
Late sleepers are tired of being discriminated against - jseliger
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/28/11306124/chronotype-night-owl-discrimination
======
StavrosK
The article hits home for me. I can't go to sleep before 3-4am, and I can't
wake up before noon. I had a job that required me to get up before 10am for a
year, but what happened was that I would only get 5-6 hours of sleep a night
and then sleep for 12 hours during the weekend.

My parents still look down on me sleeping until noon, as if I somehow sleep
for fourteen hours a day, but nobody considers the ton of productive time I
have at night, when everyone else is sleeping.

~~~
bryanlarsen
"I can't go to sleep before 3-4am"

The standard advice is:

\- no caffeine after noon

\- no screens after 8PM

\- no big meals after 7PM, (but make sure you're not hungry at bedtime)

\- no more than 2 alcoholic drinks with and after supper

\- make sure your room is cool and your bed is cozy

Those are the easy fixes. However, the most common cause of sleep problems is
stress. That's why your Mom told you to count sheep. If counting sheep isn't
enough to turn your mind off, then perhaps seeking professional help for
stress is your best option.

If you aren't stressed and the above steps didn't work, please seek medical
help.

If you're still in your teens or twenties, it may get better as you get older.

~~~
lamontcg
I'm over 40 and I'm aware of all of those issues.

What you fail to understand is that at 9:20am in the morning, like it is now,
that my brain is swimming in serotonin and it feels like I got kicked in the
face.

I DO NOT have the same neurochemistry that you do. So while all of that helps,
it doesn't magically turn me in someone that gets up at the asscrack of dawn
all bright and cheerful.

There are strong parallels between people who give this kind of advice to
delayed sleep sufferers and people who think they can cure homosexuality.

~~~
polskibus
Check out
[https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/sleep](https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/sleep)

You probably can normalize your sleep pattern by forcing yourself forward with
sleep time a bit every day (if you want to of course).

~~~
atemerev
Shifting sleep patterns is impossible for many people.

I have to wake up at 7am for the last 5 years or so, and it's always a
torture. I have to force myself to go to bed at 11pm to tolerate it.

When I can afford to wake up at 10am, I am bright and happy and can go to bed
at 3am easily.

And there is nothing particularly "normal" in waking up early.

------
wapapaloobop
I'm a night owl and I think I know what's going on here, at least as far as
I'm concerned.

It is that every so often I indulge in too much coffee, booze, etc, and this
pushes back bedtime by an hour or two. Or I get excited about something new
like a book or a video game. Since the night time is quiet and I am
undisturbed by others, I like it, and I don't bother to correct it.

Note that merely giving up coffee, as the doctor in the article recommended,
wouldn't help. It is the irregular 'binges' that push our body clocks. The
extreme case would be a hard drug user who occasionally parties for 2 nights
in a row.

Of course eventually some social obligation or appointment causes me to have
to get up at a normal hour one morning and then the process resets and slowly
advances all over again.

Two comments about this:

(1) society may be correct to judge me, because there are _addictions_
involved and they can be harmful.

(2) it's unhealthy because when one eats during a period which was recently
'sleep time' the body doesn't digest the food so well. The heart doesn't seem
to like it, and I think I read that LDL cholesterol is elevated. This is one
reason why night shift workers pay a price in terms of health.

------
AndrewKemendo
This sleep pattern started for me right around adolescence (12-13) so I assume
that it's just part of my DNA. 3-4am is about the time I naturally fall asleep
if left to my own devices.

I was in the military for 12 years and those 5am wake-ups didn't change my
"wiring." I figure if that didn't nothing will.

As indicated, the world is just not built for folks like me/us. So that means
I/we just have to put in more effort to work within it.

