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Night owls' cognitive function 'superior' to early risers, study suggests
- more_corn 2y agoCounterpoint: Google did a long-term study of employees. Everyone was more productive in the early hours of the day. Even people who identified as night owls. Cognitive function is different from productivity.
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoI was deeply touched by PKD describing night as the time outside of the hot baking heat of the Palm Tree Garden, masked from God's hot watchful eye. A time open to free & liquid consideration. My inhibitions & perfectionism slip away, my barriers fall, and the intrepid explorer in me comes out. I can work without constant self review, try things that I would want to consider more deeply in the day. The night is glorious & great.
- palad1n 2y agoRabbit hole: https://warinheaven.net https://warinheaven.net
- helloworld42024 2y agoI absolutely hate programming during the day! Working from home and working at night - for me this is the most quiet, energetic and productive time.
- gwervc 2y agoI wish I could have work hours more fitted to my sleep pattern. Everyone is loosing including the company I work for since I'm staying at bed until the daily, then do basically jack shit in the morning.
- yieldcrv 2y agothis is not comparing owls to humans, in case you were wondering
- actionfromafar 2y agoYou must be one of those night owls. :)
- _kulang 2y agoI mean… when did they test the subjects? How much of a day had they had before the tests?
- xpl 2y agoFrom the article: Jacqui Hanley, head of research funding at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “Without a detailed picture of what is going on in the brain, we don’t know if being a ‘morning’ or ‘evening’ person affects memory and thinking, or if a decline in cognition is causing changes to sleeping patterns.”
- wiradikusuma 2y agoI'm a night owl, and I have this guilty feeling that I don't belong because most C-level or VPs I know are morning people who hit the gym after waking up at 5 AM. At least that's what they told me.
- MikeTheGreat 2y agoThis seems like a good time to bring up Imposter Syndrome :) If you, or anyone else, hasn't heard of it then please definitely look it up. It's a short, quick idea and it's good for helping when I feel like I don't belong somewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome EDIT: This is actually a better explanation, I think. Particularly the first paragraph: https://www.verywellmind.com/imposter-syndrome-and-social-anxiety-disorder-4156469 https://www.verywellmind.com/imposter-syndrome-and-social-an...
- smivan 2y agoI'm a night owl C-suite (CTO), but with all of my peers as you describe. It's possible to make it work, you have to be very firm on your boundaries. One option that worked for me was to explain that I can effectively do more timezone coverage despite being in the same Geo-zone. It also helped to showcase the work I do while they are offline, so when they wake up they see a column of work that has been bounced back across to their plate. It is definitely hard though, and takes the right crowd who respects you enough to make it work. It's probably impossible to do this as a CEO though.
- Terr_ 2y ago> I have this guilty feeling that I don't belong For your amusement, a satirical take on "The Hustle" that might also have a little but of uncomfortably-too-real moments for some folks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U
- anonzzzies 2y agoI went from a night owl to a morning person; I am vastly more productive as a morning person. No idea about brain function though. I just enjoy finishing all my work at lunch time these days.
- kybernetikos 2y agoYes I was wondering if there might be an executive function vs cognitive function divide.
- nottorp 2y agoI wonder if it's the time of the day or... Night people tend to go to bed when they're tired and wake up when they're done sleeping. Early risers either use an alarm or go to bed / wake up at fixed (i.e. forced) times, mostly due to external constraints. Is the difference really between scheduled sleep and sleeping when you feel like it?
- readthenotes1 2y agoI have met a fair number of early risers who simply go to bed early.
- xen0 2y agoGoing to bed early and waking up early (relative to my schedule today) is something I _can_ do. I had to do it for several years. I felt like absolute shit every morning. I felt sick and couldn't eat before 10. Every Day. I don't have that now I can get up later.
- mjevans 2y agoI would really love to have the Sleep ability the protagonist from The Long Dark has. Unless they're fully awake, as long as they're a little tired they can sleep until fully rested. I've long assumed it's probably due to people who'd do bad things with any sort of useful, "I'd like to go to sleep in the next 15 min, oh and no side effects if the fire alarm goes off in 30 min" kinds of drugs that they aren't a common OTC item.
- geewee 2y agoI'm generally an early riser, and I just go to bed early and (generally) wake up a little before my alarm. Even if I go to bed late I wake up at around the same time (even though I might like to sleep in) I don't think that early risers are primarily due to external constraints hold.
- nottorp 2y agoMy theory is that your subconscious knows you have to wake up at a fixed time and that's extra stress, even if it wakes you up before the alarm. As you're saying, it even cuts into your sleep time. One point in favor of this theory is that even I, a night owl, manage sometimes to wake up before the alarm on the rare days that I do need to wake up early on.
- banish-m4 2y agoI'll agree through biased rationalization. It's 1:33 am now and have more tasks to finish rather than procrastinating on HN. Later folks.
- Murky3515 2y agoWorking at a company and keeping an early morning routine is absolutely brutal to my productivity. I'm a zombie for about 4/5ths of the day, and I start winding up around end of day. Then all night evening and into the night I'm high performing, only to force myself to sleep so I can wake up early again the next day and repeat. Yes I've tried melatonin, morning full-spectrum light therapy (incl sunlight), nighttime blue light filters, exercise, restricted night diet, alcohol + caffeine + sugar abstinence, and more that I'm sure I forgot about. Morning productivity just doesn't work for me. The world isn't made for night owl workers.
- __loam 2y agoRemote work during Covid was so nice because you could sleep at natural times and not get judged for it.
