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Comment by ETH_start | Hacker News Reader

So the main findings are superior cognitive performance being found in:

• people who sleep normal amounts (7–9 hours)

• night owls

night owls are people who are sensitive to light/noise/environment and therefore more productive in the night - when they can focus and be productive for prolonged periods of time without million of distractions.

when you don't have people calling, texting, slacking, zooming you, environmental noises (car, neighbours, other people, dogs), when you don't have personal life distractions (wife, kids, personal email, social media etc) - you can be in a flow state for prolonged time and be quite productive.

even such a small thing as lunch break, and other snack breaks - divides your day into two killing the flow.

Even when controlling for what’s noted, I’ve always been more productive of an evening and have been since a child. It’s not limited to me and there seems to be some genetic component. My mother, grandmother, aunts etc. All night owls, and all of us averaging 6-7 hours of sleep at best.

Regardless of what’s occurred before hand, my brain seems to kick into some higher gear at around 9-10pm. Like there is a noticeable change in my energy/cognitive capabilities.

Ironically, the only time this has ever deviated was two months I spent in Russia where for the first time in my life, I adapted almost instantly to what one might call a “normal” sleep schedule. As soon as I returned to my own time zone, it reverted back to me being a night owl again.

I’ve given up attempting to work around it and simply moved to a role that can accomodate it. It’s been huge for my physical and mental health to end the 30 odd years I’ve spent fighting what seems to be a natural schedule for me.

I have found that I'm most creative and productive right after waking, but it doesn't last long. My energy levels crash some hours after waking, then slowly rise as the day turns into evening hours. At that point, I'm not as energetic as I am right after waking, but that state can last well into the night until I can't stay awake any longer. Even as I'm getting tired at night, it seems different than the crash at midday. So, I think it's true you can have a higher level of productivity in the morning for a short period, but also get more done in the evening because of the extended period of "good enough" energy. Morning people and evening people are both correct. Circumstances generally determine which of those two ends are most easily exploitable. Because I work from home, I can take advantage of both.

I'm the same way. I wonder if it has to do with food or even the expectation of food. Maybe eating (or even drinking water) sends the body on a rollercoaster that mostly settles down by evening time.

Food intake makes blood go to stomach, temporarily reducing its amounts in the other parts of the body. It may cause some fatigue.

Disagree. I'm a night owl, and I work best with bustle around. Silence is eerie and distracting. I would keep the tv on when studying late into the night and I worked best in groups.

Nah. As a night owl myself it’s simply that I have trouble falling asleep due to an overactive mind. Add two hours or more of rolling around and instead of getting up at 7 I’m getting up at 9.

And before someone chimes in with sleep advice, please don’t. I’ve tried it all. Some rings help a bit but at the end of the day nothing makes enough of a difference. I just need those two hours my feet to the point when I can sleep.

Also no, going to bed before everyone else is not an option. I’m not giving up having a social life.

A night owl who feels pressured to wake at 7 or even 9am is a genuine tragedy.

I am extremely fortunate to have a career where I can sleep my natural hours of somewhere around 4:30 AM until after noon. But I had to fight for it, and set boundaries. I would encourage everyone with a late chronotype to seriously consider spending some time finding such work, as finally getting good sleep will be a major unlock for your life and happiness.

>A night owl who feels pressured to wake at 7 or even 9am is a genuine tragedy.

I'm very much a night owl. My whole childhood, I've been told by people that I can't choose to get out of bed late once I start working. Their message was clear: "Quit this lazy and childish behavior."

Nowadays, I sleep at 0:00-1:00 and get up at 7.30. I hate it. The world lacks empathy for us.

An anecdote, but I used to be a night owl. Like you, I had trouble falling asleep in the evening and then getting up in the morning.

Now in my thirties, it turned around. I fall dead asleep at 9-10 PM and wake up at 4-5 AM, not being able to sleep further. The change coincides with me getting kids, but I don't think it alone can explain this.

It can definitely change over time.

In my 30s I went from wanting to stay up until 2am or later, and getting up at 9-10am, to wanting to be asleep by 10pm and getting up before 6am, every day of the week, including weekends - staying out late socialising is now weirdly hard work, and I'm basically done with work by 4:30-5pm and ready to start winding down.

I don't have kids, something just flipped over the course of a year or two.

