

Can a Night Owl Become a Morning Person? - cubix
http://www.slate.com/id/2193208/

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brentr
I love the night. I also love the winter and cloudy days. Has anyone ever
thought about running their company at night? Has anyone thought about making
the normal hours for your programmers start sometime after 8 pm? It might
produce interesting results. The only thing you would need is your public
facing group awake during the "normal" hours, or as I like to call them: the
"sleeping" hours.

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cglee
You should try working from China. I'm currently based out of Beijing working
US hours (8pm-5am). All you need is broadband and a bed.

~~~
brentr
Are you working for a corporation, or are you working for yourself? Also, for
the position you are in, do you need to speak Mandarin or Cantonese?

~~~
cglee
Check your email

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pavelludiq
I've read a lot of articles and even a book on healthy sleep. I generally
understand how sleep works and I have desperately tried to make myself a
morning person. I have to wake up in 6:30 am for school and i usually feel
good for an hour or two and then i get sleepy. I take a monster coffee dose
and try to go through school without sleeping trough it(im not the only one,
at least 6 people from my class are night people) I handle it somehow until
1:30 pm and go home and im sleepy. But i just start wasting time until 5:00 pm
and go jogging and an between 6:00pm and 8:00 pm i usually fall asleep and
wake up between 9:00 pm and 11:00 pm. Weird. i fall asleep between 1:00 am and
3:30 am. Sometimes when i go to sleep i stay awake for a really long time, i
don't know how long. Anyway i managed that by forcing myself to NOT think in
bed. The bed is my favorite thinking place and i don't think here any more.
And i manage pretty well i guess, im a pretty energetic person. The only
problem is that i know someday i will burn out and this schedule will fall on
top of me and crush me. So the summer is going to be hard, because i won't
have to wake up for school. I usually wake up at noon and no alarm works on
me, i just go back to bed because i don't care. But at least i don't drink
coffee so it balances it's self. Anyway don't try to drink yourself to bed
like i tried with alcohol. It comes back to haunt you in the morning. Pill's i
don't like taking any at all. So im just cursed.

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SteveC
How did you force yourself not to think in bed? My brother who can fall asleep
in a few minutes says he can do this but I've never been able to do it once.
My mind just wanders the second I lie down.

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pavelludiq
A few months ago i started meditating. Im not that much in to it, but i
learned how to concentrate for a while on something(eg. my breathing) And in
bed i just concentrate on something like that, don't brutforce yourself not to
think, just take your mind away from it. It doesn't always work, but im
getting better and better.

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kashif
__What I am learning about sleep __

I wanted to be a morning person, because I wasnt, because I am a hacker and
our pledge requires constant self-improvement, because others could do it and
finally because i wanted to feel good about myself. Alas, all this failed,
till I chanced onto something interesting. Here is how I manage getting up
early-ish.

After numerous unsuccessful attempts my body just gave up...but I wasn't quite
done yet. So, the alarm was set for 7 AM and every morning I would get up to
switch it off and promptly go back to sleep. My body and I had reached a
compromise. I was allowed to set any big hairy audacious goal and my body was
free to disregard it just as long as it went through the motions to humour me.
Soon enough the body started getting up a few minutes early just to switch off
the alarm and then took its own time going back to sleep. Now, it gets up at
6.30AM to switch off the 7 AM alarm (lol) then it sleeps till 8 AM and is
fresh as a daisy for the rest of the day. I sneakily fooled my body! You can
too...

Next goal 6.00 AM!

~~~
drawkbox
I also read that our bright monitors are fooling us for daylight but the key
thing is eating. Usually I would eat late in the day and just get going on
coffee. But I read and tried it (it works somewhat) that if you dont' eat at
night, then wake up early just one day and eat a nice meal. Your body
instantly adjusts. You repeat this for a while and soon enough you are an
7-8am'er.

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mleonhard
Making any lasting change requires three things: Motivation, Mechanism, and
Monitoring.

I've implemented these three things to fix my sleep schedule: Motivation comes
from my own desire and encouragement from those around me. The Mechanism is to
shift my eating schedule earlier by eating a snack in my bed right when the
alarm goes off and eating dinner earlier. Monitoring is the log book of times
that I eat, wake up, and go to sleep.

Applying this technique for 2 weeks has yielded a 2-hour forward shift in my
sleep schedule! :)

The article mentions another mechanism: going outside right after waking up.
I'm going to think about adding this mechanism to my sleep-schedule-shift
personal development project.

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johnyzee
I have two things to add:

1: The consequences of lifestyle won't hit until you cross thirty. Unhealthy
diet, lack of exercise, poor posture, poor sleep habits, extreme stress - none
of these matter when you're young, so you think you're invincible. We even
celebrate this kind of lifestyle as some kind of macho thing. But bad
lifestyle karma WILL eventually get you and weird shit will start happening
with your health.

2: Want to wake up early? Just drink a huge glass of water before bed. I'm
serious.

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ComputerGuru
I love how she makes 1:30 in the morning out to be "sleeping late."

~~~
martythemaniak
Sure, but that's kinda bad. During 4th year of university, my bedtime crept up
to a regular schedule of 5am - 3pm with some nights even later. It made it
hard to do a lot of things, including going to pretty much all classes.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I agree with what you're saying.. but most hackers I know can force themselves
to get up sevenish if they're going to sleep that early. IMHO, late is 3am+

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mhartl
_Being a morning person has its drawbacks. Morning people get sleepy just when
all the fun begins. What I really wanted when I started this experiment, I now
realize, was to be one of those crazies who functions well on just five hours
of sleep. That's never going to happen._

Remarkable. I've thought a lot about this issue, and this is _exactly_ the
conclusion I've reached as well.

    
    
      O, to rise when bright,
      And bed past dark.
      To be both an owl
      And a lark!

