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A bit off topic I know, but as a night owl till my mid 30s I actually managed to flip to an early bird. Maybe it was just a fluke or something and this is totally anecdotal but what I think happened is for about 3-4 months I was doing a physical activity in the morning that I _really wanted_ to do - some martial arts classes.

And then one faithful morning there was this training session that was just sublime - working out outside, in the heat of the rising sun, very idilic. From that morning onwards, I started waking up 7am by myself, whatever I do, no matter if I stay late or not ... it was very bizarre, I just "flipped" from one day to the next.

I attribute this to the fact that most really fun things in my life happen late - parties, dancing, playing computer games to 3am, bouts of in the zone coding, spending nights with my partner - all happening in the evening, so my body obviously tries to "optimise" its attention to when I crave it most.

When I consistently had a thing that was really engaging for me for a long enough period (and no corresponding "high" in the evening) I switched to an early bird.

Last year I've stopped doing the fun morning stuff and I can sense slowly moving back to late evenings and unpleasant mornings.

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My personal hypothesis is “night owl”-ism is not as widespread as it seems (not to say it is not existent), but instead, our society makes it easier to be a night owl. I have had times in my life where I am out of bed at 5, at 8, at 11, and all have felt reasonable at the time. But definitely it is harder to be out of bed at 5 in today’s society.

Artificial lights, entertainment, modern lifestyle, and socializing all keep us up later than we ever would be in our natural state. How many night owls do you think there would be if we did not work indoors all day, had no light past sundown, no television or sporting events to watch, no bars or parties to attend, and no addictive activities to engage in? When considering this, it is easy to conclude that one is a night owl.

Just as the night owl feels ostracism for being unable to perform at early meetings and suffers throughout their youth, many early birds feel similar ostracism, because they want to sleep when night life is coming alive. I imagine these “coincidences” create vastly different outcomes in life for people based on their biological inclinations. It’s something we should be cognizant of.

“Night owl” does not describe some innate biological reality. It’s a matter of preference and habit.

To the contrary, there are genetic changes that correlate to different chronotypes [0]. I find interesting the hypothesis that chronotypes arose as a survival advantage because tribes could more naturally sleep in shifts to stay safe during the night time. I do think, however, the genetic component is overstated. I agree with you that it is more habit than anything, and lifestyle.

We as a society should do more research to determine how large the habit versus genetic components are, or publicize the information and act on it more if it is out there already. If we are fighting an unwinnable battle trying to adjust people in opposition to their genetics, we should change our practices. Similarly, if we are instilling a defeatist mindset into people (e.g. “I can’t do that, I’m not an early bird”) which cannot be justified by science, we should change our perception.

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6084759/

The fact it’s called a correlation shows it is not a fact that there are biological night owls.

And it shows that it’s not a fact that there are not.

In this case the correlation is due to a causal relationship between genetic variation and chronotype that is well established. The roles of many of the genes involved have been established in lab organisms -- fruit flys and mice mostly -- yes you can observe and manipulate chronotype in flys. The same circadian rhythm genes have similar functions in people. There are rare mutations in these genes that cause familial sleep disruption syndromes, as well as common variants that have small effects that can be detected in large studies.

I think with genetic sequencing we’re way past this belief.

We are not. There are some suggestions that they might be biological but it is not a settled matter at all.

It is absolutely settled. The genetic basis of chronotype has been extensively studied in fruit flys and mice, and parallel effects in the same genes have been found in humans.

I'm not sure that's true, at least based on personal experience. I'm a long-time night owl who has been getting up relatively early for work purposes the last couple of years. I still do my best work late at night and struggle a little on complex tasks before noon.

It seems like, while I can adjust my sleep schedule to whatever, the actual cycles of alertness have their own schedule that doesn't want to move.

Without a clear biochemical pathway (or an absence of) that's just an opinion, as weak as most the the current research in humanities.

This is false, the biological pathways that underly circadian rhythms have been mapped out in great detail in multiple organisms.

I think there's a lot to be said for habits swaying it but I think "biological" night-owl-ism is definitely a thing.

I've always been a night owl. The most in-tune I've ever felt with my biological clock is when, one summer in college, I ended up going to bed at 5-6am and waking up around 3-4pm. I had friends on IRC who lived in new zealand who I ran a minecraft server with and did minecraft plugin coding with (enabled by the weird sleep cycle, not caused by it).

College and school etc always had me feeling exhausted. I maintain that I must have some innate mathematical ability because my 7:30 AM algebra 2 class in high school was performed exclusively by my subconscious as my brain got an extra hour of sleep regardless of what the external world was trying to impose upon it.

