No /s. That's exactly why I dreamed about working in my own startup. So I wouldn't have to wake, like at 6 AM to have a chance for proper shit and shower. Now I simply can skip sleeping altogether!

I am interested in your take on "conspiracy". While I understand it might feel that way for you as a night owl I would raise you a question. How else could we structure our universities and workdays if not according to our natural environment?

We cannot fill the employment roles for professors, support staff, and every other type of worker even with this rigid 8AM system. In my head that new world would include layers and layers of renduncancies which would be a system we could not feed with our current worker population.

Teachers generally have duties that extend beyond the classroom. There is no reason that they couldn't do this before class instead of after. If they want to, of course - some of them would probably just have a later day. This "rigid 8am system" is part of the problem and it affects everyone. It certainly isn't the only problem: A lot of professors wind up having to have second jobs. We could pay more - and have slightly more flexible scheduling - and take care of some of the issues.

And realistically, it isn't like they are proposing offering more evening classes. Most proposals for later start times are advocating starting 1-2 hours later, not "lets all work second shift".

I'm sure we could come up with time tables that would allow more senior classes is high school to start later. E.g. year 9 & 10 start one lesson after year 7 & 8. This would mean scheduling challenges for families, school/public transport and other areas but maybe the outcome would be better?

The challenge that will remain is that you might have groups/classes where there are early risers and night owls in one. What to do then?

Why would you want to change starting time based on age?

Early risers can still get up early and lessons won't last till night, so they should not be affected negatively much.

It looks like late wake times peak from ages 14-19. There's a well-documented circadian rhythm shift affecting teens.

Hence schools rejiggering (and California requiring by law) later start times for high school students.

At the school I teach at, middle school students were taken along for the ride, because at our school we need to be on a common schedule (crossover teachers, MS students in HS classes). Of course, on the flip-side, no one wants to push it too late because of things like sports and outings with family wanting to have some daylight after school; we ended up starting 30 minutes later, but also shortening the school day by 15 minutes (and doing some clever schedule changes to claw back most of the instructional time lost).

> Why would you want to change starting time based on age?

Because there primary and secondary education utilizes a single set of busses, and nobody is volunteering to pay for duplicates just so everyone can start as late as you'd like. Locally, this means our elementary kids go first, then the high school kids, then the middle schoolers.

Anecdotally, this is a good arrangement. The middle schoolers really need the late start. The high schoolers are a bit more mature and can handle a slightly earlier start, and generally have an increased amount of extracurricular activities competing for daytime.

That you cannot fill some roles in an organisation is a problem of, well, organisation and motivation, isn’t it?

My “conspiracy” remark was with /s which meant sarcasm. It’s just that it can very practically suck to be an outlier from the blessed “norm” of having your sleep schedule more or less synced with day-night cycle.

Classroom and gear utilization of only 8hrs/day would be unacceptable in the industry. I never envisioned that some people might want 8pm classes but maybe it’s an idea. I know that my father, headmaster for high schools, sometimes received threats at home from teachers at 8am on Sunday during the period of establishing the schedules, to tell him that he’d better not assign this or that teacher to the 8am class or…

It's a conspiracy without the quotes alright, the early risers aren't a huge part of the population[1] yet somehow the rest of us need to conform to them in every way.

[1] https://www.appliedchronobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2022...

That's a lovely chart, but it doesn't seem to be using solar time? I wake just as the sun stretches over the horizon and peeks though my window. In the summer, it's very early; in the winter, it's quite late.

If we're to set the start for the official day, it should probably happen an hour or so after the sun has risen. Sadly, on the western side of time zones, like Grand Rapids MI, it's often pitch black when the workday starts.

I can choose to believe that graph, or I can choose to believe it's getting something wrong and the majority of people want to get up relatively early. For whatever reason that may be. If the early risers were indeed such a minority, how exactly are they forcing the vast majority to conform?

Idk, how is the rich minority forcing the rest of humanity to slave away dusk till dawn to buy them superyachts and private islands?

By being the ones in position of authority of course. It doesn't take more than one or two examples for the rest of the world to copy something verbatim out of practical conformist reasons.

I'm probably a night owl as well since I'm always going to bed too late yet I find the idea of already having done a large part of the work by midday kind of alluring. Also the concept of the "magical morning" like doing stuff for you own improvement before working for someone/something else seems to be a good way to start a day. Why not waking up at 3am and do some weightlifting or whatever?

> I find the idea of already having done a large part of the work by midday kind of alluring

Oh, no that's not what you do when you get up early!

You do the fun stuff first, have a break to go to the shop when there is near-no traffic, and start working at the end of your day. Then finish the work and just drop on bed and sleep.

The problem with getting up early is no partying of any sort really, or any evening activities.

And ruin my Netflix relaxing evening? 3am has drawbacks too, it's not like magically you end up with more time out of the 24h.

Rumor has it they don't do this in warm countries. Spain for instance is supposed to have a late night culture where people eat dinner at 9PM. Seems to be true based on what my Spanish friends say.

But generally you're right. I don't get it, what's the fuss about doing things early? Artificial light has existed for a long time now, why not get up a little later, relax, eat, chat a bit, and then go do whatever it is?

Spain is a complicated example because it's also in the 'wrong' timezone - it's on Central European Time (UTC+1), and should be really be on UTC.

So if people are living their lives roughly aligned to the sun, then they'll naturally wake and sleep later.

It would be interesting to contrast that with Athens which is more aligned to the correct timezone for their longitude.

But doesn't Spain's culture of late nights and siestas date from long before anyone bothered to coordinate clocks?

[edit: added "from", extended "any" to "anyone". Perhaps I'm less efficient early in the morning than I supposed.]

I could certainly believe that. Another interesting comparison would be with Portugal, which is in some ways culturally similar to Spain, but maintains UTC.

There is a push in Spain to try and re-align the timezone - see for instance this Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/22/spania...

If the EU plan to abolish the clock-change, and at the same time allow countries to choose which time-zone to adopt actually happens it will be interesting to see if the Spanish government chooses to use this opportunity to switch to UTC.

Sure, but the point is that if you control for the effect of timezone displacement and just look at the sun, which is probably what originally shaped schedules in different human cultures, there's not that much difference between sleep and meal times in Spain and neighboring countries. Most of the perceived difference comes from the fact that a Spanish clock will be showing a later hour than most other countries when the sun is at a given point in the sky.

