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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

#131

Post by save_ferris »

zarmin wrote: post #117
bArray wrote: post #114

Huh, I always woundered why I live a 28-30 hour day. My sleep schedule continuously drifts as a result - luckily I live a lifestyle where it's possible to get away with this. I did used to do a 9-to-5, but what ended up happening was that I slept less and struggled to keep in control over the weekends. Luckily the people I live with would wake me up (just by carrying out their own routines). These days I typically sl…

Out of curiosity, do you have ADHD?

I’ve struggled the exact same as the poster above, and I’ve been reading up on ADHD. It seems to fit so many issues I have, but I really don’t want to take stimulants, which seem to be the drug of choice for ADHD

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

#132

Post by helij »

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…

Yes to your edit. Once you have a kid there's no 9am waking up. It's 7-7.30am if you're lucky.

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

#134

Post by follower »

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…

If you haven't already, I strongly recommend consulting a competent sleep specialist.

> FWIW my brain "wakes up" at night

This suggests to me that researching Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome might be helpful.

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

#135

Post by follower »

bArray wrote: post #114

Huh, I always woundered why I live a 28-30 hour day. My sleep schedule continuously drifts as a result - luckily I live a lifestyle where it's possible to get away with this. I did used to do a 9-to-5, but what ended up happening was that I slept less and struggled to keep in control over the weekends. Luckily the people I live with would wake me up (just by carrying out their own routines). These days I typically sl…

> I always wondered why I live a 28-30 hour day.

You may wish to look into "Non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder".

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

#136

Post by sethammons »

I've always been a morning person. 5 years old waking up at 5am to watch Thunder Cats. Highschool, waking up at 4am to finish up any homework and then get video game time in. I sleep in more now than ever before, typically up around 5:50 to 6:30. My most productive coding time is 5 or 6am to around 11am. Typically, I'm tired around 8pm, and in bed before 10pm.

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

#137

Post by zarmin »

save_ferris wrote: post #131
zarmin wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, do you have ADHD?

I’ve struggled the exact same as the poster above, and I’ve been reading up on ADHD. It seems to fit so many issues I have, but I really don’t want to take stimulants, which seem to be the drug of choice for ADHD

Yeah, I think there's a large subset of people with ADHD who have some kind of alternate circadian rhythm. Mine seems to be 36 hours; for almost 35 years my peak working hours have been 4pm to 5am, with the ability to hyperfocus until I collapsed if I'm really into what I'm doing. Not for lack of trying to have a "normal" schedule...oh god I try really hard multiple times a year. It's just not natural.

You should know that stimulants are only one type of approach for treating ADHD. Your best resource, you may have discovered, is Russell Barkley; I cannot recommend him enough. Also check out the YouTube channel How to ADHD.

Some relevant Barkley videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnS0PfNyj4U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzhbAK1pdPM&list=PLzBixSjmbc...

Fair warning: You may discover some of the things you've done for your whole life without second guessing are actually typical ADHD symptoms. And if you're like me, this might thoroughly shake your snowglobe.

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

#138

Post by vneur »

dot1x wrote: post #118

For those interested, Internal Time [1] does a good job at explaining chronotypes. People that say they "changed from night owl to early riser" (or vice-versa) have never been night owls in the first place, but something else was the cause (diet, screen time, etc). Chronotypes are genetics-based so no amount of wishful thinking will make you a night owl or an early riser (though obviously you can try and force this w…

Some caveats to think about for that particular book in this blog post: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/ (I'm not a researcher in the area, so not sure how valid either side of this is!)

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

#139

Post by wpietri »

avenger123 wrote: post #123
wpietri wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made the switch. Not intentionally; it just kind of happened. I think there were a lot of things that made it work, like taking up running (in the mornings), avoiding stimulants, and good sleep hygiene. But the one that finally made the difference surprised me: it's that I'm not a responsible lightswitch user. I built an automated lighting system such that dawn in my house comes at 6 am and gets gradually brighter.…

I don't have an elaborate setup as yours but I have found the most dramatic improvement by getting one of these: https://www.philips.ca/c-p/HF3670_60/smartsleep-connected-sl... It's a sunrise and sunset alarm clock. I wake up at 5:15 AM on a daily basis and 20 minutes before, the light starts with increasing brightness. At 5:08 AM, I have selected ocean waves for the sound and at 5:15 the loud alarm comes on. It's be…

Yes! I started with a Philips sunrise alarm clock, an older model than that. It was good, but I really wanted more light and coverage in more rooms than the bedroom, so I got a bunch of Hue bulbs and wrote my own daemon [1]. I added the dim-in-the-evening thing more as a lark, but it ended up making a big difference for me.

[1] https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise

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

#140

Post by tropdrop »

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.

It's refreshing to have a space that is welcoming of all sorts of circadian schedules instead of subtle shaming. But it's not just software engineers who decry the early risers - writers, artists, and PhD students constantly speak up about their need to stay up late in deep focus mode on a creative project. Maybe that's the common denominator - the need to be able to focus for hours without the disruption of emails or meetings.
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