6 ms·

As a lifelong nightowl, I switched to mornings almost 2 years ago and it’s been great. Rather than bed at 2am, sleep till 10, I wake up at 5:30am and fall asle

by Swizec 5y ago

As a lifelong nightowl, I switched to mornings almost 2 years ago and it’s been great. Rather than bed at 2am, sleep till 10, I wake up at 5:30am and fall asleep at 10 simply by being tired enough. The result is that I get better sleep, need less caffeine, have more effective creative time for personal projects, and put my stuff first before the brain is full of work stuff. Oh and the girlfriend says I’m less cranky, more pleasant to be around, and she loves that we go to bed together. The insight that made it happen: If I can switch to a 9 hour different timezone, why not to waking up early? Body just cares which timezone your circadian rhytm is in, not where you are physically.

pseudalopex 5y ago
Humans have natural sleep preferences.[1] Artificial light can keep almost anyone up later though. Your story sounds like a life long early bird who stopped fighting their biology. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype
- Swizec 5y ago
  I think it’s more likely I just don’t need a lot of sleep and it doesn’t matter when that happens. These days I average 7h/night and I’m ridiculously well rested. In high school and college I could go weeks on 4h/night.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    7 hours is the low end of the normal range. How do you reconcile "it doesn’t matter when" and "The result is that I get better sleep"?
    - Swizec 5y ago
      It’s better in that there’s more of it because I spend less time trying to work on personal projects when I’m already tired from dayjob and am more effective. The actual sleep quality depends more on how much regular exercise I get and eating well than it does on timing. Unless I’m literally jetlagged.
- wkrmetodeathplz 5y ago
  Yeah, these posts drive me nuts because they seem to imply that I should just "push myself and get over it". No, sorry. I've been "fun-employed" for 3 years and I've experimented with my sleep schedule extensively. If someone wants to tell me they know my biology better than me, fine, but I'll do what keeps me productive and happy.
cortesoft 5y ago
This hasn't even the case for me. I have young children, so I can't sleep in anymore... I now wake up between 6am and 7am most days. I still have trouble going to sleep early. I end up staying up too late, and then am tired most of the day the next day. But I still end up staying up too late the next night, too. I would think I would adjust my schedule, but I struggle with it.
- Swizec 5y ago
  My biggest bedtime struggle is when I’m too tired to make the decision to stop what I’m doint and go to bed. It takes some discipline but setting a sleep alarm has worked well for me. 10pm, watch goes bzzz -> lie down in bed with lights off. Even if you don’t feel like it, even if you don’t wanna sleep yet, even if it seems dumb. Invariably within 20min at most I’m asleep. The hard part is accepting the boredom of it all. It’s sleep, you’re supposed to be bored.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    I just want to note that reading your last sentence, “It’s sleep, you’re supposed to be bored.“, just felt like a revelation to me.
    - scollet 5y ago
      Idk, sleep has never been boring for me. It's something I consciously look forward to/anticipate(?).
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    Yeah, that is certainly part of it. Another part is that right after I get the kids to bed, I don’t want to do the dishes and clean up things to get ready for bed, so I take a break. But then I get more tired and want to clean up even less, so I stay up longer. Until I am so tired I sleep clean and go to bed.
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  Yeah this is me. I think I averaged 5 hours per night this last week.
didibus 5y ago
I actually wondered if I was a night owl... or an even earlier riser. I never really tried it, but at around 5-7pm I'm always drowsy and that's the time of day I feel I could just easily fall asleep (no matter when I wake up). So I always thought, maybe I need to wake up at 3am and fall asleep at 7pm.
- brootstrap 5y ago
  i've gone to bed on maybe 5-10 occasions before my kids actually fall asleep. I read them nighttime books and get sleepy as fuck while reading. Then pop right over to bed around 8pm or 8:10pm and lay there falling asleep by 8:30pm. Usually wake up around 4-5am.
GuB-42 5y ago
Doesn't work for me, sure, I can drive myself to exhaustion but my day simply doesn't feel right. Morning is usually fine for 2 hours, followed by waves of exhaustion. There is something about the night that boosts me and fascinates me, it feels like it is my world. And it has been the case since early childhood, even before I can remember according to my parents. And it is not just about the sun. I love the feeling of being the last one standing, the calm after everyone went to sleep. I also asked myself the same question about timezones and also DST, why can't I be a morning person when I can naturally adjust to clock change? And I came to the conclusion that there is a lot more than the clock.