For example, I'm from Spain, and according to some quick searches, solar noon where I am today was at 13:47 (vs. 12:09 in New York, 12:14 in London, 12:20 in Berlin, 12:50 in Lisbon, 13:04 in Paris). So it's no wonder most Spanish people have lunch at around 14 (equivalent to eating at 12:22 in New York) and dinner past 21.

By the way, siesta culture is more of a stereotype than a real thing by now. I don't know anyone who regularly naps during the workweek (except kids and elderly). I guess it might still happen among physical workers in hot agricultural areas of the south, where you're not going to work the fields after noon under the scorching sun, but it's not a reality for the overwhelming majority of people.

I am from Greece. I cannot remember if our classes started at 0800 or 0900. But I remember that exams did start at 0800.

> what's the fuss about doing things early?

I feel like it has to do a lot with the most recent industrial revolution and how factories had to operate, and the school systems built around that. Most of places and industries, it hasn’t gone anywhere.

And I guess it won’t until we solve the problem of massive energy generation for pennies, orders of magnitude more than we have now, and bump up production output everywhere across the board, with AI or else.

The industrial revolution made us get up with the chickens?

Winter with a fairly-common work-and-getting-the-kids-places schedule means getting up before the chickens.

I actually think it'd be great if we could have seasonal work schedules. Winter work days should be 6 hours, not 8. Let the whole of society hibernate a bit. Leave at least one or two daylight hours that aren't taken up by work or commute.

> Winter work days should be 6 hours, not 8.

That'd be offset by having to work 15 during the summer. Up here in Alberta our shortest days are 7.5 hours and longest are 17.

I have always felt that my system wants to go into low power mode in the winter. It feels very unnatural to work full time in the winter. And working longer hours in the summer feels natural as well. I think you are on to something.

In Sweden the industrial revolution brought on 8 hour shifts for around the clock production (IIRC). Something like 06-14,14-22,22-06. Could be similar.

Yes, maximizing daylight is critical in colder climates. You want to capture as much sunlight as possible in your 16 waking hours, which often means starting your day during the foreglow before sunrise.

I'm a night owl from southern California, and when I lived in England for a bit I was surprised to find how depressing it was to enter the world at noonish, only for the sun to set after a few hours, and then having to resign myself to the indoors shortly after that. It was just a dreary way to live. (Yes, I realize England isn't even that cold.)

I like the nights, but I also love having the option to be out and about in the warm evenings. When those mild evenings are taken away, there's more motivation for people to callus themselves to the early morning alarm clocks.

> I don't get it, what's the fuss about doing things early?

Because a brisk early morning when the sun rises is sublime. In that regard, I totally support people who need to sleep in -- because the only thing better than a brisk early morning sunrise is a quiet one. No rushing about, just relax and enjoy how peaceful it is before the day ramps up. It's energizing.

Growing up I played (American) football in the south and during camp we would be up at 430 to do county fairs (a type of brutal workout). It always ended right as the sun was coming up at 6. The feeling knowing that most hellish part of the day was over and watching that sunrise covered in mud and probably still out of breath during the coolest part of the day on the way to breakfast was something almost heavenly. I'll still do metcon type workouts in the morning just to get that feeling.

I understand the French tend to do the late-dinner thing, too. 8-9PM being a common start time for dinner, even at home.

I'm in my 40s. Same.

This morning I had to get up at 0615 for the second morning in succession due to a couple of appointments. This is absolutely not normal for me and it's completely painful. Obviously sometimes it has to happen, and that's OK, but it comes at a cost.

People will say, "just go to bed earlier", but actually that doesn't really work because unless I go to bed hours after I've eaten I don't sleep and tend to get heartburn. Case in point, last night: got home at about 1915, ate dinner just after 2000, went to bed at 2200 (because I had to get up early this morning), slept like absolute crap.

Sorry (not sorry), but I can't live like this. I need a good 8 hours a night every night, and that means going to bed at 2300 - 0000 and getting up at 0700 or, ideally, 0800. I work much better that way, and am much happier with it. More than that, I'm not falling asleep by lunchtime.

It can be done but it's hard with todays jobs. The advice I was given was to wake up and then do not rest in bed until I go to bed. Sitting on a chair all day is about the same.

I did manage to switch from a night owl to a morning person but what I realized is that sitting on a chair, starring at blue light and the stress to "make things work" are actually toxic and they will mess up my sleep.

I look at the screen, make a mental list (sometimes on paper) of the things to do, get away from the screen and go over the items in my head. It's not supper productive but it does contribute to the process without screen time.

You can eat earlier than 20.00?...

I think it's detrimental to someone's quality of life to be unable to shift their sleping schedule.

The only physiological thing you cannot shift is the sunlight. If I have to wake up early before sunrise and feel like crap, I will take a walk out a couple hours later and the rest of my day will be productive.

Not when I've got in after 1900 I can't.

why not? eat before 7pm?

This is a big deal. You will be awake when you eat, 24 hours later, even if that's the middle of the night. You can shift your internal clock faster this way than any other.

> I go to bed hours after I've eaten

I feel like this is extremely important. I try very hard to eat no late than at least 4 hours before I feel like going to sleep. And get as sober as possible before that too.

> unless I go to bed hours after I've eaten I don't sleep and tend to get heartburn

FWIW YMMV going low-carb completely cured my heartburns who were particularly annoying when laying down just like you. I had been taking proton pump inhibitors for 10 years before finding that out. And every time I eat carbs, I need to take antacids. It doesn't seem like it's been studied much, but insulin stimulates the proton pump and the stomach produces more acid.

It's funny that you say you are not an early bird yet for me going to bed at 2300 - 0000 and getting up at 0700 or 0800 is still early.

I consider myself a night owl and if I ever get to bed before midnight I consider this early. I still have to wake up between 0730 and 0800 (because life/obligations) and that is why I am like a zombie half the day.

But no matter how tired I might be through the day, at night something happens and I feel full of energy.

Same here. It seems that I don't have just one tank for "energy", but two, and the second one unlocks somewhen between 20:00 and 23:00. More than that, no matter what time I go to sleep, I can't possibly get up on my own before ~10:00. This does not happen, period.