Anyway, blah blah night owl, then I had kids. Both the father and mother have a lot of hormonal changes (obviously the mother moreso but it's still nontrivial for the father) and all of a sudden I was able to wake up with the baby at 6:30am after 7 hours of shitty sleep with relatively no problem. Where was this in high school?? Well, the sleep part, not the baby part. But I digress.

Baby becomes toddler and start sleeping 10-12 hours at night, hormones recede, normalcy restores, and suddenly waking up to go to work at even 9am resumes being mild-to-moderately painful.

Have next baby. Cycle repeats.

Currently typing this having gotten up at 7 with baby #3 so this is top of mind.

This is total speculation on my part, but it seems like there would be a strong evolutionary pressure, at a group level, to select for a mixture of night owls and early risers. The "night owls" stay up to watch for predators to keep the group safe. Those groups without some late sleeper DNA ultimately get selected out.

BINGO.

There are probably some genetic night-owls or something, but I bet 95+% of night owls would be "cured" in a week flat if they were allowed no glowing screens past sundown and their typical stupid-bright room lighting were replaced with warm-temp handheld lights at ~2-4 candle equivalent (actual, not "candle power")

Modern sleeplessness is an epidemic born of hyper-palatable on-tap nigh-infinite entertainment, and far-too-bright nighttime lighting, more than anything else. It's mainly due to how incredibly stimulating our home environments are now, unprecedented ever before. Even an emperor didn't have this kind of entertainment available 24/7 on a whim—the closest equivalent would be an emperor in the middle of hosting a huge, expensive festival, but we've got that at our fingertips every hour of every day. No fucking wonder we can't sleep!

I usually sleep 9h from 3 to 12.

But, when I was on a conference last year, where I had to get up early for events for a whole week, my rythm changed and I slept from 12 to 9.

This kept going on for two weeks or so, then I was back to my old schedule.

> I bet 95+% of night owls would be "cured" in a week flat if they were allowed no glowing screens past sundown and their typical stupid-bright room lighting were replaced with warm-temp handheld lights at ~2-4 candle equivalent (actual, not "candle power")

It's an interesting theory. Problem is, without a biochemical pathway it means nothing.

Melatonin secretion & basal temperatures are both interesting avenues for research. Blue light seems to be a favorite as well.

It's not all biochemistry, much of it's psychology. Unless we're going with "psychology is just biochemistry".

I get where you are going, but there are a few issues with this, the first being that no screens after sundown is a wildly unreasonable ask in 2023 (especially for the types of folks who frequent this board), at least in my opinion. A lot of the talk around screen time before bed also fails to factor the type of activity being done on the screen, and what type of screen is being used. Shopping on your laptop vs reading on a fully dimmed phone screen are entirely different ends of the spectrum in terms of stimulation and significantly different in terms of light emitted and screen motion

That said, I’ve found switching to warm dimming circadian lighting at night has been a huge help and is an easy enough solution

A better question is: why is this something that needs to be cured? Why cater society's schedule to people who wake up at "too fucking early" O'clock, instead of either A) having flexible hours for jobs that support it (There's no reason why my office needs to have everyone work the same 8 hours), or B) a middle ground that doesn't involve grating against the preferred sleep schedule of a significant portion of the population.

Somehow we let society moralize "the early risers are Gods chosen people" and the rest of us just need to put up with it.

I wonder what role widespread caffeine consumption has to play in this.

This is somewhat along the lines of my current theory, which is that night owls vs early birds is about sensitivity to the environment. The reason night owls stay up late is not because it's late, but because it becomes quiet enough that the environment they're sensitive to stops taking attention and they can direct that attention inward. According to this theory, it would make sense for introverts to be more affected by this as they would accumulate an "introversion deficit" throughout the day.

> Maybe it was just a fluke or something and this is totally anecdotal but what I think happened is for about 3-4 months I was doing a physical activity in the morning that I _really wanted_ to do - some martial arts classes.

I suspect this is at the root of a lot of “night owl” personalities: Night time is equated with freedom, whereas mornings are equated with having to do something they don’t like (work, school).

Finding something semi-enjoyable to do in the morning is key to not hating mornings. If someone’s mornings are just a painful slog to a job you dislike and a detour until you can get to the evening where you can maybe enjoy something, of course they’re going to be a night owl.

