4 ms·

As an early riser, I must ask the question, why am I here? Presumably the adaptation is beneficial, or we would have been bread out.

by awt 17y ago

philwelch 17y ago
Night owls are very easy for bears to see at 10 AM when they are sleeping in the grass.
anigbrowl 17y ago
Obviously it's beneficial, we can see much easier in the daytime which is a considerable plus when it comes to searching for food. As a night person, I find it harder to explain why I feel more productive after the sun has gone down. There is some support now for the idea that this can be an actual medical condition in some cases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome) affecting <1% of the population, though about ~15% of people are thought to be night owls with a general preference for the evening hours but not inability to sleep earlier if they choose. Though it's not something I, um, lose sleep over, I do think that society inadvertently discriminates against people with an evening orientation. I find it horrific that many American schoolchildren are expected to begin lessons at 8am - unless I am working really long days where I'm worn out physically as well as mentally (so I sleep early), I generally can't function at all before 10am. In Ireland school starts at 9am and my childhood memories are dominated by difficult wakening, rushed breakfasts and persistent lateness. I have major reservations about how I'm going to handle this when we have kids, which will be soon.
- socillion 17y ago
  I agree that school starts excessively early. I have to wake up by 7am to get to school by 8:15am. School started this week, so I'm in a good position to observe this - during the summer I stayed alert until at least 2-3am. I woke up around 10am. Now that I'm getting up earlier, I feel tired around 9:30-10:00pm and have trouble staying awake. That's a loss of several hours for me. Although I can wake up in the morning fully rested, I'm not alert or focused until closer to lunch time, and definitely not until 9.
  - pbemaddy 17y ago
    Evan Ratliff wrote an interesting/informative article about the drug Provigil re: staying alert and focused. http://www.atavist.net/evan/images/MensJournal/MJ_Provigil_Ratliff.pdf http://www.atavist.net/evan/images/MensJournal/MJ_Provigil_R...
billswift 17y ago
Effective artificial light hasn't been around long enough for any evolutionary adaptations to it. Normally, people were awake when it was light and slept when it was dark. When camping, I normally wake at the crack of dawn and go to sleep pretty early after sunset. At home, when not working (which means without a fixed schedule) I tend to sleep from 4 AM to noon. When working I can adapt fairly easily to any working shift, but without the external focus I always drift back to the 4 AM to noon. I have tried to maintain other schedules (as I have mentioned previously on HN posts on sleeping), but they never work out for very long. As for the point of the article, sleeping the 4 AM to noon shift seems to be stable for me because I never seem to "crash" on that schedule as I sometimes do on others. I can stay up much longer than 4 AM, even completely miss a sleep period, and still be back to 4 AM to noon the next day; I cannot do that with other sleep schedules.

As an early riser, I must ask the question, why am I here? Presumably the adaptation is beneficial, or we would have been bread out.

by awt 17y ago

As an early riser, I must ask the question, why am I here? Presumably the adaptation is beneficial, or we would have been bread out.

philwelch 17y ago

Night owls are very easy for bears to see at 10 AM when they are sleeping in the grass.

anigbrowl 17y ago

Obviously it's beneficial, we can see much easier in the daytime which is a considerable plus when it comes to searching for food. As a night person, I find it harder to explain why I feel more productive after the sun has gone down. There is some support now for the idea that this can be an actual medical condition in some cases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome) affecting <1% of the population, though about ~15% of people are thought to be night owls with a general preference for the evening hours but not inability to sleep earlier if they choose. Though it's not something I, um, lose sleep over, I do think that society inadvertently discriminates against people with an evening orientation. I find it horrific that many American schoolchildren are expected to begin lessons at 8am - unless I am working really long days where I'm worn out physically as well as mentally (so I sleep early), I generally can't function at all before 10am. In Ireland school starts at 9am and my childhood memories are dominated by difficult wakening, rushed breakfasts and persistent lateness. I have major reservations about how I'm going to handle this when we have kids, which will be soon.

socillion 17y ago
I agree that school starts excessively early. I have to wake up by 7am to get to school by 8:15am. School started this week, so I'm in a good position to observe this - during the summer I stayed alert until at least 2-3am. I woke up around 10am. Now that I'm getting up earlier, I feel tired around 9:30-10:00pm and have trouble staying awake. That's a loss of several hours for me. Although I can wake up in the morning fully rested, I'm not alert or focused until closer to lunch time, and definitely not until 9.
- pbemaddy 17y ago
  Evan Ratliff wrote an interesting/informative article about the drug Provigil re: staying alert and focused. http://www.atavist.net/evan/images/MensJournal/MJ_Provigil_Ratliff.pdf http://www.atavist.net/evan/images/MensJournal/MJ_Provigil_R...

billswift 17y ago

Effective artificial light hasn't been around long enough for any evolutionary adaptations to it. Normally, people were awake when it was light and slept when it was dark. When camping, I normally wake at the crack of dawn and go to sleep pretty early after sunset. At home, when not working (which means without a fixed schedule) I tend to sleep from 4 AM to noon. When working I can adapt fairly easily to any working shift, but without the external focus I always drift back to the 4 AM to noon. I have tried to maintain other schedules (as I have mentioned previously on HN posts on sleeping), but they never work out for very long. As for the point of the article, sleeping the 4 AM to noon shift seems to be stable for me because I never seem to "crash" on that schedule as I sometimes do on others. I can stay up much longer than 4 AM, even completely miss a sleep period, and still be back to 4 AM to noon the next day; I cannot do that with other sleep schedules.