Between moving out of my parents' house and moving in with my wife, I had some years to do experiments on this, and there's one consistent result: whenever I'm not forced to wake up at specific time (say, by threat of getting fired, or just because I asked someone to keep calling me to make sure I got up), my sleeping pattern always settles around going to bed ~04:00 and waking up ~11:00. Whenever the external pressure stops, I automatically revert to that mode in two or three days.

It would all be fine, except this sleep mode is thoroughly incompatible with normal people and the society at large :/.

I'm very similar to you. Left to my own schedule, I will go to bed around 2-3am and wake up about 10am. Unfortunately, I have to be out of bed around 6:30am for work, but no matter how hard I try or how tired I was during the day, when it's the evening my brain wakes up and I just cant get to sleep before 12-1am. The only thing that really helps is cannabis, but as I got older cannabis started giving me anxiety really bad.

It would be cool to research those ideal times. It is obvious that if one sticks to the hard coded ideal rest/wake times one is much more energetic, productive and more focused but I'm curious how big the difference is. Around 11 am I can wake up and cycle 200 km or run a marathon starting immediately. If you ask me kindly to run 100 meters around 6 am your life is probably in danger.

That second tank is caused by light at night.

In my opinion, most people who say they are night owls are just light sensitive.

If we didn't have so much light in our environment at night we would be bored to sleep. On top of this, there is also a physiological effect from light. It suppresses melatonin and makes you feel newly awake to be in anything above the intensity of candlelight.

Of course there are social elements to staying up late and partying. But unless you are a party animal (and it's great if you are, the world needs more happy socialization) it's hard to believe that this causes you to stay up late every night.

> That second tank is caused by light at night.

I don't know. If anything, maybe not total light, but some kind of inside/outside delta?

I am light sensitive. I tolerate only two states: very dark and very bright. The average underlit indoors people keep during the day, when there's not that much sunlight coming in, but enough for them to keep the lights off - those shut me down very quickly.

I normally thought of it in terms of not enough light, but I just realized it's not exactly it. There are cases when, during the day, the total of sunlight + artificial light in the room is squarely in the underlit, sleep-inducing zone, but only few hours later, once it's dark outside, the same amount of artificial light is enough for my mind to consider the room bright enough.

Still, the "second tank" effect doesn't feel light-related. It's fast-acting - one moment I'm tired out of my mind, the next one I realize someone just plugged me up to a fresh battery - and the change occurs without any obvious prompt like changing locations or light levels.

As for social element, I'm not a party animal. But I am someone who suffers from something like 報復性熬夜 - "revenge bedtime procrastination". The late-night ours, after everyone around me is asleep and couldn't possibly bother me anymore, are the only time I feel I can finally unwind, relax, and recover. I've had this for a long time, but I'm fairly certain it's a downstream effect - that is, my difficulty getting up and extra energy kicking it after dark were something I've had for much, much longer.

I liked this phrase "revenge bedtime procrastination". In my case there is often this parameter that I do not want the day to end, I feel I did not accomplish enough during the day or that I did not have enough "me" time and I spend the nights in front of my PC or watching a movie/series.

I've been able to make this sleeping pattern work by being in Asia while working with American companies. I reserve 11pm to 3am for meetings/sync with other employees, I work from home and do any work that requires deep concentration in the late afternoon and I reserve lunch plus early afternoon to play with my son.

Luckily my partner is also a night owl and if she weren't forced to wake up early for work would go to sleep around 2-3am. So, when we're on holiday, we're in sync.

Oh, it's early for me too, but I can at least function well, and without becoming incredibly short tempered and frustrated, on a 0000 - 0800 sleep pattern. Left to my own devices, and with no alarm clock, I tend to actually wake up at around 0900 - 1000, but (not being independently wealthy) that's pretty incompatible with the rest of life.

If I had FU money I'd fully embrace that.

What's the point of getting up early, rushing around, only to leave the house and get immediately stuck in traffic? What a giant waste of time.

I was watching a video about getting good sleep hygiene the other day and the main tip was "control what time you wake up, because waking up tired is easier than going to bed when you're not tired."

That person is clearly not a night owl lol. Waking up at 7 doesn't make you feel any more tired at 11 when you're a night owl, because that's just when you're the most awake. All you end up doing is creating an ever growing sleep debt until you're on vacation and just sleep for its whole duration.

> People will say, "just go to bed earlier"

This is the advice you need to avoid. Don't go to bed earlier. Go to bed when you are tired. Then get up at exactly the time you set your alarm for the next morning. Then repeat that over and over, every single day (even weekends). You will adapt and start going to bed earlier so you get the amount of rest you need.

Or you'll make an excuse for why you can't do this and why it certainly won't work for you.

I recently listened to an old startup podcast where the guest spoke about how waking up 3 hours before everybody else is the smartest thing you can do because you get an extra 3 hours on everybody else. It didn't cross his mind you can also go to bed 3 hours later than everyone else.

On a different startup podcast, there was a guy claiming he went to bed at 7pm and woke up at 3am! He claimed his kids went to bed at 7pm too. I mean sure, maybe between 1 and 3 years of age, but in the long run this is just absurd (or you are not putting in an equal share of parenting, or spending time with your kids or spouse in the evening.)

> waking up 3 hours before everybody else is the smartest thing you can do because you get an extra 3 hours on everybody else

Perhaps it's not "extra" hours, it's time you can use productively vs time you can't.

Three completely uninterrupted hours in the morning while everyone else is asleep vs three hours in the evening while everyone is is awake?

To actually concentrate on something important, I'd always pick the former.

Everybody else in my household goes to bed before 22:00 and wakes up early - so there's fewer interruptions for me if I work at night. I find the quiet and cooler temperatures much more productive, too - but this could be a geographical thing

> Three constantly interrupted hours in the morning while everyone else is awake vs three quiet hours in the evening while everyone is asleep?

I do my best work after 22:00, when it's quiet. In the morning, I usually can't get anything done.

I've tried going later to bed to use these as more productive hours for my sideprojects (heck I am still going too late to bed). Although I say that I have more energy in the night the thing is that after a full day it is not easy to concentrate. In the morning you are fresher (provided you get enough sleep).