- beagle3 2y agoIt didn’t completely solve it for me, but 10,000 IU of Viyamin D3 early in the morning and making sure I get >100gr of protein per day made a huge difference for me after nothing else did (have tried most on your list). Being a vegetarian, the 100gr of protein doesn’t happen on its own, the way it does for many carnivores. I have to pay attention to it, or I end up with 30-50 which isn’t sufficient.
- cassianoleal 2y ago> the way it does for many carnivores If you mean actual carnivores (mostly eat meat, with some other animal products - eggs, dairy...), that may be right. For most people who are omnivorous, >100g protein per day is not as easy to get, especially since most people's meals are carb-heavy. It doesn't help that general guidance seems float around 45-55g per day. > On average, men should eat 55g and women 45g of protein daily. https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/should_you_worry_about_how_much_protein_you_eat https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/should_you_worry_about_h... > Most adults need around 0.75g of protein per kilo of body weight per day (for the average woman, this is 45g, or 55g for men). https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/nutrition/protein https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-maga...
- 8474_s 2y agoIIRC teenagers/children suffer greatly from this at the morning, with none of them being "morning people", as this is likely some 'learned habit' driven into people by force. https://time.com/6206470/school-start-times-research/ https://time.com/6206470/school-start-times-research/
- acchow 2y agoI was always perpetually tired until my late 20s so I just slept in every class and took naps at my desk at my job too.
- baxtr 2y agoThat’s why I believe switching to permanent summer time would be a big mistake and would make kids suffer a lot more than they already do. Summer time in winter would mean getting up 1h earlier, in most locations. EDIT: for those questioning the effect, because “school would still start at the same time (7:45 am)”. Imagine if we didn’t change 1 hour but instead 12h, and then still says: “why don’t get up? My clock says it’s 7 am!” We do have biological clocks and ideally these are in sync with our real world clocks.
- rpgwaiter 2y agoI think it’s kinda nuts that we discuss changing what time it is instead of like, “we should start work and school later in the day” I mean sure changing the clocks for DST is silly and we should stop, but the discussions are almost always really about “everyone hates waking up super early for work and school”. We can fix this without changing our clocks.
- baxtr 2y agoThat’s true. But good luck changing century old work schedules for teachers and parents. The reality is that most grownups don’t particularly care how kids and teenagers feel in the morning.
- curiousigor 2y agoQuite honestly I particularly don't care if we stick to summer or winter time. As long as I can wake up consistently at the same time and not have my sleep schedule destroyed for a couple of weeks twice per year. This clock changing business really messes me up and I see no actual benefit of it today.
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- osigurdson 2y agoI suspect this study has no predictive value. Rather it is just something mildly interesting to cover as news.
- Teleoflexuous 2y agoFor the pure fun of breaking the narrative I found original article, it's here: https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e001000 https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e001000 Time of day (or time after waking up per subject) when tests were administered has not been controlled. Cognitive abilities are mediated by wakefulness (not to mention, related for most people, digestive processes) cycle. If '"Night owls" smarter than morning people' sounds more plausible than 'time since waking up and last meal predictive of cognitive performance' it's time to get one's identity checked. And I can't imagine 'journalists' from thrash like Sky not knowing that, which brings me to the final point: what is this link doing here?
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- regen7253 2y agoAnd duplicated, two submissions got similar ~20ish upvotes about the same subject...
- k310 2y agoI'm both. Late to bed and early to rise. Some people just live ok with less than 8 hours sleep.
- MichaelRo 2y agoYeah, I heard that's how you get (early) dementia in your late years :) https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/not-getting-enough-deep-sleep-may-increase-dementia-risk https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/not-getting-enough...
- szundi 2y agoI am pretty sure there is research proving the opposite
- dweinus 2y agoSo many articles on this paper, none link to it: https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e001000 https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e001000 In case you want other mental health tips from the study: "Individuals who abstained from alcohol showed lower cognitive scores than those who consumed alcohol"
- Teleoflexuous 2y agoCopying comment from another thread of the same study (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40933910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40933910) For the pure fun of breaking the narrative I found original article, it's here: https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e001000 https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e001000 Time of day (or time after waking up per subject) when tests were administered has not been controlled. Cognitive abilities are mediated by wakefulness (not to mention, related for most people, digestive processes) cycle. If '"Night owls" smarter than morning people' sounds more plausible than 'time since waking up and last meal predictive of cognitive performance' it's time to get one's identity checked. And I can't imagine 'journalists' from thrash like Sky (Guardian this time) not knowing that, which brings me to the final point: what is this link doing here?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- antonvs 2y ago> what is this link doing here? People fall for the clickbait because it tells them something they want to believe. Motivated reasoning is powerful. (And for those who don't want to believe it, they may read the article anyway because they want to debunk the claim. It's perfect clickbait, targeting potentially 100% of the audience.)
- xpl 2y agoTo me being a night owl is an ability to do hyper focused work at night, free from daytime distractions (e.g. people talking, outdoor noise, meetings/calls/IMs/emails). I just enjoy to sit in a dark silent room and do things when nothing gets in the way!
- whimsicalism 2y agoseems correlational to me
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- dmarchand90 2y agoI really wish these public articles tried to give some estimate of the magnitude of the effect. Is this a big difference? Barely noticeable without using advanced statistics? I often think of David Mitchell's commentary on whether stripes make you look fat: https://youtu.be/ISZyJ5MHApI?si=4_hJVLfsvMWWDXKE https://youtu.be/ISZyJ5MHApI?si=4_hJVLfsvMWWDXKE