32 ms·

"But I'm a night owl!" I'm glad the author of the post recognized that it is possible to switch from being a night owl to an early riser. Anecdotally, I am a

by lee 15y ago

"But I'm a night owl!" I'm glad the author of the post recognized that it is possible to switch from being a night owl to an early riser. Anecdotally, I am a night owl... if it were not for work and kids, I would sleep late and wake early. That feels natural for me. But, when my daughter was born, I was forced to switch and it has been fairly painless. If you're a night owl, it's worthwhile to at least experiment with waking early for a period of time to experience the productivity increase that occurs from waking early. I find that on a night owl schedule, my creative side was heightened, whereas waking early allowed me more energy to "get things done".

electromagnetic 15y ago
Working a construction job led me to working 7:30-4:00, which means I'm up at 6am every weekday to take the dogs out and get ready for work. I find I can be in "get things done" mode from around 7am until around 7pm without a problem. I've even worked 7am until 7pm a couple times when I had to bank hours. However, I've found my creativity was 'willing' late at night when I was my natural night owl. When I was working as a reviewer, I woke up at 10am and could get copy out in no time. I once did an entire rewrite in under half an hour, including entirely new references with cross checking the media. My editor was amazed. IIRC the timestamp between my emailing to say I'd handle the rewrite (rather than there be a delay and have someone else do it, which would have put us behind deadline) and my delivering it was less than 35 minutes. I even got an email back that evening saying he was amazed, and also sending me the word document with the corrections on, which ended up being purely comma placement (which was a long running joke between us, as comma placement is generally where the author would naturally pause and we both had very different speaking styles, which often descended into a "changing comma position changes sentence meaning" debate). However, over the christmas break I automatically switched back to night owl. Every day I was up between 9/10am and was in bed around 4am. It was great, although my creative productivity didn't see a spike. I'd learnt to cope with my early bird, which meant I'd essentially killed that normal creative peak I used to get from 10pm-4am (which often finished with a sleep-deprived collapse into bed).
daimyoyo 15y ago
"If you're a night owl, it's worthwhile to at least experiment with waking early for a period of time to experience the productivity increase that occurs from waking early." I have worked on a early schedule many times and I'm basically on autopilot for half the day. I am never tired before 3:00-4:00AM and dispite my best efforts, if I have to work on a day schedule I simply can't get up at a decent hour without feeling absolutely miserable.
gwern 15y ago
> I'm glad the author of the post recognized that it is possible to switch from being a night owl to an early riser. Anecdotally, I am a night owl... if it were not for work and kids, I would sleep late and wake early. That feels natural for me. But, when my daughter was born, I was forced to switch and it has been fairly painless. I am skeptical it is possible. Kids and teenagers spend years being yanked awake against their circadian rhythms, and they don't switch but instead their grades suffer as does their health (http://www.gwern.net/education-is-not-about-learning#school-hours http://www.gwern.net/education-is-not-about-learning#school-...). As well, people suck at self-assessment - 'what do you think you know and why?' Sleep debt takes up to a month to pay off (http://preview.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15892922 http://preview.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15892922); people don't realize this. People sleep in 23 minutes a day on the weekend (http://blog.myzeo.com/sleep-by-night-of-the-week/ http://blog.myzeo.com/sleep-by-night-of-the-week/); people think they sleep longer. People restricted to 4 or 6 hours of sleep may claim they have adapted to it; they haven't and their mental performance still suffers (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sleep-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sleep-t.htm...). Why do you and the OP think you can switch, and have? (What do you think you know, and why?) Because you didn't notice anything bad. I see...
- lee 15y ago
  Well yea, I didn't notice anything "bad". It took some adjustment initially to move my clock, but I pretty much get up at 5:30-6:00 AM and can get out of bed alert and refreshed. I am still getting 8 hours of sleep a day. I can only assume that night owls who fail to switch, who wake up groggy and tired, are actually sleep deprived.
nas 15y ago
That hasn't worked for me. I've worked at jobs where I had to get up at 6 am every weekday for months. It gets easier when you do it regularly but I still hate it. I naturally feel more energetic starting around 2 pm and I don't feel like going to bed until after midnight.

by lee 15y ago

electromagnetic 15y ago

Working a construction job led me to working 7:30-4:00, which means I'm up at 6am every weekday to take the dogs out and get ready for work. I find I can be in "get things done" mode from around 7am until around 7pm without a problem. I've even worked 7am until 7pm a couple times when I had to bank hours. However, I've found my creativity was 'willing' late at night when I was my natural night owl. When I was working as a reviewer, I woke up at 10am and could get copy out in no time. I once did an entire rewrite in under half an hour, including entirely new references with cross checking the media. My editor was amazed. IIRC the timestamp between my emailing to say I'd handle the rewrite (rather than there be a delay and have someone else do it, which would have put us behind deadline) and my delivering it was less than 35 minutes. I even got an email back that evening saying he was amazed, and also sending me the word document with the corrections on, which ended up being purely comma placement (which was a long running joke between us, as comma placement is generally where the author would naturally pause and we both had very different speaking styles, which often descended into a "changing comma position changes sentence meaning" debate). However, over the christmas break I automatically switched back to night owl. Every day I was up between 9/10am and was in bed around 4am. It was great, although my creative productivity didn't see a spike. I'd learnt to cope with my early bird, which meant I'd essentially killed that normal creative peak I used to get from 10pm-4am (which often finished with a sleep-deprived collapse into bed).

daimyoyo 15y ago

"If you're a night owl, it's worthwhile to at least experiment with waking early for a period of time to experience the productivity increase that occurs from waking early." I have worked on a early schedule many times and I'm basically on autopilot for half the day. I am never tired before 3:00-4:00AM and dispite my best efforts, if I have to work on a day schedule I simply can't get up at a decent hour without feeling absolutely miserable.

gwern 15y ago

> I'm glad the author of the post recognized that it is possible to switch from being a night owl to an early riser. Anecdotally, I am a night owl... if it were not for work and kids, I would sleep late and wake early. That feels natural for me. But, when my daughter was born, I was forced to switch and it has been fairly painless. I am skeptical it is possible. Kids and teenagers spend years being yanked awake against their circadian rhythms, and they don't switch but instead their grades suffer as does their health (http://www.gwern.net/education-is-not-about-learning#school-hours http://www.gwern.net/education-is-not-about-learning#school-...). As well, people suck at self-assessment - 'what do you think you know and why?' Sleep debt takes up to a month to pay off (http://preview.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15892922 http://preview.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15892922); people don't realize this. People sleep in 23 minutes a day on the weekend (http://blog.myzeo.com/sleep-by-night-of-the-week/ http://blog.myzeo.com/sleep-by-night-of-the-week/); people think they sleep longer. People restricted to 4 or 6 hours of sleep may claim they have adapted to it; they haven't and their mental performance still suffers (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sleep-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sleep-t.htm...). Why do you and the OP think you can switch, and have? (What do you think you know, and why?) Because you didn't notice anything bad. I see...

lee 15y ago
Well yea, I didn't notice anything "bad". It took some adjustment initially to move my clock, but I pretty much get up at 5:30-6:00 AM and can get out of bed alert and refreshed. I am still getting 8 hours of sleep a day. I can only assume that night owls who fail to switch, who wake up groggy and tired, are actually sleep deprived.

nas 15y ago

That hasn't worked for me. I've worked at jobs where I had to get up at 6 am every weekday for months. It gets easier when you do it regularly but I still hate it. I naturally feel more energetic starting around 2 pm and I don't feel like going to bed until after midnight.