Keys to productivity include scoping the work in a way where it can be done solo, and then convincing people to work a few hours during the day when either others aren’t, working or when you aren’t expected to be available. Go offline or invis on your work communications app. Close your email client. Try it 2 hours a day for 2 weeks and watch what happens.

Overall, my productivity & creativity looks like a gently downsloping graph throughout the day. There are some dips and surges, but in general that is the trend. Three hours first thing in the morning is significantly more valuable -- I prioritize my work/side/personal life so that on any given day I make sure I stack the important stuff earlier if I can.

Our neighbors are the 7pm family. They own their own business and they're out the door at the crack of dawn to tend to things. The kids have always gone to bed at 7pm, except the teenager of course. So such families do exist, but I think it's important that the whole family be on the same schedule, for the reasons you mention.

A bit off topic I know, but as a night owl till my mid 30s I actually managed to flip to an early bird. Maybe it was just a fluke or something and this is totally anecdotal but what I think happened is for about 3-4 months I was doing a physical activity in the morning that I _really wanted_ to do - some martial arts classes.

And then one faithful morning there was this training session that was just sublime - working out outside, in the heat of the rising sun, very idilic. From that morning onwards, I started waking up 7am by myself, whatever I do, no matter if I stay late or not ... it was very bizarre, I just "flipped" from one day to the next.

I attribute this to the fact that most really fun things in my life happen late - parties, dancing, playing computer games to 3am, bouts of in the zone coding, spending nights with my partner - all happening in the evening, so my body obviously tries to "optimise" its attention to when I crave it most.

When I consistently had a thing that was really engaging for me for a long enough period (and no corresponding "high" in the evening) I switched to an early bird.

Last year I've stopped doing the fun morning stuff and I can sense slowly moving back to late evenings and unpleasant mornings.

> Maybe it was just a fluke or something and this is totally anecdotal but what I think happened is for about 3-4 months I was doing a physical activity in the morning that I _really wanted_ to do - some martial arts classes.

I suspect this is at the root of a lot of “night owl” personalities: Night time is equated with freedom, whereas mornings are equated with having to do something they don’t like (work, school).

Finding something semi-enjoyable to do in the morning is key to not hating mornings. If someone’s mornings are just a painful slog to a job you dislike and a detour until you can get to the evening where you can maybe enjoy something, of course they’re going to be a night owl.

> Night time is equated with freedom

Interesting thought. I enjoy being alone and have always equated early morning with freedom. There are very few distractions at 5am. Night owls just get to that sweet spot in time from the other direction.

But you don’t spend those hours before work with the inevitability of what you’ll have to deal with at work in just a few hours weighing on your mind?

Personally I find evenings a bit different, in that I’m sufficiently worn out mentally from the day that I no longer can think (productively) about work — and so the worries of the upcoming day are temporarily shelved for lack of practical progress to be made on them. Through no particular mental effort on my part, it is easy to relax in the evenings.

But in the mornings, I’m fresh enough that that doesn’t work. I can, through an act of willpower and mindfulness, intentionally forget that work is a thing I’ll have to be doing in a few hours, and so just enjoy my mornings like you do — but this was a skill I learned, and I didn’t always have it; and moreover, I suspect it’s a skill many people never develop.

Yes and no. I enjoy getting personal tasks done in the morning before work, especially those that require a sharp mind. Like you mentioned, I feel worn out mentally and the end of the day, though I find I'm happier and more productive overall if I save a few sharp-minded hours in the early morning for myself.

Work is one of many things I do, and I never feel the need to forget it exists. Dealing with it is inevitable whether it's right before bed or right when I wake up. For me, relaxation comes from doing other things like reading, working out, jiu-jitsu, watching a show, etc...

I am sharpest in the morning, and every day gives me a new opportunity on where to apply myself when I'm at my best.

I know people who really need to get up early because the morning is their most productive part of the day by a really huge margin. They start yawning around 1-2 pm to really drive the point home. Their circadian rhythm seems heavily stacked towards the early game.

I work night shifts, some of the early birds are insanely dumb after 3 am, insanely dumb compared to who they are the rest of the day. I see one student of higher education put down his a tool and turn around for 3 seconds then panic wondering where they put it. Not one time! I see him do that hundreds of times. I keep a mental map of where I see him put stuff so that I can remind him or answer when asked. They had plenty of rest, they work hard. It's supper funny to me because I'm a bit like that before 11 am. I'm physically there, if someone asks me to do something my mind makes a raw audio recording of it that I often revisit later to parse out what it was they actually said. In school I've aced tests with 100% questions I consciously knew nothing about. You have to picture it, its hilarious, I read a question about a topic I've never seen before, 5 seconds later I apparently know the answer to the question. I know the difference in file format, recalling unparsed information comes with a lot of irrelevant data about the moment the teacher explained the topic. After 1 pm I only retain the relevant parts, those files contain almost no information about when I learned it, their attachments are my own thoughts.

Of course at times I have to condition myself for morning productivity, I can for example get up at 4 am if I need my brain at 9:00. I can go to bed early, at exactly the same time, rest the body/eyes and think about life for a few hours. It works but it feels wrong, it screams wrong.

I did a hilarious experiment one time where I went to bed at 17:30 straight after work and set the alarm at 1 am. It felt perfect but had negative social implications.

Maybe its a cool idea for a startup. It seems one hell of a perk from my perspective.

There may be a kernel of truth to this, but–as a lifelong nightowl who got in the habit of going for morning runs several years ago–I‘ve never been able to wake up as easily as I can stay up.

I love the feeling of running early in the morning as the city wakes up around me. I get a lot of the same enjoyment as when I stay up late at night, but I still haven’t been able to maintain a habit of truly early runs.

These days I sleep roughly midnight to 8am, and could very easily stay up til 4am if I were to want to, but shifting the other direction and waking up at 5 or 6am to run is super difficult. I can do it for a few days but have never made it stick. Running at 8 or 9am is still nice but not quite the same.

> I‘ve never been able to wake up as easily as I can stay up.

Is that even quantifiable? Maybe you can stay up till 2 but not wake up by 7. But 2 and 7 nor any other pair are equivalent so I don’t see how you could make that comparison.

