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

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

#41

Post by TomMarius »

airstrike wrote: post #18
milofeynman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You definitely don't want bright lights in your eyes (computer) if you're trying to sleep. I've heard getting up and doing a menial task (dishes, knitting, etc) for a few minutes can help if you've laid in bed for a long time with no luck.

My personal tactic is to eat any simple carb and proceed to do something incredibly boring like reading https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/tpavone/fi...

I used to stay awake until 5 AM reading as a child. Might not be a working advice for some people :P

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

#42

Post by M_V_Nostrand »

winrid wrote: post #40

I always thought I was a night owl. Then I realized I just didn't have anything to look forward to in the morning. So now I work on some interesting problem for 30mins at 7am and waking up earlier is a lot easier.

I can relate to this a lot, I love my current job and arrive at work around 7am at least 1 hour before my nearest colleagues, and just work on fun stuff and learn new things. I did not think that would have such an impact. I always thought I was a night owl.

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

#43

Post by hellofunk »

There's a neat chart on this page that shows how various well-known writers over time balanced sleep with writing, and it widely varies: some worked very early while others almost never slept or only worked overnight:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/12/16/writers-wakeup-time...

There's also this:

https://www.fastcompany.com/3031754/the-sleep-schedules-of-2...

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

#44

Post by zer00eyz »

sqs wrote: post #17

I used to be a night owl but switched to being an early riser in the last 3 months. I didn't intend to switch and am not sure why it happened, but here's what happened that probably contributed to it: - Started working out 1-2 hours per day (trail hiking/running) - Stopped reading my iPhone in bed at night, now I just read my backlit Kindle - Company switched to all-remote (used to commute to SF) - Had a daughter (~9…

> - Cut down on sugar intake

This is what does it for me. Refined sugar in most forms, and excessive fruit will keep me up at night.

That having been said, I'm not productive in the mornings. I don't write good code, or create good solutions before 10 am still. Early morning have become my time to catch up on administrative work, or reading.

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

#46

Post by raxxorrax »

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.

No, it is not and it is equally frustrating if people shut down early in the evening. Granted, the normal work hours favor early-birds, but I think that changes a bit in some occupations.

There is certainly some form of habituation and I mostly don't need a clock. But I am still considerably more grumpy on week-days after waking up.

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

#48

Post by seer »

This may be very anecdotal but might help someone in a similar predicament. After reading Why We Sleep I think I got some explanation what happened to me, but at least for my case it seems it wasn't really on the money. I _was_ able to make the switch from night owl to an early bird myself so it's certainly possible, though requires some effort and dedication.

I naturally woke up at 10 am and didn't really like mornings, and my most productive periods were definitely 1-2am. Thats when the most exciting coding solutions seemed to come to me.

Then I started going to early martial arts training. Since I wanted to go before work, I had to wake up at 7:30. For about 8-9 months it was quite unpleasant, though the training sessions themselves were fun enough for me to want to continue.

But then something strange happened. I vividly remember the day I "switched". It was spring time and we just started getting our training sessions outside. It was intense enough that the guys decided to go shirtless and take in the morning sun. And at that exact moment, basking in the sun at 8am, during a demanding physical exercise I thought to myself - wow! this is so exciting, fun and natural. It felt a bit like a Chinese kung-fu movie. A very energising experience.

And from that exact day I start feeling sleepy at 11pm and wake up at 7:30 consistently each day and would feel awesome in the mornings.

This is I know very anecdotal, but at least I know it's possible. And the recipe seemed to be lots and lots of sun, outdoor activity and a very positive emotional feedback. This I think might be the biggest reason. Currently the most positive feedback we usually encounter is in the evening - late night YouTube / tv / internet / books / friends / family, ... even intercourse. Quite a lot of the stuff we look forward to happens in the evening. It makes sense that our bodies adapt to make us most alert when it senses we get the most bang for the buck. But if you reverse that and attempt to do the stuff you really like early, your body might adopt, albeit slowly.

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

#49

Post by hoka-one-one »

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.

That's why it's important to go outside and meet real people and not make the internet a significant part of your social interaction.

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

#50

Post by el_cujo »

zozbot234 wrote: post #38
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.

Yeah I definitely think there are probably some people like this with messed up cycles that they can't do anything about it. But in general, it does kind of annoy me when people who are late to stuff in the morning blame it on being a nite owl, kind of disposing of any responsibility as if they have a real medical disorder or something when I think for most people it has more to do with enjoying doing stuff late at night or just getting in a habit of staying up late from trying to stretch the day before having to go to work.
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