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> I envy people who regularly get tired in the evening rather than waking up and wanting to do stuff when the rest of the world shuts down.

Here's some more from my personal experience (not saying it would work for any of you, and it appears you've already tried a few times):

fwiw, I rarely am tired in the evenings, I just decide that it's reasonable to go to bed now. Similar about food, I do it more to keep my machine working, not because I'm hungry. Sometimes I pull a late-nighter because I'm sucked into something, but getting up the next morning is harder (the "blerch" [1] is louder) so that sucks.

Every time my alarm goes off in the mornings (fun fact: the alarm sound is "Gonna Fly Now" from Rocky :-) there's a few minutes where my inner "blerch" tries to convince me to stay in bed. Every time. I force myself to walk the stairs and down a glass of tomato juice, and in almost an instant, am up and running.

I don't think that it being really easy is the point here. And part of me always wants to stay up long and nerd around. For me, taking control, getting over that hump is never easy and takes a good bit of discipline, for the lack of a better word. I did find that getting up in the mornings and stopping to code/paint/play games a bit earlier before getting tired gets easier with time.

[1] where I got that "blerch" word from: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/running

Lol. I can't think of anything that would have me up and running like that. It often takes several hours after I get up before I properly feel alert and awake.

The only thing that I have found really works is about an hour of exercise, preferably cycling. That was a lot easier when I lived in a warm country.

Also I guess I'm not convinced why I should have discipline... it just seems to work for other people!

I did an experiment when I was in my early twenties: I went to bed when tired and got up when I woke up. My time awake shifted an hour or two every day, soon moving my sleep time to fall squarely during day time. I functioned just fine with this schedule but the bad thing about it was it shifted me out of my social life - hard to keep that going when you are asleep when your friends are awake and vice versa.

I tried that when I was a student, with much the same results though probably a couple more hours shift daily.

You get really weird days when 10am has become 'staying up late' somehow...

This is exactly how I describe my sleep pattern. I just don't feel like my body has a 24 hour cycle. I'd probably be awake 20 hours and sleep 7 hours, and would end up shifting my schedule by 3 hours a day if there were no external factors (sun, work, etc).

I've been thinking about this a bit, too. It reminds me of an article I read (can't find the link) that described "segmented sleep" [1]; how our ancestors might have had two sleep phases because nights were longer (e.g. no electrical light). Creative people would often have worked in the quiet period between both sleeps.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep

I don't think that would suit me either. When I'm awake I stay awake. Sleep likewise. It doesn't (and can't!) address the not-enough-hours-in-the-day thing.

I posted that more because I found it interesting, not because I think it would be very realistic to adopt such a pattern in "modern days".

If you want my advice (feel free to ignore me, I'm just a random guy on the internet):

If you aren't happy with how it's going for you (big if), identify the variables you can change, and experiment with them. What worked for me doesn't have to work for you, but I wouldn't count on "them" adding hours to the day anytime soon :-) Diet and exercise had a strong effect on my energy levels and sleep patterns, beyond that I'd just be guessing. The topic turns into biochemistry very fast, and I'm not very good at that. But at the end of the day, you're a machine, and that machine can be hacked. How, is up for you to find out.

(On mobile so I can't really load up much for articles, so the rest is based on an assumption about what you linked regarding segmented sleep in the past.)

My old business partner used to pull it off quite effectively. His girlfriend was an early to bed, early to rise type and seemed to require more sleep than him. They'd go to bed around 9 or 10.

She'd sleep through to 6. He'd sleep through to about 4, get up and screw around on the computer for a couple of hours, go back to bed, and then get up again at 8.

Got to go to bed at the same time as his girlfriend, got an extra couple hours of productive time in the night, got up at his regular time. It was, to me, a pretty ingenious solution within his constraints.

Unfortunately I'm the "if I'm up, I'm up" type. Takes me a bit of work to get conscious but once I do I won't sleep again until my bed time.

Advice is always helpful, especially from someone who has been owlish and found a way to change.

I go through phases of being happy with it and not, guess we'll see if/when I get annoyed enough to have another go at 'fixing' it.

As I mentioned above, I kind of had to change once I had kids and a day job. I might still be owling (heh) if my priorities weren't forced into a change that way.

Good luck :-)