- TravHatesMe 5y ago
  > I love the feeling of being the last one standing, the calm after everyone went to sleep. I love being the first one standing. Get to the office early for that 30-60mins of quiet and peace. Most productive time of my day.
  - birdyrooster 5y ago
    we must have always needed night owl and early riser humans to serve as watchers of our sleeping civilizations for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, and our genome is adapted to the need. Do you think so?
    - bemmu 5y ago
      Rest of the tribe is asleep, we’re the ones keeping watch while the stars are out, left to our own thoughts.
    - pharmakom 5y ago
      But then the tribe is on the move and a few need to sleep. I think a mostly synchronised schedule is more likely.
      - AuryGlenz 5y ago
wpietri 5y ago
Yes, same here, but longer ago. One thing that made a huge difference for me was managing light levels. My sleep schedule is much more tied to ambient light than I expected. Now I automatically dim the lights in the evening and bring them up in the morning. That leaves me with a solid 10-6-ish sleep schedule. No alarm clocks, no caffeine, and generally solid energy levels. These days if I accidentally leave on some manual lights while I'm engaged in something I'll end up staying up way too late. Turns out I'm just not a responsible lightswitch user, so now I try to leave all up to Hue.
vector_spaces 5y ago
It's great that it's working out for you. I have a pretty annoying sleep disorder called delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD), diagnosed by multiple clinicians. I have impeccable sleep hygiene, quit caffeine entirely, tried lots of OTC and prescription sleep drugs, light therapy, every kind of sleep supplement you've heard of and probably a few you haven't, and I still revert to going to bed around 5am and waking between noon and 1:30pm. In the times I maintained a "normal" early-bird schedule, I actually consistently fall into a deep depression. Our circadian rhythms are pretty powerful regulators -- not just of sleep, but of our hormones and regularity (in the poop sense) too. So misalignment wreaks havoc on our bodies in various ways, even if we're able to get enough sleep. Anyway for some people they're more flexible and trainable than others. I'm genuinely happy for your case, but I mainly wanted to point out that not everyone will have the same results.
- Swizec 5y ago
  > Anyway for some people they're more flexible and trainable than others. I'm genuinely happy for your case, but I mainly wanted to point out that not everyone will have the same results. I wonder if this is something I unlocked during my digital nomad days. There was a period of 2 years in my mid 20’s when I moved from Europe to SFBA and back every 2 or 3 months. 9 hours difference each way, just enough to really screw up your rhythms.
  - midasuni 5y ago
    What visa did you use in that time?
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    It is also something that changes as you age
- rossnordby 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, did you have any luck at all with the glasses-style light therapy devices like the Luminette? I was having limited success with other forms of light therapy (and the rest of the laundry list of interventions), and some recommendations from an experimental non24 protocol (https://circadiaware.github.io/VLiDACMel-entrainment-therapy-non24/SleepNon24VLiDACMel.html https://circadiaware.github.io/VLiDACMel-entrainment-therapy...) lead me to finally try the glasses type and it's oddly effective, so far. I'm waking up around 10:30 AM without alarms and without sliding, which has... literally never happened before. I'm just hoping it won't regress to the mean after another month.
pharmakom 5y ago
If this was true, then night shift workers would not see lower life expectancy, even controlling for other factors.
- ericwooley 5y ago
  I'm not sure it would. There are other factors besides circadian rhythm at play for night workers. Eg, they probably need money not, or they would be less likely to accept a night shift. Another one is how there is more noise during the day that could affect their sleep, etc...
senbarryobama 5y ago
And never enjoy a night out? :thumbsdown:
godelmachine 5y ago
>>fall asleep at 10 simply by being tired enough You are truly a blessed person and are enjoying one of life's greatest treasures.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Same. Night owl forever. Switched when I got a real job. Realize nearly everyone has bad sleep hygiene and self diagnoses themselves as having a disorder of some sort.

