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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

#51

Post by sk0g »

dijit wrote: post #39

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 d…

How do you manage to exercise 31.5 hours a week? That's basically a full time job!

I'd say I'm in pretty good shape, and I gym around 5 hours a week and play sport another one hour, so that's 6 total.

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

#52

Post by airstrike »

TomMarius wrote: post #41
airstrike wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hopefully you were not reading a review on Jurisprudence, though!

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

#53

Post by grumpy8 »

dijit wrote: post #39

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 d…

You say "You've followed every advice", but what were you trying to achieve exactly? Is it that you can't fall asleep or that you're not productive in the morning, or something else?

Personally what worked best for me is just to wake up at 6am for 2 weeks without nap during the day.

Most people try to adjust their sleeping time to match their waking time, but they've got it backward. Set your wake up time and listen to your body for when it's sleepy, then go to sleep and wake up at the same time the following day.

The "have a kid" is just a way to force this behavior because they will wake up early every day over a long period of time.

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

#54

Post by mmcgaha »

inertiatic wrote: post #21

I've been a night owl all my life. Now I wake up by 7 before my alarm even rings. All it took was getting into the habit of trying to get a little person to sleep by 10 in the evening and falling asleep with them. I'm still at my most productive at the end of the working day however and early morning is still not great.

Although I wake up for work every day and live the early bird schedule, I am a night owl. Every so often my body will reject the schedule and I wake up between midnight and 1:00AM. Of course I am sleepy by sunrise but I have to push through the day to get back on schedule.

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

#55

Post by _1100 »

seer wrote: post #48

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 morni…

I’ll add n+1 to this anecdote.

Found a form of exercise I was excited and willing to get up for, now I wake up around 5:45 every morning trying to drag my “early riser” wife out of bed to go start the day.

Was a complete night owl before, and my wife was constantly reminding me that it was late and time to call it a day.

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

#57

Post by dhruvkar »

inertiatic wrote: post #21

I've been a night owl all my life. Now I wake up by 7 before my alarm even rings. All it took was getting into the habit of trying to get a little person to sleep by 10 in the evening and falling asleep with them. I'm still at my most productive at the end of the working day however and early morning is still not great.

>>little person to sleep by 10

This.

I regualrly slept between 1-3am for many years. After having a baby (6 month old), I'm ready to sleep whenever, and definitely can't stay up past 11. Huge win in terms of sleeping early and waking up early.

Have a baby. Fix your schedule.

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

#58

Post by katzgrau »

inertiatic wrote: post #21

I've been a night owl all my life. Now I wake up by 7 before my alarm even rings. All it took was getting into the habit of trying to get a little person to sleep by 10 in the evening and falling asleep with them. I'm still at my most productive at the end of the working day however and early morning is still not great.

Clicked in to say the same thing. My favorite time to work usually came between 9pm and 2/3am.

Now with a baby I'm usually sleeping by 10 and up at or before 6. I kind of like it though. Now the before-lunch period is the productive time.

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

#59

Post by mathattack »

inertiatic wrote: post #21

I've been a night owl all my life. Now I wake up by 7 before my alarm even rings. All it took was getting into the habit of trying to get a little person to sleep by 10 in the evening and falling asleep with them. I'm still at my most productive at the end of the working day however and early morning is still not great.

I made the swap too. As an individual contributor I wanted to work until everything was finished. When I moved to managing managers I wanted to get ahead of the day, and be current before everyone else started.

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

#60

Post by zwieback »

inertiatic wrote: post #21

I've been a night owl all my life. Now I wake up by 7 before my alarm even rings. All it took was getting into the habit of trying to get a little person to sleep by 10 in the evening and falling asleep with them. I'm still at my most productive at the end of the working day however and early morning is still not great.

When my kids were toddlers they switched my wake-up time to around 5AM, now I seem to be stuck with that rhythm while they sleep in happily.
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