> Night time is equated with freedom

Interesting thought. I enjoy being alone and have always equated early morning with freedom. There are very few distractions at 5am. Night owls just get to that sweet spot in time from the other direction.

But you don’t spend those hours before work with the inevitability of what you’ll have to deal with at work in just a few hours weighing on your mind?

Personally I find evenings a bit different, in that I’m sufficiently worn out mentally from the day that I no longer can think (productively) about work — and so the worries of the upcoming day are temporarily shelved for lack of practical progress to be made on them. Through no particular mental effort on my part, it is easy to relax in the evenings.

But in the mornings, I’m fresh enough that that doesn’t work. I can, through an act of willpower and mindfulness, intentionally forget that work is a thing I’ll have to be doing in a few hours, and so just enjoy my mornings like you do — but this was a skill I learned, and I didn’t always have it; and moreover, I suspect it’s a skill many people never develop.

Yes and no. I enjoy getting personal tasks done in the morning before work, especially those that require a sharp mind. Like you mentioned, I feel worn out mentally and the end of the day, though I find I'm happier and more productive overall if I save a few sharp-minded hours in the early morning for myself.

Work is one of many things I do, and I never feel the need to forget it exists. Dealing with it is inevitable whether it's right before bed or right when I wake up. For me, relaxation comes from doing other things like reading, working out, jiu-jitsu, watching a show, etc...

I am sharpest in the morning, and every day gives me a new opportunity on where to apply myself when I'm at my best.

I know people who really need to get up early because the morning is their most productive part of the day by a really huge margin. They start yawning around 1-2 pm to really drive the point home. Their circadian rhythm seems heavily stacked towards the early game.

I work night shifts, some of the early birds are insanely dumb after 3 am, insanely dumb compared to who they are the rest of the day. I see one student of higher education put down his a tool and turn around for 3 seconds then panic wondering where they put it. Not one time! I see him do that hundreds of times. I keep a mental map of where I see him put stuff so that I can remind him or answer when asked. They had plenty of rest, they work hard. It's supper funny to me because I'm a bit like that before 11 am. I'm physically there, if someone asks me to do something my mind makes a raw audio recording of it that I often revisit later to parse out what it was they actually said. In school I've aced tests with 100% questions I consciously knew nothing about. You have to picture it, its hilarious, I read a question about a topic I've never seen before, 5 seconds later I apparently know the answer to the question. I know the difference in file format, recalling unparsed information comes with a lot of irrelevant data about the moment the teacher explained the topic. After 1 pm I only retain the relevant parts, those files contain almost no information about when I learned it, their attachments are my own thoughts.

Of course at times I have to condition myself for morning productivity, I can for example get up at 4 am if I need my brain at 9:00. I can go to bed early, at exactly the same time, rest the body/eyes and think about life for a few hours. It works but it feels wrong, it screams wrong.

I did a hilarious experiment one time where I went to bed at 17:30 straight after work and set the alarm at 1 am. It felt perfect but had negative social implications.

Maybe its a cool idea for a startup. It seems one hell of a perk from my perspective.

There may be a kernel of truth to this, but–as a lifelong nightowl who got in the habit of going for morning runs several years ago–I‘ve never been able to wake up as easily as I can stay up.

I love the feeling of running early in the morning as the city wakes up around me. I get a lot of the same enjoyment as when I stay up late at night, but I still haven’t been able to maintain a habit of truly early runs.

These days I sleep roughly midnight to 8am, and could very easily stay up til 4am if I were to want to, but shifting the other direction and waking up at 5 or 6am to run is super difficult. I can do it for a few days but have never made it stick. Running at 8 or 9am is still nice but not quite the same.

> I‘ve never been able to wake up as easily as I can stay up.

Is that even quantifiable? Maybe you can stay up till 2 but not wake up by 7. But 2 and 7 nor any other pair are equivalent so I don’t see how you could make that comparison.

>> Maybe it was just a fluke or something

> Night time is equated with freedom

I'm middle-aged. I think my testosterone-levels are falling (sex-drive diminishing, at least). Paired with that I've had less depression [desire a season of grief]. But also I've had periods of morning wakefulness.

Someone said downthread "you've just aged". Seems to me, on n=1, like I'm transitioning in my sleepy times. I'm getting up early (for periods of days/weeks at a time), but it's the 'waking and feeling wakeful' that is driving it.

On the flipside, I get super-sleepy after lunch.

If the drive to get solitude were the cause, then night-time provides that still in my home, despite me finding myself drawn towards being an early-bird (but still only for short periods of a few days to a few weeks, so far).