by Swizec 5y ago

pseudalopex 5y ago

Humans have natural sleep preferences.[1] Artificial light can keep almost anyone up later though. Your story sounds like a life long early bird who stopped fighting their biology. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype

Swizec 5y ago
I think it’s more likely I just don’t need a lot of sleep and it doesn’t matter when that happens. These days I average 7h/night and I’m ridiculously well rested. In high school and college I could go weeks on 4h/night.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  7 hours is the low end of the normal range. How do you reconcile "it doesn’t matter when" and "The result is that I get better sleep"?
  - Swizec 5y ago
    It’s better in that there’s more of it because I spend less time trying to work on personal projects when I’m already tired from dayjob and am more effective. The actual sleep quality depends more on how much regular exercise I get and eating well than it does on timing. Unless I’m literally jetlagged.
wkrmetodeathplz 5y ago
Yeah, these posts drive me nuts because they seem to imply that I should just "push myself and get over it". No, sorry. I've been "fun-employed" for 3 years and I've experimented with my sleep schedule extensively. If someone wants to tell me they know my biology better than me, fine, but I'll do what keeps me productive and happy.

cortesoft 5y ago

This hasn't even the case for me. I have young children, so I can't sleep in anymore... I now wake up between 6am and 7am most days. I still have trouble going to sleep early. I end up staying up too late, and then am tired most of the day the next day. But I still end up staying up too late the next night, too. I would think I would adjust my schedule, but I struggle with it.

Swizec 5y ago
My biggest bedtime struggle is when I’m too tired to make the decision to stop what I’m doint and go to bed. It takes some discipline but setting a sleep alarm has worked well for me. 10pm, watch goes bzzz -> lie down in bed with lights off. Even if you don’t feel like it, even if you don’t wanna sleep yet, even if it seems dumb. Invariably within 20min at most I’m asleep. The hard part is accepting the boredom of it all. It’s sleep, you’re supposed to be bored.
- nefitty 5y ago
  I just want to note that reading your last sentence, “It’s sleep, you’re supposed to be bored.“, just felt like a revelation to me.
  - scollet 5y ago
    Idk, sleep has never been boring for me. It's something I consciously look forward to/anticipate(?).
- cortesoft 5y ago
  Yeah, that is certainly part of it. Another part is that right after I get the kids to bed, I don’t want to do the dishes and clean up things to get ready for bed, so I take a break. But then I get more tired and want to clean up even less, so I stay up longer. Until I am so tired I sleep clean and go to bed.
bcrosby95 5y ago
Yeah this is me. I think I averaged 5 hours per night this last week.

didibus 5y ago

I actually wondered if I was a night owl... or an even earlier riser. I never really tried it, but at around 5-7pm I'm always drowsy and that's the time of day I feel I could just easily fall asleep (no matter when I wake up). So I always thought, maybe I need to wake up at 3am and fall asleep at 7pm.

brootstrap 5y ago
i've gone to bed on maybe 5-10 occasions before my kids actually fall asleep. I read them nighttime books and get sleepy as fuck while reading. Then pop right over to bed around 8pm or 8:10pm and lay there falling asleep by 8:30pm. Usually wake up around 4-5am.

GuB-42 5y ago

Doesn't work for me, sure, I can drive myself to exhaustion but my day simply doesn't feel right. Morning is usually fine for 2 hours, followed by waves of exhaustion. There is something about the night that boosts me and fascinates me, it feels like it is my world. And it has been the case since early childhood, even before I can remember according to my parents. And it is not just about the sun. I love the feeling of being the last one standing, the calm after everyone went to sleep. I also asked myself the same question about timezones and also DST, why can't I be a morning person when I can naturally adjust to clock change? And I came to the conclusion that there is a lot more than the clock.