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jgrahamc
Have children; worked for me.

~~~
babul
Or get a day job/contract.

I did _just_ so I would be _forced_ to sleep and get up at 'normal' times.

...so far so good. A hidden benefit that never occured to me is all the prety
girls I now meet with no extra effort. (day<girls<night). :)

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
I did get a day job, and I force myself to sleep on a normal schedule. I still
hate it. It's completely unnatural to me.

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radu_floricica
About the half-hour morning walk, you can skip it if you can put an 100 watt
light bulb (or equivalent) somewhere in your field of vision. It should be
visible without turning the head, but not directly in your retina. Mine is
(accidentally) half a meter above and behind the monitor and works just fine.
Used it to get over a bad case of winter blues (more like winter depression,
if you ask me) and worked wonders.

I'm still waiting for someone to try and confirm the latest Harvard study, the
one about not eating 16 hours before the desired wake-up time. Looks very good
on paper.

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figured
Throughout university you could not of convinced me that I would be a morning
person. But once I got into the real world (aka corp gig) I realized that I
was most productive in the early hours of the morning, my job required me to
get up early. Now I have totally embraced the morning as my "getting stuff
done" time. I have more energy and time, I won't be going back to the night
owl lifestyle anytime soon.

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timcederman
Last September, I flew to Australia to visit my family. My normal routine
(roughly) is sleeping from 2am to 9am.

Somehow the jetlag worked its wonders on me. For a couple of months after the
trip, I was dog-tired by 9pm and asleep by 10, up at 6. Somewhat sadly, it
wore off, but at least I started getting stuff done in the evening again. I
found I just wasn't productive in the mornings.

~~~
radu_floricica
That's the final argument for us, night owls. Even if we could "fix" our
schedule, it's not worth it because it's the best for us. Plus nothing
compares with work done after 7 pm - no phones, no emergencies and even less
noise.

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DenisM
Daylight can be replaced with "full spectrum" lights, esp if you live in
places where sun is infrequent (e.g. Seattle).

Also recommended is physical activity. A small, foldable exercise bike is
ideal for apartment and can be used at the same time as lights.

~~~
jrockway
> A small, foldable excersize [sic] bike is ideal for apparment [sic] and can
> be used at the same time as lights.

Real bike riding is more fun, though. Riding at night is especially nice
because nobody else is awake, there's no traffic, and the wind is lighter.

~~~
DenisM
And how would riding at night help in becoming a morning person?

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tomjen
Because you are up before the sun (at least in the winter).

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DenisM
To suppress melatonin production you need to be exposed to the sunlight, not
the darkness before the sunlight.

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jackchristopher
Popular post on sleep from a former programmer;

[http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-
ea...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/)

Read his polyphasic sleep posts too.

~~~
cubix
Thanks for the link. I've struggled since childhood with both falling asleep
and waking up, especially the latter. (Some of my earliest memories involve
been ripped out of bed and thrown into a cold car to be taken to school.) I've
read quite a few articles like this over the years, but this is the first time
I've encountered the notion of practicing a routine during waking hours to
program yourself to get up. Interesting idea -- I may even give it a shot.

~~~
jackchristopher
Where is the bug?

In your beliefs about the universe? > Your purpose in life? > Your career
choice?> Your motivation? > Your diet > Your genes...

Seriously, at what level of abstraction is the problem? Is it a problem at
all?

~~~
cubix
There's most likely a large genetic component. I doubt I had formed many
beliefs about the universe when I was only 5 or 6, but my tendency to stay up
late and sleep in appeared as early as then, if not sooner. If I'm free to set
my schedule, which has been possible at times, it's not a problem. But
inevitably outside factors -- job, school, relationships, etc. -- interfere.

That said, I find that the night does have a certain aesthetic appeal -- a
sense of freedom, of wonder even -- that I find absent in the cold, hard light
of day, which likely contributes to my return to a "night owl" pattern when
possible.

~~~
sjh
Almost word-for-word, I'm in the same situation and have a very similar
outlook, for whatever that's worth.

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drawkbox
Yeh I totally was warped for ages going to bed at 4am and waking at 12pm. I
got so much done but my health, availability and communication hours were
difficult. I am still fighting it but when you can work it in the day
sometimes you spend less time messing around, for better or worse. Some of my
best stuff came from just messing around.

There is something to be said of the late night session, It almost feels like
you can draw more inspiration without constant interruption and nothing going
on, extreme focus.

In fact with the green onslaught, globalization and population growth maybe
night living will be acceptable at some point.

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brentr
Does anyone know of any other websites for Night Owls besides
www.nightowlnet.com and www.nightowlcafe.com? I want to believe that there is
a whole group of people who are dedicated towards making my condition more
known so that I one day will not have to CONFORM to a way of life that I view
as backwards. I use to envy Dave Attell.

Of course there is some sarcasm in the above comment, but really does anyone
know of a place or company more centered around the "night owls" life?

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schtog
I like my life much better when I go up at 07-08:00 and not 12-14:00 but I
have this really bad tendency to push later and later everyday until I stay up
24hours , go to bed at 18:00 sleep to 04:00 then start it all over again.

But it has to do with being free, I will soon have more habits, training etc
which will force me to keep a more normal schedule.

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astine
I used to have trouble getting up by 9am back when I lived in my parent's
basement. When I moved out on my own, I started waking up at 7am. It was the
sunlight which did it. It was bright shining through the shades and when I
lived in the basement, I had no windows.

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joshwa
How about trying the recently-discovered "fasting" method?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=199394>

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LPTS
I think melatonin works really well for some people. If I take one mg
melatonin, I sleep great, natural, and wake up 8 hours later, refreshed, ready
to go, feeling like it's morning no matter what time it is.

