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Comment by rubicon33 | Hacker News Reader

This.

What's missing from this article, is a discussion about ideal sleep TIMES. Not everyone is meant to sleep from 10-6. Yes, you can fudge your sleep cycle and you can adjust, but only so much.

I'm naturally a night owl. With no alarm clock, and no obligations, I will "naturally" fall asleep at 3am, and wake up at 11.

In times of my life when I've been able to do this, the 8 hours that I would get then FAR TRUMPED the 8 hours I get now. It's night and day.

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> I'm naturally a night owl.

Many people are unnatural night owls, thanks to blue light sources in the evening - perhaps that applies to you too. Have you tried f.lux?

http://getflux.com/

Blue light may be interrupting sleep patterns, but I assume people who call themselves night owls share with me a certain feeling of mental haze during daylight hours, regardless of sleep schedule. I'm also about 5% weaker at lifting maximal weights until late afternoon. For what it's worth, I don't consume caffeine (allergic) and I do use f.lux.

I used to call myself a owl too. Often I would be in a haze until late afternoon, then work right up until I went to sleep. Running a business with employees meant I had to shift to mornings (though no longer), but now I'm definitely a lark. My schedule is almost reversed: I work an hour after I get up, and then chill out a couple of hours before bed.

Overall, on this schedule I feel much more rested.

For what it's worth, in my opinion the haze = noise. During the day every damned thing is causing too much noise, even if you block it out with music & headphones it's still noise/distraction. So when you get to the evening and definitely past midnight the ambient noise drops considerably, everything is quiet and there's far less to subconsciously distract you.

it may be sensory overload, variant by person. for me, it's definitely light. i feel fried and cranky within minutes of being in bright sunlight.

i use a program similar to flux and, while it's shifted going to sleep a couple of hours earlier, i still have as much difficulty getting to work by 9. maybe i'm still working through decades of deprivation.

Night-owl here, and that's not the problem. I will keep myself awake until 3AM whether I'm on my computer or not. I'll often read until 3AM because that's when my body seems to want to go to sleep.

edit: and I don't drink caffeine after 5.

I'm not denying the existence of night-owls of course, it's just that these situations are hard to judge until you've checked all possible causes.

5pm is pretty late to stop caffeine. Try stopping it at 2 or 3.

Wrong URL, try: https://justgetflux.com/

For the Linux users among us, there's redshift, which does about the same thing.

And there's Lux for Android, as well.

Shit, you're right and I can't edit it any more.

What's missing from this article, is a discussion about ideal sleep TIMES.

Yes, yes, yes!

Personally, I feel better rested after 6 hours of sleep if I get to sleep by 10 than 8+ hours of sleep if I don't get to bed until after midnight.

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