I'm flipping regularly, every month or two. All you need is lack of constant schedule and ADHD; suddenly days start to be longer than 24h and you can't just go to bed earlier (well, you can, but you'll just lay there awake for hours). For a while I had one meeting each week at work and free rein otherwise - so sometimes I was waking up early for it, and sometimes went to bed late because of it.

I've noticed that when I'm flipped to be awake in early morning, I get tired really fast. It's like a cutoff hour - I have missed some concerts just because they started at 7-8 PM which was around bed time for me at the time. When I'm in the evening/night mode, I can be much more flexible.

It seems much harder to flip out of morning mode than to flip into it, even though I really don't like how I'm feeling across the day. It requires conscious effort to beat the cutoff, while flipping out of evening mode just happens on its own eventually if I'm not careful enough.

I was never a morning person whenever I had to follow a schedule.

I think structuring days can help. I often am up at 6am with nothing to do for hours on end (it's a Sunday, my partner is not getting up until 10am, so I guess it's reading time or going for a walk time...?), but what I've found helps is marking blocks out in my calendar and then getting a reminder what its time to do.

Some weekdays at a certain time, it's time to go for a run. Saturday afternoons are side projects or spending time doing something with friends and family. Weekday evenings have a broad pattern to them (you won't see me in a cinema on a Friday night, or in the pub on a Monday...)

This structure seems to help regulate a ton of stuff, including eating, sleeping and so on. Some people "don't like routine", which I get, but you can basically block out sleep (plus an hour either side), and then riff in the middle, the key is try and get your head down around the same time, 7 nights a week, and try and learn the military sleep method [1] to get some consistency if you need it.

Good luck with settling it down, if that's what you want/need!

[1] https://www.dreams.co.uk/sleep-matters-club/what-is-the-mili...

Kids actually helped me, too. Strangest thing.

But only (any one of) three things have proven to reliably get me all the way to being able to sleep like a normal person every day (while sustained):

1) Being totally exhausted by my day. This requires a lot of physical activity. Basically impossible on a work day or if I have significant amounts of anything not-very-active to do. I rarely achieve this one on except on vacation.

2) Zero electronics, including electric lights, after sundown (or at least for a full two or more hours before I want to be asleep).

3) 5mg of weed gummy

Only the third one is compatible with normal modern life with an office job.

Oh yeah, I've improved over time for sure. Right now I need those extra two hours, when I was younger I'd roll around for 4-5h at times. In high school I routinely slept through my morning classes (in class), and in university I just stopped taking classes before noon.

Now I can almost do a 9-5 if I get up at 9 to be at work for 10. It's a vast improvement!

No sleep advice. Do you talked with a psychiatrist about ADHD? I had a similar experience before my diagnosis.

That’s me! But instead of going to bed late, I also try to get up very early to have the silent environment you describe.

So seeing the other comments disagreeing maybe what you’re describing is a different kind of night owl…

I personally find daylight itself to be "distracting" -- like that basic sensory input alone consumes some non-trivial amount of cognitive energy. I much prefer to think in a dark space. I've never met anyone IRL who relates to this though.

For what it’s worth I’ve loved wfh because I get to work in a dark cave with blacked out windows.

Yeah, there’s something about the day itself that’s distracting. Maybe it’s the light + some latent emotion I have from residual expectations about what I “should” be doing. Not sure.

At my worst I procrastinate my whole day away at home and not enter deep work until late at night where I become feverishly productive.

I feel the same, but I've never actually talked to anybody about it since it felt like such a strange thing to say. Thanks for letting me know I'm not alone!

I found that a basement is a good substitute during the day. Reduced noise, distraction and no sunlight which often changes intensity every time a cloud rolls by.

Owls could have the same amount of productive focus time in the early morning before everyone else starts to distract them - the reason they chose not to do that is mostly due to chronobiology, which is determined by genes, not social constructs like "lunch time".

As Douglas Adams said

“Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.”

What if you're a night owl who sleeps in. Does that make you just an offset normie?

Aren’t we all just offset normies?

I would argue no because, while you’re doing stuff that matters to you, everyone else is done with their day and partying. You’d just be asleep while everyone else is pretending to do their work.

What does partying have to do with this? If anything, strong party goers are more likely to be night owls who sleep in?

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