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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

90% of Hacker News probably thinks they are night owls. Most (but definitely not all) of you are wrong -- you're just young, over-caffeinated, over-exposed to artificial light and / or adjusting because the fun stuff in life happens in the evenings and at night.

I thought I was a night owl. I got fired once for showing up to start work at closing time after being warned several times.

10 years later, I'm one of those people that wakes up at 5AM so they can go to the gym before work.

What changed? I hit my forties, I cut out caffeine, I stopped using the computer after 9PM, I got married & had kids, and I go out dancing 6 times a year rather than 6 times a week.

Want to know if you're really a night owl without radical experiments like cutting out caffeine? Ask your Mom if you slept in on Saturdays when you were 7 years old.

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>What changed? I hit my forties

It's pretty well documented that people in your age group are generally early risers and that people in young adulthood tend to be night owls. Getting older and having your preference change is hardly an indication that you were "never really" a certain way when you were younger.

I'm 20, don't drink caffeine or go out more than once or twice a month. Left to my own devices, in a few weeks I'd be falling asleep around 10AM and waking up at 5PM.

People are different. It doesn't mean they're wrong.

You're 20 years old, and you use computers after 9PM, I presume. Therefore the time shifting you experience is perfectly normal, and is not necessarily because you are a night owl.

You're presuming a bit too much there. I don't understand how you figure my age factors into some sort of false transition period or that my experience is any less real because it happens before an arbitrary age, though.

>I'm 20, don't drink caffeine or go out more than once or twice a month. Left to my own devices, in a few weeks I'd be falling asleep around 10AM and waking up at 5PM.

I'd bet that might not be so without electronics :)

99% of statistics on the Internet are false.

I don't take caffeine in any form, don't do any drugs. Nor sugar. All displays at their lowest level of backlight the whole day. Still, there's no way I could fall asleep before midnight.

Every time I had to wake up before 7-8 it was a physically painful experience.

And yes, I pretty much always slept in on Saturdays, Sundays and every free day I could.

Like others in this thread say -- the "you're just a lazy ass" thinking is really hurtful and ignorant.

I am happy there're still companies with sane approach to office hours.

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