>> Maybe it was just a fluke or something

> Night time is equated with freedom

I'm middle-aged. I think my testosterone-levels are falling (sex-drive diminishing, at least). Paired with that I've had less depression [desire a season of grief]. But also I've had periods of morning wakefulness.

Someone said downthread "you've just aged". Seems to me, on n=1, like I'm transitioning in my sleepy times. I'm getting up early (for periods of days/weeks at a time), but it's the 'waking and feeling wakeful' that is driving it.

On the flipside, I get super-sleepy after lunch.

If the drive to get solitude were the cause, then night-time provides that still in my home, despite me finding myself drawn towards being an early-bird (but still only for short periods of a few days to a few weeks, so far).

Of course I could just have a brain tumour, but it would be interesting to see some broad studies on sleep pattern changes in middle-age?

Try eating a light meal at lunch if you want to stay awake. Digestion is energetically demanding and causes fluctuations in your blood sugar.

Yes, I've always had a postprandial dip in energy levels, but I do only have a light lunch.

I tried this with scuba diving classes and paragliding classes, but I still hated it. I typically wake up at 9:00 am, but I don't function very well until around 10:00 am.

I think the early morning wake-up time (5:00 am for the paragliding classes) was a contributing factor in one of the other paragliding students running into me, collapsing both our wings, and sending us 150 to 200 feet into the ground.

Fortunately, neither of us died, but I shattered one of my vertebrae and she shattered her pelvis. Not worth it.

Reminds me of my early-morning driving lessons. No matter how much I prioritized being rested for them, on the morning drives my attention was always 60%+ focused on just not falling asleep. Several times I had a situation when I would suddenly realize I've been asleep for the past 5+ seconds - while going down a road at 100km/h. The fear of this resulting in an actual accident is a major factor why, after random life circumstances interrupted my learning, I haven't pursued that license again.

I should mention that paragliding can only safely be done in the early morning or in the evening. The wind gets too choppy during the day, making it a lot more dangerous. For me, evening lessons would have been a much better option than early morning lessons. Had I opted for that, I may still be doing it and wouldn't have had to deal with a multi-year recovery, multiple operations, and chronic pain today. Lesson learned, I guess.

One of the more interesting things I had happen to me while being unemployed was I actually liked waking up relatively early. I'm was always a "nightowl". now I had the feeling that the whole day was mine and I wanted the most from it. Before I'd stay in bed pretty much to the last minute

> Night time is equated with freedom

The tagline and part of what is explored in a Fall anime - Call of the Night.

Was really good, highly recommend

I hear you. Doing something physical in the early morning hours when you can sense that the rest of the world is still at rest is sublime. I too have lived most of my life as a night owl but there have been bursts recently when an early morning run is exactly what I need.

Yes, you went through the same shift on circadian rhythm that most people do as they age. Babies sleep a lot irregularly. Very small children take a nap in the middle of the day. Young adults are sleepy sometime between 1-4am. Adults stay up 9pm-maybe 1 am. Old people sleep little and wake lots, somewhat like babies. There are predictable shifts on average in preferences that have next to nothing to do with what we do.

> I attribute this to the fact that most really fun things in my life happen late - parties, dancing, playing computer games to 3am, bouts of in the zone coding, spending nights with my partner - all happening in the evening, so my body obviously tries to "optimise" its attention to when I crave it most.

I’ve personally found that 4am wake-up is driven by the same goal as 3am bedtimes: hours when everyone else is too asleep to bother you. The big difference is that it’s far easier to stay awake than it is to force yourself out of bed.

Doubly so when you live with a partner. Triply so when you have kids that will wake up (for the final time) at some point between 0400 and 0600, so you can't even rely on that time being uninterrupted anyway.

My personal hypothesis is “night owl”-ism is not as widespread as it seems (not to say it is not existent), but instead, our society makes it easier to be a night owl. I have had times in my life where I am out of bed at 5, at 8, at 11, and all have felt reasonable at the time. But definitely it is harder to be out of bed at 5 in today’s society.

Artificial lights, entertainment, modern lifestyle, and socializing all keep us up later than we ever would be in our natural state. How many night owls do you think there would be if we did not work indoors all day, had no light past sundown, no television or sporting events to watch, no bars or parties to attend, and no addictive activities to engage in? When considering this, it is easy to conclude that one is a night owl.

Just as the night owl feels ostracism for being unable to perform at early meetings and suffers throughout their youth, many early birds feel similar ostracism, because they want to sleep when night life is coming alive. I imagine these “coincidences” create vastly different outcomes in life for people based on their biological inclinations. It’s something we should be cognizant of.

“Night owl” does not describe some innate biological reality. It’s a matter of preference and habit.

To the contrary, there are genetic changes that correlate to different chronotypes [0]. I find interesting the hypothesis that chronotypes arose as a survival advantage because tribes could more naturally sleep in shifts to stay safe during the night time. I do think, however, the genetic component is overstated. I agree with you that it is more habit than anything, and lifestyle.

We as a society should do more research to determine how large the habit versus genetic components are, or publicize the information and act on it more if it is out there already. If we are fighting an unwinnable battle trying to adjust people in opposition to their genetics, we should change our practices. Similarly, if we are instilling a defeatist mindset into people (e.g. “I can’t do that, I’m not an early bird”) which cannot be justified by science, we should change our perception.

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6084759/

The fact it’s called a correlation shows it is not a fact that there are biological night owls.

And it shows that it’s not a fact that there are not.

In this case the correlation is due to a causal relationship between genetic variation and chronotype that is well established. The roles of many of the genes involved have been established in lab organisms -- fruit flys and mice mostly -- yes you can observe and manipulate chronotype in flys. The same circadian rhythm genes have similar functions in people. There are rare mutations in these genes that cause familial sleep disruption syndromes, as well as common variants that have small effects that can be detected in large studies.

I think with genetic sequencing we’re way past this belief.

We are not. There are some suggestions that they might be biological but it is not a settled matter at all.

It is absolutely settled. The genetic basis of chronotype has been extensively studied in fruit flys and mice, and parallel effects in the same genes have been found in humans.

I'm not sure that's true, at least based on personal experience. I'm a long-time night owl who has been getting up relatively early for work purposes the last couple of years. I still do my best work late at night and struggle a little on complex tasks before noon.

