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Ask HN: Has anyone switched from being a night owl to being a morning person?

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11–20 of 71 posts

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone switched from being a night owl to being a morning person?

#11
Changing it requires discipline. Someone else pointed out being active but that requires discipline too.

You also have to be honest with yourself because discipline requires it. A lot of people make excuses for themselves. They measure their productivity and cite the news blurbs about sleep studies that confirm their bias. They tell themselves and others they can’t. But the reality is that if you’re not sedentary and actually go to sleep with lights and devices off instead of procrastinating you will adjust.

You also have to actually want it enough to deal with annoyance or discomfort. If you convince yourself that you’ll fail you will lay there in the dark for hours until you give in and pull out your phone or laptop. Without motivation you’ll read this and think “I’ve tried all of this, I need some trick or way to solve this that doesn’t require hard work.”

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone switched from being a night owl to being a morning person?

#12
post #2

Have you ever spent a full day in the outdoors? The moment you lay your stuff for sleep before sunset you’re out like a baby till sunrise. That’s because you’ve been walking and being active all day. There’s also less distractions. Having said that, I do believe that if you were to wake up at 6 am, go to the gym and work daily, you would be ready to sleep like a baby at 9-10 pm. Most of the time when I become a night…

Do heavy deadlifts or squats and you will sleep like a baby that night.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone switched from being a night owl to being a morning person?

#14
Yes.

In college, I worked a third shift job, from 8pm to 430am one or two times a week. Staying up late was pretty much the way I did stuff.

Immediately after college, I started a job as a baker; work began at 7am Tuesday through Friday, and 4am on Saturday. I quit baking after two years, but I still wake up around 6am every day, even with no alarm set.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone switched from being a night owl to being a morning person?

#15
Yes, I have. In a desire to change some bad habits, I stopped using alarms to wake up, and I configured my router to stop providing me Internet access from 11pm every day. I also put a sign on my bedroom door, saying "this is a phone-free zone". The sunshine wakes me up. I kept this up at least for a couple of years. I genuinely feel like a morning person now, instead of a night owl that I used to be.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone switched from being a night owl to being a morning person?

#16
post #6

I have, and I also have done a lot of shift work too and easily switched regimes many times. The trick is very simple - if you want to wake up and have breakfast in 6 am, your last meal must be 14 hours before that - which is 4 pm on the previous date. No snacks, no dinner not anything like this. You will be hungry but you will find yourself falling asleep at about 10 pm. If you don't stay in front of a screen you ca…

A study in mice showed such a consumption schedule contributed to weight loss. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/timin...

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone switched from being a night owl to being a morning person?

#17
Yes. A light alarm is what let me do it, in particular the twighlight simulation, which allowed me to fall asleep consistently:

https://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3531_60/wake-up-light

It also dramatically improved my depression.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone switched from being a night owl to being a morning person?

#19
I found some helpful information in here that may apply:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180424-what-i-learnt-by-li...

Also, I second “hiking the AT”. You don’t even need to hike the AT, just find a 5 day/night backpacking trip. It’s like a reboot for your circadian rhythms. A slightly costlier reset is to fly east 6 or 7 time zones and spend a week there! But no matter what, after you do a reset, you need a good plan for holding on to your new schedule. That’s where the morning daylight comes in...

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