.
What changed?
- 6 days/week with 6am meetings (remote work and timezones) - bright light (light box, much brighter than room lighting) and exercise early so I could function in those meetings - prioritized consistently going to bed and sleep early (often harder for me than getting up early) - and time passed
post hoc, ergo propter hoc, but consistency with those habits made it easier to function in those mornings, and it got easier as time passed.
Basically the idea is you always wake up at a consistent time and do exercise immediately. Preferably outside in the sunlight. I’ll run a few miles or on rainy days use the exercise bike. By 11 that night I’m wiped out and sleep like a baby. Even if I have one rough night of sleep for whatever reason, I still try to wake at 7 and do this routine. Over the long haul it’s dramatically improved my sleep.
Highly recommended if you have sleep issues
I used to work on projects where I'd be up anywhere from 1AM - 4AM. I really hated to do it, but I started a new job with new responsibilities so I had to be on top of my game during the day. It REALLY makes me yearn for a 32 hour work week because now I'm missing out on the side stuff I used to do.
One approach that I've found successful (in bursts) is if I focus on getting to sleep at a reasonable time on Sunday night. This seems to naturally put me in a good groove for the rest of the week.
It's just straight up better to be a morning person in our civilization.
The theory is basically thinking of humans as coupled oscillators that are entrained by sunlight.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
I've reluctantly forced myself into doing morning workouts now, but if any other night-owl there has any advice in making evening workouts work, please share.
My understanding is that during the Cambrian, the day was less than 23 hours long. At the emergence of the first eukaryotes it was 21 hours. Much shorter still when life first appeared.
That makes the uniformity of this protein across the major branches of life quite fascinating.
You can be what you want.
Is anyone aware of scientific research that looked into the possibility of awaking early vs. awaking late being different, but equally useful evolutionary strategies?
That’s why there is the classic stereotype of male teens waking up so late.
The only way to reset your circadian rhythm is sunlight as soon as you wake up in the morning! And melatonin at night
Fortunately I'm so exhausted from getting up at 5am that my body starts shutting down around 8pm.
The observation that genetics leads people to different circadian clocks is decades old. We already know what enzymes are involved.
What's news is that somebody has worked out some of the structures of the enzymes in some people with genetic sleep problems. That's one clue in figuring out how those enzymes actually work and how they evolved.
"Helps" is science writers' crutch for "here's a minor improvement in an ongoing thing, but we're going to pretend that we just solved it". I expect that from the clickbait love-science's-butt sites, but not from the NIH director's blog.
I've noticed that my sleep cycle also differs from 24-hours. It's usually around 28-32 hours. Having a 9-5 job _really_ kills my productivity.