Of course I could just have a brain tumour, but it would be interesting to see some broad studies on sleep pattern changes in middle-age?

Try eating a light meal at lunch if you want to stay awake. Digestion is energetically demanding and causes fluctuations in your blood sugar.

Yes, I've always had a postprandial dip in energy levels, but I do only have a light lunch.

I tried this with scuba diving classes and paragliding classes, but I still hated it. I typically wake up at 9:00 am, but I don't function very well until around 10:00 am.

I think the early morning wake-up time (5:00 am for the paragliding classes) was a contributing factor in one of the other paragliding students running into me, collapsing both our wings, and sending us 150 to 200 feet into the ground.

Fortunately, neither of us died, but I shattered one of my vertebrae and she shattered her pelvis. Not worth it.

I should mention that paragliding can only safely be done in the early morning or in the evening. The wind gets too choppy during the day, making it a lot more dangerous. For me, evening lessons would have been a much better option than early morning lessons. Had I opted for that, I may still be doing it and wouldn't have had to deal with a multi-year recovery, multiple operations, and chronic pain today. Lesson learned, I guess.

Reminds me of my early-morning driving lessons. No matter how much I prioritized being rested for them, on the morning drives my attention was always 60%+ focused on just not falling asleep. Several times I had a situation when I would suddenly realize I've been asleep for the past 5+ seconds - while going down a road at 100km/h. The fear of this resulting in an actual accident is a major factor why, after random life circumstances interrupted my learning, I haven't pursued that license again.

One of the more interesting things I had happen to me while being unemployed was I actually liked waking up relatively early. I'm was always a "nightowl". now I had the feeling that the whole day was mine and I wanted the most from it. Before I'd stay in bed pretty much to the last minute

> Night time is equated with freedom

The tagline and part of what is explored in a Fall anime - Call of the Night.

Was really good, highly recommend

> I attribute this to the fact that most really fun things in my life happen late - parties, dancing, playing computer games to 3am, bouts of in the zone coding, spending nights with my partner - all happening in the evening, so my body obviously tries to "optimise" its attention to when I crave it most.

I’ve personally found that 4am wake-up is driven by the same goal as 3am bedtimes: hours when everyone else is too asleep to bother you. The big difference is that it’s far easier to stay awake than it is to force yourself out of bed.

Doubly so when you live with a partner. Triply so when you have kids that will wake up (for the final time) at some point between 0400 and 0600, so you can't even rely on that time being uninterrupted anyway.

I‘ve always been a night owl. Waking up at any time before 8am just left me groggy for most of the morning. It didn’t matter if I established a sleep schedule where I got a full 8 hours, my body just doesn’t like getting up that early.

But after returning from a trip to a different time zone, I discovered something kinda bizarre. If I wake up around 4:30am, I feel amazing and I’m super productive for the whole day. I have to be in bed by 9pm, but even with slightly less than 8 hours sleep, the effect is transformative.

But my problem ends up being that the world is super hostile to an adult going to bed by 9pm. It’s just really hard to keep on that schedule when you’re interacting with the rest of society. So I end up on my old night owl schedule because it’s the only one that somewhat works for my body and my interactions with other people. I really wish I could stay on the up-at-4:30 schedule, though, because it’s just so energizing.

I agree. I also would add to the theory that for a night owl, getting up at 4:30-5:00 am, is still getting up at night, so it is ok with whatever hormone regulatory system exists. But you are correct, you need to go to sleep around 8pm which is impossible, if you want to keep it up. And if your are up after 9, then you're screwed, and can't sleep until 2 AM. I also agree with poster up above about kids changing your dream cycle to make it possible to wake early, when necessary.

     but as a night owl till my mid 30s I actually managed to 
     flip to an early bird.

Anecdotally, this seems common. Even without early morning incentives. I think a lot of late sleepers become early risers as they reach their 30s and 40s.

It's called "ageing."

I really hope that'll be true for me as well. (still have a few years left in that age span)

Each time I go to bed early and get enough sleep, I just love the morning hours and being done with the day's work while the sun is still shines is really nice.

Yet no matter how hard I try it seems the temptations of the internet get me every time and with a blinks it's 3 am :(

It's probably easier if you've got a partner who is a natural early bird.

> It's probably easier if you've got a partner who is a natural early bird.