File this under the category: Things you have to do to survive in society.

~~~
sametmax
Actually some part of the world is: the one set around the nigh life. I have
people around me that live like you, by social design: musicians, bar tenders,
events makers. If you want to live this life, then you better be wired for it.

I'm not, and when I try to follow them, I end up destroyed for a week.

One of my previous flatmate is. He stopped for a while and his social circle
reduced a lot (while getting closer to me). Mostly, he misses the sex.

Yes, it's way easier to have sex (quantity wise) when you go out 3 times a
week as he used to do. And you need to come back late as well, if you want to
find a partner, you won't bring him or her at home at 10pm.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
That's a good point. The night-life scene is fairly out of the norm for the
majority of society however and comprises a pretty small percentage of
industry in total, so I don't know if it makes sense to just say "well just go
work night-life type jobs" as a solution.

Not even mentioning if that is something that any given person with delayed
sleep wants to do.

Sometimes (most times actually) you just have to suck it up.

------
f_allwein
I agree that society should become more accepting of late sleepers. This would
also have practical advantages, e.g. a more equal distribution of commuter
travel. In London, everyone seems to work from 9 to 6pm, with predictable
traffic chaos at peak hours.

------
DerKommissar
I was a night owl when I was younger. Went to bed around 2am and felt like a
sack of potatoes for a couple hours in the morning. I have no idea what time I
would naturally wake up because I always had to get up earlier than that. I
remember sleeping until the afternoon on weekends when I was a teenager. I
slept through my fair share of alarms, didn't remember hitting the snooze
button, etc.

Sometime in my late 20s after learning enough about health in general I
realized that sleep was much more important than most believed and I decided
my routine was unhealthy. I dealt with it with similar methods mentioned on
other comments. No caffeine in the afternoon, blackout curtains, red lights,
limit light when it's dark out, not eating late.

That was about seven years ago, I'm now 35 and I'm not a night owl anymore.
Part of it is probably getting older, I've heard that this frequently happens
to people as they age. But I noticed the changes within a few months of taking
sleep hygiene seriously. A few years ago I threw out my alarm clock because I
hadn't set it in a few years (I'm lucky that I really only have to be at work
by 10am for a standup so it wouldn't matter if I overslept). I can't remember
the last time I woke up later than 7:30am, that's late for me now. Usually
it's around 6:30am. I am wide awake when I open my eyes. My main sleep problem
now is waking up too early and not being able to fall back asleep. I'll then
get tired and go to bed early, and wake up even earlier the next day.

I feel better than I have at any point in my life previously. It's certainly
possible that many people here with sleep problems have naturally different
rhythms. It's also possible that certain obese people are naturally obese and
no amount of diet or exercise changes will fix it. I have personally come to
the belief that having a sleep cycle which is not mostly aligned with the
natural patterns is unhealthy, regardless of whether it's "natural" or not.

If anyone is interested in specific techniques I have all sorts of little
hacks, although I don't have to use many of them anymore.

~~~
Eridrus
I had a similar experience a few years ago when I was ~23. If I got in to work
at even 10am, I'd still be a total wreck and mornings were hell.

After my boss gave me a bit of a talking to and futzing around with sleep
tracking apps and alarms that woke me up at the appropriate point in my sleep
cycle for a while I realised that if I just didn't stay up so late I'd feel
better.

It was a bit of an adjustment at first and I think f.lux and exercise helped
to modify my sleep habits, but I've been feeling tired enough to just _want_
to go to bed at 11pm and haven't used an alarm in years either.

Obviously I'm older than I was when I was a night owl, but given I was able to
make the change in a few months, at the prompting from a former boss, I'm less
convinced that it's unchangeable.

~~~
DerKommissar
Reminded me of a great sleep app I used to use. It's called Gentle Alarm and
it really is a great hack. I don't know if the authors of the software came up
with this idea but it works great.

Here's how it works. If you are woken up when you are deep REM sleep you will
feel tired. If you wake up when you are in very light sleep you will not. This
is what happens when you wake up naturally. The sleep cycle generally repeats
itself every 90 minutes or so but everyone is different. The point is there
are times you can wake up when you will feel refreshed, and times when you
will feel tired.

Gentle Alarm configures two alarms. It plays a very soft alarm half an hour
before your real alarm (all the times and volumes are configurable). If you
are in deep sleep at that time you will not wake up to this alarm but if you
are in light sleep you will. If you are in deep sleep then in half an hour (or
whatever period) you will almost certainly not be in deep sleep. You will then
wake up to your normal alarm. The system ensures that you are awake by your
alarm time.

It worked amazingly well for me when I needed it.

------
diffraction
If you have this problem in only winter, this gadget actually does a lot for
me:

[http://www.amazon.com/Philips-HF3520-Wake-Up-Colored-
Simulat...](http://www.amazon.com/Philips-HF3520-Wake-Up-Colored-
Simulation/dp/B0093162RM)

It simulates a sunrise and sunset with bright LEDs. I always wake up before
the audio alarm starts. Before this I was very difficult morning riser. I may
be more light sensitive than you, but it works for me, and has some medical
research to back up the idea.

