101–110 of 151 posts
How I became a morning person? I had kids! They completely resynced my whole day. I don't know if this works for everybody but It worked for me and I can't belive now how I could take lunch at 5pm before.
Your kids must have been rather different to mine - I didn't become a morning person - just a perpetually tired person.
I find that when I'm a morning person I'm much better at getting "needed stuff" done and also take better care of my health. When I do the night-owl thing, I'm far better at the more forward-thinking things but struggle more with taking care of myself and can procrastinate on short-term requirements.
I also find that night-owling can make me feel depressed after a while, not taking care of things that I should, whereas being a morning person can make me feel trivial after a while, not really putting any deep thought into things.
There's some quote the origin escapes me like "they wake up so early because there's so much to do, and go to sleep so early because there's so little to think about" (I'm thinking Middlemarch, but can't find it), which pretty much sums it up. You can't win. (That said I'm pretty happy when on a multi-week solo bike tour and waking up early every day).
I always roll my eyes a little bit when people say they get extra "free hours" by waking up earlier. In this case it works for the OP, because he has another motive, which is syncing his schedule with his wife so he can spend more time with her. But the extra hours don't come from nowhere... you need to compensate by losing a comparable amount of time at night. My waking hours are usually 10-11am until 2-5am. It's no…
I relate to OP's notion of "free hours". Simple programming tasks took me twice the usual time late at night, and after 1am I just couldn't come up with anything creative. That's great that you work well in the evening, but not everyone works this way. When I shifted to morning schedule, I didn't waste time on doing tasks slowly at night, so these are my free hours.
When I've tried working longer hours (by starting earlier) my total productivity goes down significantly. I know a lot of people who just say you get used to getting up earlier, but I never do. Even maintaining an early-ish schedule waking up at 6:30 for a full year, I was just plain miserable every day and it never got better. On the other hand, I know plenty of people who only get stuff done in the morning and rise early. Whatever works, but it sucks when jobs force everybody to start on an stupendously early schedule. But it cuts both ways - I don't want to force other people to work on my schedule if that makes them miserable.
I was training martial arts like crazy at the time, after work 5 days a week.
I wanted to compete in a tournament. To qualify I had to attend 'special' classes early in the morning. They started 6:30AM, and that meant a 5:30AM wakeup for me.
So I set an alarm and did the first morning. I put the alarm in the next room, so I'd be forced to get up and turn it off.
Going out in the dark felt as weird as going out without any pants on. I was convinced no one else would turn up for the training. They all did, of course.
I did this 5 days the first week, and spent all day at work half-asleep at my desk.
By the end of the following week I felt normal, and it's been my routine ever since, tho I'm not training any more.
I'm still not a 'genuine' morning person. I can't maintain a conversation before 7AM, but I am productive.
Speaking of being more productive: if I head to work at 6AM, the couple hours I get of no interruptions are guaranteed to be the most productive in my day.
To him a night owl is up till midnight. To me, midnight is super duper early. I struggle to sleep before 5am. At midnight I wake up and have been known to gut clean the entire house then. Even if i've been awake for over 24 hours i wake up at night. I cycle around my sleeping pattern often, i'll get up at 3am. I'll try and get it slowly to 5am wake up, then 7am - normal time. I can usually keep it there for about a w…
I have a similar sleeping pattern. Over time it tends to shift a couple hours. For instance, I slept from 9am until about 330PM today. By Tuesday it will likely be closer to 11am until 5 or 6pm. It will occasionally adjust itself to something more "normal" but never for more than a week before it starts rolling again. I work remotely and my wife is a bartender, so it's never much of a problem for me. When I interact…
To him a night owl is up till midnight. To me, midnight is super duper early. I struggle to sleep before 5am. At midnight I wake up and have been known to gut clean the entire house then. Even if i've been awake for over 24 hours i wake up at night. I cycle around my sleeping pattern often, i'll get up at 3am. I'll try and get it slowly to 5am wake up, then 7am - normal time. I can usually keep it there for about a w…
I always roll my eyes a little bit when people say they get extra "free hours" by waking up earlier. In this case it works for the OP, because he has another motive, which is syncing his schedule with his wife so he can spend more time with her. But the extra hours don't come from nowhere... you need to compensate by losing a comparable amount of time at night. My waking hours are usually 10-11am until 2-5am. It's no…
I've kept both types of schedule and while it's true that the morning hours you get by waking up early aren't strictly "free", I have noticed that for me they are often more productive. I suspect this is because in the mornings there are never demands placed on my time by other people or "more interesting" things to do whereas in the evenings I am often inundated with invitations from friends or distracting opportuni…
There simply aren't as many distractions in the morning, because most other people are either still sleeping or at work.
I guess the same would work if most of your workday were really late at night (e.g. midnight to 8 am), but for most people, that kind of lifestyle tends not to be very compatible with the other demands of life and business. So working from early morning until early afternoon seems to hit a nice balance between lack of distractions and compatibility with other people's schedules.
If you really need to be a night owl, well, haven't we got the technology to adjust the lighting in our buildings so that you feel like it's afternoon even when it's only 8 am?
To him a night owl is up till midnight. To me, midnight is super duper early. I struggle to sleep before 5am. At midnight I wake up and have been known to gut clean the entire house then. Even if i've been awake for over 24 hours i wake up at night. I cycle around my sleeping pattern often, i'll get up at 3am. I'll try and get it slowly to 5am wake up, then 7am - normal time. I can usually keep it there for about a w…
I have a similar sleeping pattern. Over time it tends to shift a couple hours. For instance, I slept from 9am until about 330PM today. By Tuesday it will likely be closer to 11am until 5 or 6pm. It will occasionally adjust itself to something more "normal" but never for more than a week before it starts rolling again. I work remotely and my wife is a bartender, so it's never much of a problem for me. When I interact…
I always roll my eyes a little bit when people say they get extra "free hours" by waking up earlier. In this case it works for the OP, because he has another motive, which is syncing his schedule with his wife so he can spend more time with her. But the extra hours don't come from nowhere... you need to compensate by losing a comparable amount of time at night. My waking hours are usually 10-11am until 2-5am. It's no…
I'm in a similar boat, and I've never understood the patronizing attitude lobbed at night owls by morning people.