It is surprising that companies don't let employees work in their most productive hours. When will this trend start?
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
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Were you averaging around 7.5 hours of sleep a night, even with your long vigils? If so, I doubt it's a harmful pattern. Based on some studies I've seen recently, oversleeping is a larger health risk for many than undersleeping.
No, I would stay up for 2-3 days straight and it'd end with just a longish ~12 hour sleep, often leaving me with a sleep cycle randomly out of phase with the rest of the world to boot. The stuff I've read about sleep being when your brain bathes itself in spinal fluid convinced me this was probably not a good long-term strategy for preserving cognitive health.
I’m stuck in a loop like this right now. I’ve been getting an average of less than 3 hours of sleep per night on weekdays for a few months now. On the weekends, when I don’t have strict external obligations, I sleep 8-10 hrs.
I’m really scared that I’m going to cause myself to develop early onset Alzheimer’s or something. Even then, that fear looms nowhere as large as the anxiety of going to bed before 1am.
Maybe it’s an existential thing. When the world’s light goes out I start thinking about death, and then the idea of sleep being the “little death” overwhelms me. Next thing I know I’m passing out just as my wife is getting up for work, but I feel so much safer laying down to sleep when I hear the world stirring and birds chirping. It’s almost like my body stays awake to make sure everyone else is safe while they sleep...
Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference
#223I'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…
I feel this in my bones. You described my entire 20s. I felt pretty ashamed that I couldn't master this single skill.
When I got into my thirties, I chose to embrace it instead of fight it. I worked at companies that were understanding of my chosen schedule. By every metric across the board I've been happier since then. The single exception was a period of time where I had to be up on a 7am international conference call every morning. The stress necessary to maintain that schedule was enormous, and came with consequences to my health. Never again.
I just don't think humans are meant to keep to a schedule. It requires massive amounts of stress to keep up.
Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference
#224For some reason I don't get creative and productive until the hours I should be sleeping. Throughout my teens and twenties (I'm in my 40s now) I indulged this tendency and it served me well, often staying up for multiple days without realizing it and the productivity was incredible. Since then I've become more interested in preserving/improving my health and how such behaviors may be harming it, so I try to keep a re…
I can relate to this, and I wonder if it has to do with the unscheduled nature of staying awake through sleep hours. Our adult lives become so regulated and scheduled, which is arguably a good thing for health, relationships, and business. But, for me, during the recent times when I could not sleep at night, or had an unexpected pocket of time with no obligation -- I was unbelievably motivated, creative, and producti…
I can relate to this as an early riser too! Getting up at three in the morning, not being able to fall back to sleep, and then just deciding to start my day then is weirdly productive and fulfilling, probably because I’m not expected to be doing something productive at that hour.
Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference
#225I like the fact they present it as an either/or choice. My natural sleep cycle seems to default to a 28 hour day (eg I go to bed slightly later every evening then morning) which makes interfacing with reality pretty difficult. This seems to be something shared with a number of geeks I know.
I've been on a 28-hour cycle for the last 7 or so years. Since it lines up into a 6-day week I can still be awake for more-or-less business hours on weekdays (sleep at 4pm mondays, wake at noon fridays).
I'm pretty sure 28 hours isn't quite what my body naturally wants, but it's a lot closer than 24. After a week trying to stick to a 24h cycle I'm basically a walking zombie.
They tried to put me on melatonin when I was a kid. First dose sent me to hospital with an allergic reaction. After that we were pretty hesitant to try other remedies. My life was miserable until I went onto the 28h cycle and I realised it was possible to NOT be tired all the time.
Don't listen to all the "oh, you just aren't doing X right" people. Find a solution that works for your body and your life.
Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference
#226I'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…
I have never encountered those strongly negative views, it seems.
In high school, I was sleepy during the morning lectures, but people just assumed that I was bored or partying too much.
In university, I simply didn't have many lectures before 10 AM. Plus there actually were lots of late-night parties going on.
Now that I'm working, I told people that I like to enjoy a peaceful morning with my family and it seems nobody really cares if start working at 10 or 11.
That said, I noticed that bright lights work wonders for helping me to concentrate. I bought a lot of those 1800 lumen IKEA LED light bulbs. They need 20W each, so you can connect 3 of them where normally one lamp would be. And that makes my living room bright like a sunny day at the beach :)
Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference
#227I'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…
What you’re describing sounds similar to me years ago Then one day I moved to a house that had no internet, and we would have to wait a month to have satellite put in, and we had no smartphones After 20+ years of just thinking I had a sleeping disorder, losing internet access and living like a pilgrim caused my sleep schedule to naturally coincide with the setting and rising of the sun Without any deliberate effort f…
Same when I go camping in a natural reserve, without electricity: daylight is the sleep governor and it's incredibly effective and effortless, without even a sensation of jetlag.
But it's not the place for cerebral activity, where things works best after hours.
I guess in the end it's a matter of performing well under distractions or not. I often found that the reason for late night performance was due to the lack of interruption and all sorts of external stimulation that goes with daytime.
Now I wish I could find a middle ground.
Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference
#228I 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.
I’m in the same boat. It’s very hard for me to operate on a schedule compatible with the rest of society. I can force myself into it, but I never really feel well rested. What makes matters worse is if I don’t keep my sleeping schedule for two or three days, everything gets messed up again and I see myself reverting back to falling asleep at 3am. It’s really hard and it limits greatly my employment options. I’m sure…
One of the worst things that happened to me in my last job is that I became important in the mid-level at work. Suddenly, I was expected to be at work earlier, be ready to rock at 8am, knocking meetings out and making decisions. I ran on fumes for years.
A few times, when critical bad shit happened after 5pm and I had to stay at work until midnight, I felt like I was the competent and motivated person that got me into that position to begin with. There was no way my bosses were going to let me saunter into the office at 1pm, after all the client meetings had already wrapped up... I definitely tried to convince them though lol
Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference
#229I 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…
I started a new job, started walking to/from work (c.2 miles/3km each way), started IF, reduced my caffeine intake dramatically.
For the first 2 months or so I was able to sleep early and wake earlier. Now I've got used to the exercise - that's my theory - I've shifted back to being more wakeful at night. Which is fine for work hours as that's flexible (but perception of early risers is that late risers are lazy, so still a little problematic). But, I'd like to shift my pattern to match my kids' schedules better.
Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a very hard time believing that this stuff has to do with anything other than having the discipline to have a proper sleep schedule. It's possible to adjust your sleep schedule. People do it all the time when they change timezones. I didn't read the article, I'll go read it and update if I change my mind..
Yes, people can adapt to different timezone. However what's interesting is that night owls will adapt based on their own circadian rhythm. If you are someone with delayed circadian rhythm, you would end up synchronizing to the local timezone but still fall asleep after midnight.
So the solution is to own 24 homes and move one timezone over each month?