It seems like, while I can adjust my sleep schedule to whatever, the actual cycles of alertness have their own schedule that doesn't want to move.

Without a clear biochemical pathway (or an absence of) that's just an opinion, as weak as most the the current research in humanities.

This is false, the biological pathways that underly circadian rhythms have been mapped out in great detail in multiple organisms.

I think there's a lot to be said for habits swaying it but I think "biological" night-owl-ism is definitely a thing.

I've always been a night owl. The most in-tune I've ever felt with my biological clock is when, one summer in college, I ended up going to bed at 5-6am and waking up around 3-4pm. I had friends on IRC who lived in new zealand who I ran a minecraft server with and did minecraft plugin coding with (enabled by the weird sleep cycle, not caused by it).

College and school etc always had me feeling exhausted. I maintain that I must have some innate mathematical ability because my 7:30 AM algebra 2 class in high school was performed exclusively by my subconscious as my brain got an extra hour of sleep regardless of what the external world was trying to impose upon it.

Anyway, blah blah night owl, then I had kids. Both the father and mother have a lot of hormonal changes (obviously the mother moreso but it's still nontrivial for the father) and all of a sudden I was able to wake up with the baby at 6:30am after 7 hours of shitty sleep with relatively no problem. Where was this in high school?? Well, the sleep part, not the baby part. But I digress.

Baby becomes toddler and start sleeping 10-12 hours at night, hormones recede, normalcy restores, and suddenly waking up to go to work at even 9am resumes being mild-to-moderately painful.

Have next baby. Cycle repeats.

Currently typing this having gotten up at 7 with baby #3 so this is top of mind.

This is total speculation on my part, but it seems like there would be a strong evolutionary pressure, at a group level, to select for a mixture of night owls and early risers. The "night owls" stay up to watch for predators to keep the group safe. Those groups without some late sleeper DNA ultimately get selected out.

BINGO.

There are probably some genetic night-owls or something, but I bet 95+% of night owls would be "cured" in a week flat if they were allowed no glowing screens past sundown and their typical stupid-bright room lighting were replaced with warm-temp handheld lights at ~2-4 candle equivalent (actual, not "candle power")

Modern sleeplessness is an epidemic born of hyper-palatable on-tap nigh-infinite entertainment, and far-too-bright nighttime lighting, more than anything else. It's mainly due to how incredibly stimulating our home environments are now, unprecedented ever before. Even an emperor didn't have this kind of entertainment available 24/7 on a whim—the closest equivalent would be an emperor in the middle of hosting a huge, expensive festival, but we've got that at our fingertips every hour of every day. No fucking wonder we can't sleep!

I usually sleep 9h from 3 to 12.

But, when I was on a conference last year, where I had to get up early for events for a whole week, my rythm changed and I slept from 12 to 9.

This kept going on for two weeks or so, then I was back to my old schedule.

> I bet 95+% of night owls would be "cured" in a week flat if they were allowed no glowing screens past sundown and their typical stupid-bright room lighting were replaced with warm-temp handheld lights at ~2-4 candle equivalent (actual, not "candle power")

It's an interesting theory. Problem is, without a biochemical pathway it means nothing.

Melatonin secretion & basal temperatures are both interesting avenues for research. Blue light seems to be a favorite as well.

It's not all biochemistry, much of it's psychology. Unless we're going with "psychology is just biochemistry".

I get where you are going, but there are a few issues with this, the first being that no screens after sundown is a wildly unreasonable ask in 2023 (especially for the types of folks who frequent this board), at least in my opinion. A lot of the talk around screen time before bed also fails to factor the type of activity being done on the screen, and what type of screen is being used. Shopping on your laptop vs reading on a fully dimmed phone screen are entirely different ends of the spectrum in terms of stimulation and significantly different in terms of light emitted and screen motion

That said, I’ve found switching to warm dimming circadian lighting at night has been a huge help and is an easy enough solution

A better question is: why is this something that needs to be cured? Why cater society's schedule to people who wake up at "too fucking early" O'clock, instead of either A) having flexible hours for jobs that support it (There's no reason why my office needs to have everyone work the same 8 hours), or B) a middle ground that doesn't involve grating against the preferred sleep schedule of a significant portion of the population.

Somehow we let society moralize "the early risers are Gods chosen people" and the rest of us just need to put up with it.

I wonder what role widespread caffeine consumption has to play in this.

This is somewhat along the lines of my current theory, which is that night owls vs early birds is about sensitivity to the environment. The reason night owls stay up late is not because it's late, but because it becomes quiet enough that the environment they're sensitive to stops taking attention and the person can direct that attention inward. According to this theory, it would make sense for introverts to be more affected by this as they would accumulate an "introversion deficit" throughout the day.

     but as a night owl till my mid 30s I actually managed to 
     flip to an early bird.

Anecdotally, this seems common. Even without early morning incentives. I think a lot of late sleepers become early risers as they reach their 30s and 40s.

One could see where there's a biological advantage in this pattern. For a group of pre-modern humans, most tasks will happen during daylight, but some (keeping watch, childcare, tending a fire) work best with someone awake around the clock. Notably, those tasks can be done by people who aren't either physically able enough (older) or mentally experienced enough (younger) to do the core activities (hunting and gathering).

With older people waking up very early, and adolescents staying up very late, you can cover the entire daily cycle with alert humans capable of doing basic tasks (and alerting the rest of the group should something come up).

I really hope that'll be true for me as well. (still have a few years left in that age span)

Each time I go to bed early and get enough sleep, I just love the morning hours and being done with the day's work while the sun is still shines is really nice.

Yet no matter how hard I try it seems the temptations of the internet get me every time and with a blinks it's 3 am :(

It's probably easier if you've got a partner who is a natural early bird.

> It's probably easier if you've got a partner who is a natural early bird.

It's not. You will get up early, that's true. Then you'll spend until noon in zombie mode, then you'll blow through the afternoon, all stressed, trying to desperately catch up with your work as to not have to stay late. Then the partner/family stuff, and then with the evening, comes the big problem: you now need those late-night hours even more, to unwind, to sort your thoughts out. However, it also feels bad to not go asleep with your partner together. But then, you're not really in the mood for anything and going to sleep early feels like throwing away the best part of the day.