TravHatesMe 5y ago
> I love the feeling of being the last one standing, the calm after everyone went to sleep. I love being the first one standing. Get to the office early for that 30-60mins of quiet and peace. Most productive time of my day.
- birdyrooster 5y ago
  we must have always needed night owl and early riser humans to serve as watchers of our sleeping civilizations for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, and our genome is adapted to the need. Do you think so?
  - bemmu 5y ago
    Rest of the tribe is asleep, we’re the ones keeping watch while the stars are out, left to our own thoughts.
  - pharmakom 5y ago
    But then the tribe is on the move and a few need to sleep. I think a mostly synchronised schedule is more likely.
    - AuryGlenz 5y ago

wpietri 5y ago

Yes, same here, but longer ago. One thing that made a huge difference for me was managing light levels. My sleep schedule is much more tied to ambient light than I expected. Now I automatically dim the lights in the evening and bring them up in the morning. That leaves me with a solid 10-6-ish sleep schedule. No alarm clocks, no caffeine, and generally solid energy levels. These days if I accidentally leave on some manual lights while I'm engaged in something I'll end up staying up way too late. Turns out I'm just not a responsible lightswitch user, so now I try to leave all up to Hue.

vector_spaces 5y ago

It's great that it's working out for you. I have a pretty annoying sleep disorder called delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD), diagnosed by multiple clinicians. I have impeccable sleep hygiene, quit caffeine entirely, tried lots of OTC and prescription sleep drugs, light therapy, every kind of sleep supplement you've heard of and probably a few you haven't, and I still revert to going to bed around 5am and waking between noon and 1:30pm. In the times I maintained a "normal" early-bird schedule, I actually consistently fall into a deep depression. Our circadian rhythms are pretty powerful regulators -- not just of sleep, but of our hormones and regularity (in the poop sense) too. So misalignment wreaks havoc on our bodies in various ways, even if we're able to get enough sleep. Anyway for some people they're more flexible and trainable than others. I'm genuinely happy for your case, but I mainly wanted to point out that not everyone will have the same results.

Swizec 5y ago
> Anyway for some people they're more flexible and trainable than others. I'm genuinely happy for your case, but I mainly wanted to point out that not everyone will have the same results. I wonder if this is something I unlocked during my digital nomad days. There was a period of 2 years in my mid 20’s when I moved from Europe to SFBA and back every 2 or 3 months. 9 hours difference each way, just enough to really screw up your rhythms.
- midasuni 5y ago
  What visa did you use in that time?
- colechristensen 5y ago
  It is also something that changes as you age
rossnordby 5y ago
Out of curiosity, did you have any luck at all with the glasses-style light therapy devices like the Luminette? I was having limited success with other forms of light therapy (and the rest of the laundry list of interventions), and some recommendations from an experimental non24 protocol (https://circadiaware.github.io/VLiDACMel-entrainment-therapy-non24/SleepNon24VLiDACMel.html https://circadiaware.github.io/VLiDACMel-entrainment-therapy...) lead me to finally try the glasses type and it's oddly effective, so far. I'm waking up around 10:30 AM without alarms and without sliding, which has... literally never happened before. I'm just hoping it won't regress to the mean after another month.

pharmakom 5y ago

If this was true, then night shift workers would not see lower life expectancy, even controlling for other factors.

ericwooley 5y ago
I'm not sure it would. There are other factors besides circadian rhythm at play for night workers. Eg, they probably need money not, or they would be less likely to accept a night shift. Another one is how there is more noise during the day that could affect their sleep, etc...

senbarryobama 5y ago

And never enjoy a night out? :thumbsdown:

godelmachine 5y ago

>>fall asleep at 10 simply by being tired enough You are truly a blessed person and are enjoying one of life's greatest treasures.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

Same. Night owl forever. Switched when I got a real job. Realize nearly everyone has bad sleep hygiene and self diagnoses themselves as having a disorder of some sort.