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Comment by buserror | Hacker News Reader

I do that a lot these days. I went to bed around 8:30pm, woke at 4am... It's 6:50 now and I've done a lot of work! It's nice, quiet, I just really crack on.

I'm waiting for 8am, then feed + walk the dogs, then I'll go back to bed for 1h or a bit more (tops), and it'll still be early when I wake up again. Most of my colleagues will show up around 10 with bleary eyes while I've done most of the stuff I wanted to do already!

... So that gives me a lot of time for a good walk, or tinkering etc in the afternoon.

I used to be a 'night owl' really, going to bed at 2am; but I realized I was never really terribly efficient until about lunchtime the following day, while I was also wasting my time in the evening for no real reason. AND wasting the short winter day at my desk.

Nowadays, well, I got the whole day to myself!

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So your weekday evening social life is non existent?

I would imagine everyone who is 35+ with family has no evening social life. Or am I missing something?

Another question, at some point in your life - do you even want an evening social life?

This! It's not even about the family. I think it just gets boring and unnecessarily exhausting after 10+ years so it transforms to trips, mid-day visits at home and various shared hobbies (like you meet with your friends to go bouldering Saturday morning, idk).

Not OP, but most of the people I know above 30 don't "go out" on weekday evenings nor regular weekends tbh. Even people without kids. Various trips and meets in friends' houses during the day (usually Sunday) is the main form of socializing.

For the most part, going out just sounds awful. The parking, the people, the price for mediocre drinks. I’m good lol.

But have you really tried any? :)

Because I go out regularly and does not have any problems with parking (uber / public trans. / choosing places with plenty of parking generalny solves this headache) , the people (you know that you can choose who you meet), prices (free meetups rules) and mediocre drinks (not drinking is an option ,but if somehow not, craft beers seems to work)

I think it depends on a variety of factors. The given city, day of the week, popularity of the establishment, etc. Going to a great brewery in Columbus on a Wednesday is a great time. Going out to a super packed bar on a Friday night in Los Angeles is a different experience.

I'm in the "over 30 without kids" category. I used to do the go to bed / wake up early thing. Used to be great for the same reasons OP mentions.

Then I found there actually were things I wanted to do on weekdays. These tend to happen later in the evening, like 8-9 PM. Think taking up some sport / dance / other kind of class. Clubs usually meet in the evenings, too.

In my neck of the woods, people usually start work around 9:30 and get off around 6:30 - 7. You basically need one hour to get around town, so you can't reasonably hold an event earlier than 8 and expect any amount of people to show up.

And that's without mentioning participating in NGOs, collectives, unions, or dare I say activism.

The current system is not built for free time, it is built for work time and if you're lucky you can shove some quality time with your kids between your employer and your sleep but that's optional.

If we didn't work so much, used all the producittvity gains to actually work less as was promised, this wouldn't even be a discussion, but alas.

Not OP, but I'm almost the same.

If you have (young) kids, it's non existent either way.

Now I go to sleep at the same time my kids do, around 9PM. My social life is during noon. My lunch-time is 2.5 hours instead of the usual 40min. During that time I go to the gym, have lunch with my wife, do some shopping, go to the barber,...

I can recommend it. More sunlight, more movement, no evening binging, no hanging in the couch, no useless late-night phone scrolling, no tired mornings, better quality time with the family...

Pretty much so. Mind you I did a lot (too much) in my 20's and 30's, both amazingly good, and amazingly bad, which means going out at in my little off-the-city town is boring as hell anyway.

I'm much more excited about able to be able to go fishing at 4am in the summer, NOW we're talking ;-)

i sleep similarly to the OP (2200-0500). i wouldn't say it's non-existent. instead, i'm much more selective over what i do at night.

the calculus now is: "is this thing that ends super late worth being tired as shit the next day? i'm going to wake up at 0500 regardless."

a date night with my wife or close friends that goes deep into the night? sure!

a random night where folks just want to drink? unlikely, unless i _really_ want to hang with those people. (this means i dip early for work events now. this is okay, since most of the people i work with have kids and need to bail earlier to take care of them.)

that said, i "can" be more selective now because i spent many years doing the latter. i know how it goes, and i've drank enough to know that i'm not missing anything.

i used to be a super hardcore night owl (0200-0900). transforming into an early bird was very hard but extremely worth it. between this and giving up caffeine, my productivity shot up through the roof and my mood in the morning is much more stable.

also, waking up early is a great way to make friends with others that wake up early!

I want to implement something like this so badly. It's just impossible when one is in the strict 9-5 meat grinder.

I'm a night owl that crashes around 2 AM, and honestly, I think it's why I can barely function on an average day. I try to make up for lost sleep on the weekends, but it doesn't quite work that way.

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