~~~
hobo_mark
Well that would be me, I have been looking at these for years but the cost
always put me off.

Also, how is it different from this one? [http://www.amazon.com/Philips-
goLITE-BLU-Therapy-Device/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Philips-goLITE-BLU-
Therapy-Device/dp/B001I45XL8)

~~~
hga
The goLITE BLU is a serious and very useful mostly conventional light therapy
device which helped me go from 7 to 8 hours of sleep, although recently I've
found an even more conventional type like this makes an even bigger
difference, enough to maybe get off a drug I've been taking for a decade
(weasel word "maybe" because I'm off it but still seeing if I can get back to
a regular 8 hours): [http://www.amazon.com/Carex-Health-Brands-Day-Light-
DL2000/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Carex-Health-Brands-Day-Light-
DL2000/dp/B002WTCHLC)

------
flatline
Society is geared against late sleepers on many fundamental levels. Daycares
and schools typically start early and let out early. If you have two working
parents they can split the dropoff/pickup only if both have early schedules,
or can still do productive work at home, with a small child around. Not even
the kids want to wake up at 6:30.

~~~
bryanlarsen
"Not even the kids want to wake up at 6:30."

Not my experience, and a standard complaint when commiserating with other
parents is how early their kids wake up on the weekends.

My 6 year old reliably wakes up about 15 minutes earlier on the weekend than
she does on weekdays.

~~~
splintercell
I don't think I ever remember waking up early as a kid. If my parents didn't
wake me up, I would not get out of bed.

~~~
totalrobe
Does nobody here remember early Saturday morning cartoons?! Transformers,
Thundercats, Spiderman...before parents got up and the chores started..

~~~
undersuit
I would always get up early on Saturday for cartoons, infact I only started
sleeping in because I was no longer interested in the new shows. That was
somewhere around 1999 because I remember hating the new Sonic the Hedgehog
cartoon.

------
humbleMouse
If my employer let me come in @10am I would be 2x as productive. I have to
drag myself out of bed every morning and spend 9am-10am not really doing much
at work anyway. If I could get that extra hour of sleep it would be amazing...

~~~
rayvd
For every one of you there are probably 10x others who would totally abuse it.

~~~
psb217
Uh, if the expectation when one arrives ~1hr late is that they will also stay
~1hr late, what is there to abuse?

~~~
humbleMouse
Yeah, unfortunately my company has "core hours" that start @9am so I am
expected to be around starting @9am.

------
tshtf
Chances are this does not affect you:

 _Delayed sleep phase is extreme. Less than 1 percent of the population has
it._

~~~
bryanlarsen
Being a teenager or in your twenties and/or consuming caffeine can also cause
similar symptoms.

When I was in my twenties, I actually used to work on a 28 hour day
schedule.[1] Now I've quit caffeine and hit my forties, and am one of those
people that goes to the gym at 5:30AM.

1: (28x6 == 24x7) [https://xkcd.com/320/](https://xkcd.com/320/)

~~~
paulmd
I've never read this before, but I'm mid-20s and I'm pretty sure I'm on that
schedule. In my grad-student years I noted the same tendency - my schedule
would "roll backwards" a couple of hours each day. For what it's worth I'm
under the impression that this is a well-known phenomenon with hackers. The
Jargon File includes this reference:

[http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/phase.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/phase.html)

My employer expects me to work a roughly normal 9-5. The best compromise I
seem to have worked out is that I take Wednesday morning off and I work a
little longer on the other 4 days to make up for it. This gives me the ability
to rotate my sleep schedule on a semi-weekly basis. Wednesday morning I can
sleep in and "reset". Tuesday and Friday aren't the most productive days
because my internal clock is the most detached from my working hours, but
around noon my grogginess will clear up and I'm on track, so it's workable.

