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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

#61

Post by geddy »

I'm a night owl who's started waking up earlier. I guess that makes me an early owl? Or a night riser, which makes me sound like a zombie.

I started waking up earlier because I realized I had a much better work day if I did something I enjoyed before working. I start work at 10am, but I wake up around 7:30, walk the dog for ~2 miles, then relax and play a game, lift, do some blogging, read Hackernews etc. It's made my work day far more productive, I will say that. I also have a little one on the way so starting to acclimate my body to waking up earlier is better done sooner rather than later.

I recall reading a while back an article that stated people had more productive and overall positive work days if they did something enjoyable before starting work. I work from home most of the time and so it became more important than ever for me to actually _use_ the time I wouldn't be spending commuting. I definitely recommend it to everyone, particularly those who don't have a commute to "wind up" and decompress from their work day!

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

#62

Post by StrangeDoctor »

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…

Your ability to shift between 10pm and 2am is someone else’s 1am to 5am or 6pm to 10pm. Just because you personally had ease falling asleep at these times has no relationship to when other people find it easy to fall asleep. It’s not a binary state night owl or morning bird.

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

schuke wrote: post #30
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 wonder if the genetical night owl can pull this off too?

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by 1e-9 »

It seems that sleep pattern variation is an evolutionary consequence of the survival benefit of having someone awake when others are sleeping [1]. A good combination of night owls, insomniacs, and early risers in camp probably made it far less likely a sleeper got hauled off by the hyenas. This also seems to be the reason that anxiety (sense of danger) reduces our sleep. There's a part of our brain that doesn't differentiate well between today's worries and predation risk. For this reason, I think that addressing anxiety is often the best way to improve sleep.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4972941

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

#65

Post by jvm_ »

So my natural rhythm is working 10-2 and then a lull until 4-6, and then a lull until midnight, I wouldn't get tired until 2am.

Not ideal for a 9-5 job with kids. I'd also need a nap around 5:30-7 or so, also not wife-compatible to fall asleep at 5:30pm for an hour.

I started using a SAD lamp and it makes a huge difference, 30 minutes in the morning, I just browse my phone in front of it. It feels like a cup of coffee and a 30 minute nap.

The biggest is not needing the evening nap followed by actually being tired at midnight, and the ability to fall sleep between 10pm-midnight if I need to get up early. It makes a major difference to me, it has about a 2-day effect, I can skip the 30 minutes for a day or two, but after day 3 my clock resets.

I'd get a 4pm boost at work, I could tell the time by how productive I was being. Same thing with midnight, I'd sit on the couch from 9-midnight, and then find myself cleaning up exactly at midnight. With the light, everything is 2 hours earlier, 2pm work boost, and 10pm boost at home.

I have one of the larger lights, don't want to be accused of shilling.

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

#66

Post by hugi »

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.

This was what did it for me as well. I was alone with my three kids (5,6 and 9) for half a year recently (wife went on a foreign student exchange program) and to prevent life from descending into chaos I established a pretty dictatorial parenting style. Kids were asleep by 8-9pm, and we had to be up at 7am to prevent our mornings from being stressful. I eventually discovered that I could make much better use of the day if I also went to sleep early and woke up about 5am to prepare the day or start working. These early hours were much so much more productive than the evening hours.

I've tried to stick with this program, or at least a version of it, but ironically it's kind of harder now that there are two of us again.

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

#67

Post by [deleted] »

schuke wrote: post #30
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 wonder if the genetical night owl can pull this off too?

[deleted]

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

#68

Post by rriepe »

sk0g wrote: post #51
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.

He meant 3 times a week, 1.5 hours at a time.

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

#69

Post by inetknght »

rriepe wrote: post #68
sk0g wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He meant 3 times a week, 1.5 hours at a time.

I'd be skeptical of you trying to assume what someone else said. However `3` is un-italic while `1.5` is italic. It can be hard to spot that difference in font. I'd say you're right.

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

#70

Post by OJFord »

sk0g wrote: post #51
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.

Notice that's where the italics start, i.e. '3*1.5 hours a week', and if I carefully don't use another asterisk at the end of my post (unlike GP)...
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