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Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

directorsblog.nih.gov

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Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#31

Post by saagarjha »

zozbot234 wrote: post #20
saagarjha wrote: post #3

There's early risers, night owls, and those who are still awake an hour after sunrise and should really get off of Hacker News…

If you're 'still' awake an hour after sunrise, does that mean you're technically an early riser?

I guess I haven’t technically risen…

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#32

Post by nkrisc »

I've found throughout my life my sleep cycle almost always follows the sun. I sleep in longer in the winter and wake up early in the summer. If I wake up with the sun I almost always feel refreshed and ready to go. I'm usually falling asleep by about 10PM (22:00) though, whatever I'm doing. After that point, laying down anywhere usually puts me immediately to sleep.

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#33

Post by el_cujo »

I've always been skeptical of the early-riser v night-owl dichotomy. When I was younger and in highschool, I had to be to school early every day, so I was on the early-riser schedule of sleep at ~10 PM wake at ~6 AM. When I later went to college, I adjusted to a sleep at ~2 AM wake at ~10 AM schedule. Anyone who is on one of these schedules is going to naturally have difficulty if one random day of the week they need to, say, be at work extra early or be out extra late, that's usually where this kind of thing comes up. I feel like this has much more to do with whatever routine you're currently in than it does with any instinctive preference.

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#34

Post by softwaredoug »

I made a lot of changes to my habits to recreate some of the aspects of a “boot camp”. It’s helped my sleep a lot, and I end up just waking up at 7 every morning.

Basically the idea is you always wake up at a consistent time and do exercise immediately. Preferably outside in the sunlight. I’ll run a few miles or on rainy days use the exercise bike. By 11 that night I’m wiped out and sleep like a baby. Even if I have one rough night of sleep for whatever reason, I still try to wake at 7 and do this routine. Over the long haul it’s dramatically improved my sleep.

Highly recommended if you have sleep issues

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#36

Post by poulsbohemian »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #4
bilekas wrote: post #2

I am very much a night owl and I have a really hard time getting into a routine of getting up early in the morning, even if I do manage to get my hours of sleep. It took a long time to find a balance of forcing to sleep and forcing to get up. But now I have to be very concious, if I have a late weekend I am out of sync for the rest of the week. People say its a lazy thing, but its really not.

Maybe it’s just the small subset of software engineers who frequent HN, but I swear 99.9% of the people on here are night owls, and they very much let their opinions be known on every thread about sleep.

Nearly everywhere in US society where productivity comes up, the “early bird” is held up as the standard of efficiency. Thus, those people who instead prefer a schedule that doesn’t begin pre-dawn have been chastised in books, talks, and in media despite there not being any proof that that they are “lazy” but rather are simply naturally attuned to a different schedule.

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#37

Post by bilekas »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #6
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it’s just the small subset of software engineers who frequent HN, but I swear 99.9% of the people on here are night owls, and they very much let their opinions be known on every thread about sleep.

Well, they're the ones most likely to click on threads about sleep probably.

I definitely opened the link to read up on something relating to me! :)

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#38

Post by zozbot234 »

el_cujo wrote: post #33

I've always been skeptical of the early-riser v night-owl dichotomy. When I was younger and in highschool, I had to be to school early every day, so I was on the early-riser schedule of sleep at ~10 PM wake at ~6 AM. When I later went to college, I adjusted to a sleep at ~2 AM wake at ~10 AM schedule. Anyone who is on one of these schedules is going to naturally have difficulty if one random day of the week they need…

I think most cases are going to be like that, but people with "advanced" or "delayed" sleep phases are not in the same boat - they will have trouble adapting to any fixed schedule, and no matter what they choose they will feel "jet-lagged" after a while as their "natural" sleep phase goes out of sync with it.

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#39

Post by dijit »

I've been a night owl my whole life, with the exception of that period during secondary school where I was so depressed in the evenings I went to bed early and as a consequence woke up super early.

I have followed every advice, meditation (1yr), excercise (3*1.5hrs per week for 18 months), staving off screens after 18:00 (8mo), no caffiene, no sugar, no food of any kind, I also tried: too much food, cooling my body down before I go to bed, valerian root, sleeping pills, codeine, running before sleep.. absolutely positively everything.

Why? because there is a strongly negative view society has on me for waking up at nearly 9am every day, or staying at work longer into the evenings.

At some point I have to call it quits, it's not working.

(FWIW my brain "wakes up" at night, I get the majority of my best work done between midnight and 4am, and for 6 years now I have avoided being awake during that time for any reason.. but recently I let it happen for one night and the output was insane compared to my daily hours)

EDIT: Based on the comments here, I just need to have a kid.

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