In the famous words of Admiral Ackbar, it's a trap. Ask me how I know.

(Also, Admiral Ackbar doesn't know a thing about traps. It's not really a trap until you have small children in the mix, randomly disrupting any kind of rhythm or schedule you cling to in order to cope.)

It's like you reached into my mind and transcribed my thoughts directly.

Don’t forget guilt tripped for sleeping “in” until 10am

That too. Fortunately that "solved itself" thanks to the kids not letting anyone sleep past 08:00.

It's called "ageing."

Yup. When I was in my 20s, all these guys I knew in their late 30s and up were all getting up at the crack of dawn to go running or other activities. Seemed like they must be very disciplined.

At around age 37, I started noticing I could wake up at 6am no problem, and now I could probably get up at 5 fairly easily, provided I can get to bed on time.

A couple of years earlier but I experienced the same. I started working on a project I really liked in the mornings before work and I automatically started to get up early, now almost a decade later I m still waking up early.

I flipped when we only had one kid, it worked much better with my training schedule. Once we had two (and three) kids I've always had to fight for any sleep I could get so the idea of "being" a "night-owl" or "early-bird" lost all meaning.

That is gradually improving and once my youngest starts school I'm going to try to return to the early bird pattern. We'll see how it goes.

Surprisingly, with two small kids, I only reinforced my night-owl habits. The rhythm we settled at is simple: my wife - a natural early bird - handles the early morning while letting me sleep in a little, and I - a natural night owl - stay up late, effectively covering for anything that happens between 23:00 and 03:00, so that it doesn't wake her up.

It's a bad system in so many ways, but we can't seem to make anything else work. And we know from experience that both of us getting enough sleep is the foundation on which everything else stands.

We did shift-sleep for the early weeks for all three kids (all ours were sleeping through the night by 3ish months, so it was never that long we had to do it, though) and I can't imagine doing it any other way. Couples who both get up for every event out of some apparent sense of either solidarity or resentment are just baffling to me. WTF, so you're both constantly running on like zero REM sleep? Jesus, that's like doing it on hard mode for no good reason.

The way we did it, we both got about six uninterrupted hours every week night, so it really wasn't that bad. Then alternate sleep-in days on the weekend, and you even get one really good 8+ (hell, sometimes 10 or more) hour sleep per week. Could have maintained that schedule much longer than we had to, really was totally manageable, if not exactly fun.

It seems to be understood now that getting outdoor sunlight in your eyes after waking up is what sets your circadian clock. This 100% worked for me too.

This probably makes the most sense to me. But I also think depending on caffeine to wake up keeps the brain from transitioning from sleep to a full waking state. I can't seem to give up coffee, but I notice if I cut back it is not as severe. Also, going to bed early enough so that by the time you wake up, you have had time to run through the final dream REM stage of sleep before waking up helps tremendously.

I'm a bit of both, which is effectively the same thing.

If I'm sleeping later, I prefer to work late, at least until 3am. However, my most natural awakening happens by 5am. From there, I can work for 3-4 hours in silence until it begins to warm up outside.

I don't do well with either too little sleep or an irregular sleep schedule, and I don't like sleeping around other people's schedules. Which, with a partner and a very bossy cat, I don't have much hope of overcoming.

I‘ve always been a night owl. Waking up at any time before 8am just left me groggy for most of the morning. It didn’t matter if I established a sleep schedule where I got a full 8 hours, my body just doesn’t like getting up that early.

But after returning from a trip to a different time zone, I discovered something kinda bizarre. If I wake up around 4:30am, I feel amazing and I’m super productive for the whole day. I have to be in bed by 9pm, but even with slightly less than 8 hours sleep, the effect is transformative.

But my problem ends up being that the world is super hostile to an adult going to bed by 9pm. It’s just really hard to keep on that schedule when you’re interacting with the rest of society. So I end up on my old night owl schedule because it’s the only one that somewhat works for my body and my interactions with other people. I really wish I could stay on the up-at-4:30 schedule, though, because it’s just so energizing.

I agree. I also would add to the theory that for a night owl, getting up at 4:30-5:00 am, is still getting up at night, so it is ok with whatever hormone regulatory system exists. But you are correct, you need to go to sleep around 8pm which is impossible, if you want to keep it up. And if your are up after 9, then you're screwed, and can't sleep until 2 AM. I also agree with poster up above about kids changing your dream cycle to make it possible to wake early, when necessary.

I am also a late sleeper.

I just don’t like going to bed.

If University started at 11 I would still be tired though. I would just go to bed later.

adhd? if I wouldn't set artificial constraints forcing my sleep-wake-rhythm into a frame it would probably rotate continuously. let's say you catch me at 1am to 9am. next day it would be 1am30 to 9am30. next day 2am to 10am etc ... I'd fight against my urge to sleep forcing the rhythm to move like that. now how to learn liking to go to bed? that's my 1 million dollar problem - paradoxically I very much like to _stay_ in bed ...

but are you able to maintain a consistent sleep rhythm long-term? like going to bed at 2am and waking up at 11am? or do you have to guard against continuous rotation of that rhythm (going to bed later and waking up later until you basically wake up at 2pm or later)?

Oh hey that's me. It's a fucking curse. I just can't get to sleep earlier, and any delay (indulging into "one more episode", or reading a book a bit too long) just makes me wake up later. Even setting alarm clock doesn't really work I just... start getting sleepy at same late hour even if I feel groggy half the day coz of reduced sleep

> but are you able to maintain a consistent sleep rhythm long-term? like going to bed at 2am and waking up at 11am?

Most of the time it’s steady 3am-11am for the last couple of years, and it’s perfect for me based on how I feel. 5am-12pm works well enough too if needed.

Usually I can’t sleep earlier than 12am, but even if I do, if I wake up 10am or earlier, it doesn’t feel good. In that case, if I’ve slept less than four uninterrupted sleep cycles, I’m most likely a wreck.

I'm not even a late sleeper but as soon as I got to make my own schedule the idea of learning went from painful at best to actual fun.

Like a lot of people I hated high school but I attribute 75% of that or more to the fact that it started at 6:45 and that I spent most of my days catatonic.