------
a_small_island
In my teenage years I hated going to sleep because I was riddled with anxiety,
so generally I would stay up all night so that it made it easier to sleep the
next day. My mom was a night owl, but my dad would go to sleep at 9pm like
clockwork and I never understood how.

It wasn't until I started weightlifting the past several years where I've
found myself actively going to sleep at reasonable hours (9-11pm) because not
only am I tired from the exercising, but because I know my body needs the
sleep to rebuild itself. My time inside the gym would be wasted without the
sleep. I also track my calories obsessively fwiw.

------
FussyZeus
As an employer of people you are motivated to ensure that people perform at
their best. By forcing someone to not work a schedule that works for them,
you're diminishing your own investment and you have no one but yourself to
blame.

At our company we have people who come in at 6 am and we have people who don't
get in until 9. Everyone sets their schedule to what works for them and I
think we're better for it. Does that make it harder to schedule meetings? Not
at all, we can always find an hour or two somewhere where everyone is around.

~~~
dijit
9 is still early, to be in work for 9 you have to be awake for 7:30.

Left to my own devices I reliably wake up at 11am-12pm, which I would venture
is not acceptable in your work environment.

------
jkot
I am not sure if this article is not a satire.

> _We tend to assume that late wakers are the partiers, the deadbeats, the
> ones who are so irresponsible they can 't keep a basic schedule._

> _the data point to the idea that an [evening type] pattern is a risk factor
> for some disorders, whereas [morning type] is a protection factor, " a 2012
> review of hundreds of papers in the academic literature concludes._

------
jkot
One company I interviewed for starts day at 11AM, you are expected to be in
the office until 7PM, sometime 9PM. I think they do it for timezone
difference, heat and easier commute.

------
kamaal
>>The message is clear: Starting early is the way to get ahead; lateness is
ugly as sin.

This message is the key. But its not what is literally understood here. Being
the first is the key. By first I mean, being first to finish your course work
as a student, being first in finishing most of the tickets at work, being
first in taking initiatives in work and life, being first in taking up more
responsibilities etc. When people talk of being first, its not just time.

Also productivity is the key here. I've been both a night owl and early riser
based on how the situation would demand.

As a student I was mostly a night owl. College has its day schedule charted
out. I would study late into the night, and go to college in the day. Most
night owl's I knew during college, we were down with all our course work in
1/4th the term and would spend most of the time in mock exams, practice and
revision.

At work and in my own start up I've tried various schedule with a ridiculous
amount of productivity. And never felt discriminated in either.

Don't worry about being discriminated, if you are productive you will be
getting astronomical miles ahead of everybody else. And people around you will
notice this.

------
pbarnes_1
I go to bed at 1-2am and wake up around 10am.

Works for me, but I run my own company so... it's a bit easier to do. :D

------
tropo
Explanation:

Younger people tend to be late sleepers. Older people tend to rise earlier.
Normally, businesses are run by older people. They get to choose, and
obviously they choose what they like.

The same goes for the thermostat. Older people put on weight and wear suits.

------
wiseleo
I am in Florida now and my clients are in California. My time zone has
changed, but they now get better service from me because I can sleep until 12
and it's only 9 for them.

Changing time zones might be a viable option.

------
losvedir
How does this interact with time zones?

I travel back and forth between Singapore, for reasonable lengths at a time,
and to ease the jet lag adjustment period I choose to be a morning person in
one and a night owl in the other. It works pretty well.

Is the hypothesis that your body naturally gets tired some number of hours
after the sun goes down?

To all the people commenting about how this article "hits home": what is
jetlag like for you? If you travel 5 time zones away do you become a morning
person? Have you tried to keep that, but does it slip away and you revert to
staying up late?