It's not. You will get up early, that's true. Then you'll spend until noon in zombie mode, then you'll blow through the afternoon, all stressed, trying to desperately catch up with your work as to not have to stay late. Then the partner/family stuff, and then with the evening, comes the big problem: you now need those late-night hours even more, to unwind, to sort your thoughts out. However, it also feels bad to not go asleep with your partner together. But then, you're not really in the mood for anything and going to sleep early feels like throwing away the best part of the day.

In the famous words of Admiral Ackbar, it's a trap. Ask me how I know.

(Also, Admiral Ackbar doesn't know a thing about traps. It's not really a trap until you have small children in the mix, randomly disrupting any kind of rhythm or schedule you cling to in order to cope.)

It's like you reached into my mind and transcribed my thoughts directly.

Don’t forget guilt tripped for sleeping “in” until 10am

That too. Fortunately that "solved itself" thanks to the kids not letting anyone sleep past 08:00.

One could see where there's a biological advantage in this pattern. For a group of pre-modern humans, most tasks will happen during daylight, but some (keeping watch, childcare, tending a fire) work best with someone awake around the clock. Notably, those tasks can be done by people who aren't either physically able enough (older) or mentally experienced enough (younger) to do the core activities (hunting and gathering).

With older people waking up very early, and adolescents staying up very late, you can cover the entire daily cycle with alert humans capable of doing basic tasks (and alerting the rest of the group should something come up).

Yup. When I was in my 20s, all these guys I knew in their late 30s and up were all getting up at the crack of dawn to go running or other activities. Seemed like they must be very disciplined.

At around age 37, I started noticing I could wake up at 6am no problem, and now I could probably get up at 5 fairly easily, provided I can get to bed on time.

Yes, you went through the same shift on circadian rhythm that most people do as they age. Babies sleep a lot irregularly. Very small children take a nap in the middle of the day. Young adults are sleepy sometime between 1-4am. Adults stay up 9pm-maybe 1 am. Old people sleep little and wake lots, somewhat like babies. There are predictable shifts on average in preferences that have next to nothing to do with what we do.

I'm a bit of both, which is effectively the same thing.

If I'm sleeping later, I prefer to work late, at least until 3am. However, my most natural awakening happens by 5am. From there, I can work for 3-4 hours in silence until it begins to warm up outside.

I don't do well with either too little sleep or an irregular sleep schedule, and I don't like sleeping around other people's schedules. Which, with a partner and a very bossy cat, I don't have much hope of overcoming.

This probably makes the most sense to me. But I also think depending on caffeine to wake up keeps the brain from transitioning from sleep to a full waking state. I can't seem to give up coffee, but I notice if I cut back it is not as severe. Also, going to bed early enough so that by the time you wake up, you have had time to run through the final dream REM stage of sleep before waking up helps tremendously.

I flipped when we only had one kid, it worked much better with my training schedule. Once we had two (and three) kids I've always had to fight for any sleep I could get so the idea of "being" a "night-owl" or "early-bird" lost all meaning.

That is gradually improving and once my youngest starts school I'm going to try to return to the early bird pattern. We'll see how it goes.

Surprisingly, with two small kids, I only reinforced my night-owl habits. The rhythm we settled at is simple: my wife - a natural early bird - handles the early morning while letting me sleep in a little, and I - a natural night owl - stay up late, effectively covering for anything that happens between 23:00 and 03:00, so that it doesn't wake her up.

It's a bad system in so many ways, but we can't seem to make anything else work. And we know from experience that both of us getting enough sleep is the foundation on which everything else stands.

We did shift-sleep for the early weeks for all three kids (all ours were sleeping through the night by 3ish months, so it was never that long we had to do it, though) and I can't imagine doing it any other way. Couples who both get up for every event out of some apparent sense of either solidarity or resentment are just baffling to me. WTF, so you're both constantly running on like zero REM sleep? Jesus, that's like doing it on hard mode for no good reason.

The way we did it, we both got about six uninterrupted hours every week night, so it really wasn't that bad. Then alternate sleep-in days on the weekend, and you even get one really good 8+ (hell, sometimes 10 or more) hour sleep per week. Could have maintained that schedule much longer than we had to, really was totally manageable, if not exactly fun.

I hear you. Doing something physical in the early morning hours when you can sense that the rest of the world is still at rest is sublime. I too have lived most of my life as a night owl but there have been bursts recently when an early morning run is exactly what I need.

A couple of years earlier but I experienced the same. I started working on a project I really liked in the mornings before work and I automatically started to get up early, now almost a decade later I m still waking up early.

It seems to be understood now that getting outdoor sunlight in your eyes after waking up is what sets your circadian clock. This 100% worked for me too.

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