Absolutely identify with this. 9am engineering classes were a struggle for me. Absolutely affected my attention & retention. Wish it could have been otherwise, for my choice of major that was the only schedule available.

i failed a 7:30am calc class in my freshman year of engineering school that was a 1 mile hike uphill in the middle of winter...NOPE!

It is just discrimination of circadian-challenged persons.

I read this at 8:22 laying in bed waiting for my coffee to kick in and feeling drowsy - a daily drowsiness that only disappates after multiple days off where I can wake up with no alarm (i.e. vacation). Even if I try to sleep early, my sleep is choppy most of the night and requires being able to go back to sleep til 10 or 11. I have more energy at midnight than at 8a. There's no blue light or other trick, here, it's been like this since childhood.

By thinking this way - I gained 30 lbs, developed a little drinking habit, and stopped bathing .. wife stopped giving me the "social" attention, and I withered socially. HOWEVER, I got a 6-figure job, an MBA, a Master's in Physics, and a hell of a lot smarter. That took 4 years to do, but took 4 years off the end of my life, I'm sure.

In the long run though, the >adversity< experience that is the human condition trains us to be hard. I'm not talking about body wise, but in fortitude. We weren't meant to be given everything on a silver platter, yet here we are in modern society.

You don't have to go all "liver king" on this one, but recognizing that a healthy dose of day-walker ain't so bad. I returned to the day-walker realm about 3 months ago and have since dropped 20 of the 30, drink about 1x a month (best I can tell that trend will continue) and I actually give a sh*t.

I don't want to say this is wrong, but its a cautionary tale about taking the uphill battles as a challenge to sharpen you for the time you really meet adversity.

My life has genuinely improved when we signed up all kids in a school which starts not earlier than 8:30. Where I live, all public schools start at 7:45, which is just way too early for me.

> As a night owl

I'll echo the early morning exercise suggestion as an additional data point.

I was worse than you...for over ten years. I used to work nights. I'd go into work at 4 PM and get back home anywhere between 2 AM and 4 AM (my theoretical midnight out-time never happened). As a result, waking up between noon at 2 PM was pretty normal. Again, this was the case for over ten years.

I was eventually faced with having to flip my life to a normal schedule. That took a few years. What made a huge difference was exercise. This is when I got into strength training. I'd get out of the house at 5:30 AM to go to the gym. By the time I went to the office I was definitely fully awake and functional. It didn't take more than a couple of months for this schedule to become my new normal and for it to feel easy. A year later, waking up at 5:30 AM happened normally and without having to use multiple alarms. These day I wake up at 6 AM even if I go to sleep at 1 AM.

If you are interested in making a change, you might want to consider early morning exercise.

But if policies delay those early morning classes, won't those night-owls just go to bed even later? I have had the same trouble, but any effort to address that by not scheduling anything in the morning has only led to sleeping in even later. The internal clock just shifts to compensate.

Not sure how to address the night-owl phenomenon, but there seem to be people who have successfully converted from being a night-owl to an early riser. The only thing I have seen to help is sticking to a strict schedule.

This is exactly why I didn't get a degree in biology. Organic chem was at 7:30 in the morning and I couldn't cut it that early in the morning. All the lectures just washed over me.

All worked out in the end though =)

Showing up on time for work/school/etc., early in the morning, is a sign of grit and determination. It's virtue signaling, from the Before Times when "virtue signaling" wasn't right-wing dogwhistle for "I resent anyone who puts in effort not to come off as a bigoted asshole". We live in a society, which judges us according to ancient agricultural-society standards according to which those who sleep in late when there's chickens to be fed and cows to be milked are lazy; and the health benefits that accrue from such signaling (i.e., the ability to feed yourself and your family and secure a more comfortable life for them) outweigh the health deficits of getting up early itself.

I prefer to look for signs of grit and determination in a person's actions where those actions have signficant meaning to that person.

Also, showing up on time is a sign of determination, but making someone get up at 7AM because you do is a sign of narcissism.

im in my mid 30s and have been the same since I was ~12 years old. I finally figured out why in the past year since having a good sleep tracker: 75% of my rem sleep happens between 5:30am and 8:30am. I go to bed around 12:00 and sleep until 8:30am usually. if I have to get up before 8:30 i frequently feel totally out of it and exhausted for a while, now I'm thinking because thats frequently being woken up directly from REM sleep.

> Yet the worldwide conspiracy to wake up absurdly early for any important matter is really annoying /s.

Doesn't need the "/s"

At some point I hope to see Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder treated like a proper medical disability and for discrimination cases to be won by people with it.

That should cause corporate legal departments to shift schedules to being later.

Being a night owl is artificial. It's virtually impossible for most of human existence because for most of human existence we didn't have strong lights at night.

The most natural thing to do for a human is to sleep when it's dark and get up when it's light.

The second best thing given that nobody does the above anymore is to sleep late and get up late.

But make no mistake it is more "healthy" and "natural" to have classes early in the morning.

Ironically, when I saw the headline I thought to myself "what's with this conspiracy with people constantly trying to push this narrative that people should reject morning stuff", and then the top comment is complaining about a "conspiracy to make people wake up early".

From an evolutionary perspective I guess you can try to argue that in the past there was some benefit to some people being on a shifted schedule so they can stay awake to keep watch at night, but I feel like overwhelmingly throughout human history people mostly just naturally woke up when the sun rose and anyone that stayed at camp sleeping in, not helping with duties, was very looked down upon by the rest of the group.

You probably haven’t noticed /s but that’s alright.

I strongly agree that it feels like this whole thing came from ancient times and the need to sync to day-night cycle because of how things were.

In the same time I feel like the “morning conspiracy” is being sort of inertially reinforced in modern times for no measurable metric gain of anything.

See, I don’t wanna rise and shine and shit, because it’s not only the early bird that gets the worm really; I want to wake up after enough of sleep at the time when I feel optimally the best possible for a day, and that’s about it.

Question is whether I can afford it.

Covid mess showed that many of us actually can work remotely, and if anything else, it also showed that many of us can wake up when they feel optimally good without hindering the business we’re contributing to.

I didn’t quite expect my comment to be a top comment here though, but reading from people who have simialr experiences makes me feel a bit less conspiratorial. Or more! :)