~~~
EvanKelly
That's exactly what happens to me. When I was living in Honolulu and traveling
to the East Coast a lot, I would be a night owl on the east coast and then
would have the wonderful experience of being a morning person for about a 2
week period before I reverted back to being definitively not a morning person.

------
erikb
The funny thing I found is if you accept the things you can't change and use
them instead you can actually get some of the other world as well.People who
get up early may be more successful than their colleagues in the morning and
because of that can have a rest after lunch, that other people don't get. And
we all know that sleeping 20 minutes after lunch has huge impacts on your
health and afternoon work as well.

------
mchahn
This article makes it sound like people have individual schedules that are
somehow locked in. My experience is that my schedule changes and I can force
it to change. I can get on a 7am schedule or a 11am schedule by slowly forcing
it.

Also, there is a quiz (which I haven't looked at). Why do you need a quiz?
Couldn't you just ask what time you get up on weekends?

------
neugier
"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes."
Orson Scott Card.

------
pink_dinner
The problem is that the majority of people don't work this way. It's difficult
for a business to have meetings when a portion of the staff has decided to
come in around noon and the other portion comes in at 9am.

You can try switching meetings around, but there is only so much time in the
day.

Update: I was pretty rational with this discussion and it was still down
voted. Either: 1) I have people following me and down voting the majority of
my posts (which I suspect is happening to some degree) or 2) HN users aren't
realistic.

~~~
wutbrodo
Meh, my last company/team had work hours that were almost completely flexible.
My team had one weekly 10 o clock meeting that I had trouble making
consistently (I had a longer commute than most), and we moved it.

It's honestly not _that_ universally difficult, because in practice
"completely flexible work hours" means that there will be a good few mid-
day/afternoon hours during which everyone is around, and lumping the meetings
into that time works perfectly well. Obviously the extreme case as described
in this article would make it more difficult, but for most people I don't see
why it wouldn't work and even the extreme case people would be somewhat better
off.

~~~
vonmoltke
That's fine for scheduled meetings, but what about unscheduled collaboration?
Every time the issue of remote work comes up there is a camp that insists
companies need their engineers collocated for communication reasons. It seems
that allowing completely flexible schedules like this has similar issues. How
do you address that?

~~~
wutbrodo
My company wasn't a fan of fully remote work (as opposed to periodic wfh) for
the same reasons, and I agree with them. I didn't find that to be a problem at
all though because bilateral communication is much easier to do over
email/IM/videochat/etc.

------
Spooky23
Great. Can't wait for the nonsense lawsuits over this stuff.

------
swagv1
Who is this "science" person I keep hearing about in the news, and why does he
have so many random opinions on the most inane topics?

------
blammail
To me, regardless of what time you go to sleep - how productive are you in
those last 3-4 hours before sleep.

Sorry, but you'll never convince me you get "sharper" at the end of the day
than at the beginning.

I go to sleep as soon as I believe I'm able so I can wake up again. Sleep is a
necessary evil, but it is necessary. So let's get it over with.

In the morning, I'm 100% the coder I am at 9pm.

~~~
martincmartin
Is it so hard to believe that different people work differently?

~~~
blammail
No. It's just hard to believe all people don't get more tired as the day goes
on. In fact, eventually, as the day goes on we all get so tired we eventually
fall asleep (all of us).

So the nuance is what's your tipping point where you are performing worse due
to fatigue.

~~~
Raphmedia
I start the day tired and wake up gradually until around supper. Then, I eat
and do the chores. At around 9pm, I'm fully awake.

When I was a kid, my parents made me go to bed around 9pm. I used to get up
every half hour saying "mom, dad, I can't sleep". They figured out quickly
enough that sending me to bed early was a waste of time since I would spend 3
hours sitting or laying in my bed waiting, fully awake, feeling like going
playing outside.

