It's Time to End the Tyranny of Morning People

Post Reply New Topic

New research debunks the notion that chronotype is a binary choice between "morning people" and "night owls." It also shows that a substantial number of people, if not an outright majority, are not energetic in the morning. It's time to end the tyranny of early birds.

We often speak of "morning people"/"early birds" and "night owls," but a new paper written mostly by Russian researchers demonstrates that six different chronotypes exist.

The authors recruited primarily college students (most of whom were also women) for their study. The volunteers were then asked to self-assess their chronotype based on six charts, shown below. The charts depict how energetic a person feels throughout the day (morning, daytime, evening). The percentages (in red) represent the proportion of respondents who chose that chronotype.



As shown, only 13% of people would fall under the category of "early birds." Nearly twice as many are classical "night owls" (24%). The vast majority, however, belong to different chronotypes entirely.

For instance, 9% are "highly active," meaning that they're energetic no matter what time of the day it is. On the flip side, about 16% are lethargic all day, but the researchers thought that a word like that was too mean, so they used "moderately active" instead. Another 18% are those who are energetic in the morning but need an afternoon nap, while 15% feel lousy in the morning but are active in the afternoon.

Adding up all the people who are active in the morning (i.e., morning type, highly active type, and daytime sleepy type) yields 40%. If the results are applicable to the entire population, that means a minority of people dictate our entire social and professional lives. Many people are not energetic in the morning, yet work begins at 9 a.m. (or even earlier). Particularly irritating is when you go to a professional conference, and some important breakfast meeting begins at 7 a.m. Seriously, people?

Still, the paper clearly debunks the notion that chronotype is a binary choice between "morning people" and "night owls." And it shows that a substantial number of people, if not an outright majority, are not energetic in the morning. The fact that more people are working from home should come as comfort to those of us who think and feel best in the afternoons and evenings. Finally, our work can be aligned with our natural biological rhythms.

Source: Tyranny Of The Early Birds: Morning People Dictate Our Society

I get up by 4:00am to be at the office by 6:00am.  I am the boss of those who get up and show up to work later.

I gave up drinking coffee.

I get up at 6 in the morning. I guess that's pretty average. Most people get up between 6 and 8.

I'm a daytime type but I focus best in the early evening because I have too much energy in the afternoon and too little in the morning.

I am most definitely a night owl.
Although this is likely partially due to suffering from a hard to diagnose sleep disorder which i believe is idiosyncratic hypersomnia, which makes me need at least 12 hours of sleep a day, and which results in me waking up feeling groggy.

In the past i was tested for Sleep Apnea, which i kind of had, and was given a CPAP machine to use.
However, after a trial period of using the CPAP machine, i found it had no positive affect.

So I am left, with this sleep disorder and no real diagnosis. Apparently the sleep clinic that i was sent to simply doesn't cover all sleep disorders and just really deal with insomnia and sleep apnea.

I also like to stay up late, after everyone else has gone to sleep. As I am hypersensitive to sound etc.
And love nothing more than silence or doing things in silence. I am unable to filter out other people's noise.
so i need silence for what ever i do.

The best time to get this silence is when everyone else is asleep!

finally i can get some peace and quiet and hear myself think and not be distracted.

On the show Animaniacs they said "Early To Rise & Early To Bed Makes A Man Healthy But Socially Dead"

Sometimes my day starts at 4:20 am, in order to be at work for 6.
I get two weeks of that before I get to work from 4 pm until 1 am, although we often have to be there until 2 am instead.
Then I get to go back to days.

At this point I just get tired at random times (instead of at 'bedtime') and often struggle to keep track of what time of day it is.

My patterns are all over the place since childhood, whether there are routines or not.
And then there's N24.

The least or almost never occuring for me would be the morning type and the daytime sleepy type.

Gained Number Post Count (1).
Lose Time (n).

Lose more time here - Updates at least once a week.

i think my schedule is dependent on life stuff that's going on. When I was a teen I stayed up late because I wanted to watch TV & my parents were asleep so I had more time to myself. I also wanted to have more fun before bed & going to school. After I graduated high-school & was still living with my parents & not working, I would go to bed around 5 to 8am & I'd wake up in the afternoon because I liked having time to myself while my parents were asleep.

I had different schedules when I was working.
At my 1st job I worked in the evening & afternoon. I would clock in around 4pm & clock out around 9-10pm. I'd wake up at like 2pm & I would go to bed around 6am.
At my 2nd job I worked overnight. I clocked in at 9pm & clocked out at 6-8am. I'd wake up around 7pm & I would go to bed a little before noon.
The hours at my 3rd job fluctuated a lot. I sometimes had to be there around 7am, other times around noon, & other times in the early afternoon. That made things complicated.

The hours I have nowadays living with my girlfriend fluctuate a lot sometimes. Normally when nothing is going on she would go to bed in the morning so I would stay up till like 4-7am & wake up in the afternoon. I sometimes need to be up early to wait around for packages, to go shopping, or because she is coming back from vising her family. Those days I would get up at like 7-9am & we would sometimes take a nap in the afternoon or evening. I'd eat breakfast a while before the nap & we'd eat lunch after we wake up. I'd go back to bed around 4-9am which would be sometime after supper. Yesterday she came back from visiting her family so I woke up at 9. We went to bed around 7pm. Then we woke up around 11pm. I then went to bed around 6am & we got up around 1pm cuz she had a telehealth appointment.

I'm not really an early afternoon person either.

Personally, I like days where I get up early but don't really do anything productive until later on. I call it a slow / gradual wake day. Mind you, that's not usually how my routine goes because I've been thrown off my rhythm lately, but it's when I feel best. I like to have a notebook by my bed, and lie there for a while letting my mind sort through the jumble of thoughts colliding. Occasionally writing messy notes and quick doodles to capture ideas in the notebook before shutting off my lamp again and going to sleep.

When I wake, I like to absently recap what I have to do that day in my head and what I'm going to do in between and after those tasks. I like to keep the notebook open on the page of ideas. I can't eat breakfast right away, I have a health condition which means that eating too soon or too late can be rather painful for me. Plus, if I wake up too late then I don't eat enough during the day and then I loose too much weight. I'm currently underweight and trying to gain a healthy weight again. So waking early lends well to managing my health, but my mind doesn't fully wake usually until the afternoon which is when I'm most productive. That's when I put my ideas into action from the night before. So...I guess I'm an afternoon person?

You're much less lazy than me!