
Researchers uncover why morning people should not work at night - renafowler
http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/8283.html
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Falkon1313
>The researchers did not find any important differences between the results of
the ANT test the early birds and night owls completed in the morning

So the morning people are just as bad as a night person in the morning, and
worse at night. Maybe they should revise the headline: Why you shouldn't hire
morning people.

>Participants were required to stay awake for 18 hours, from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00
a.m., and adhere to their normal routine.

That doesn't seem to fit the normal routine of either a night person or a
morning person, nor really the opposite. A morning person would be up earlier
and asleep later, while the opposite for a night person. Seems a better test
would be to have night people stay awake from 0500 to 2300 and morning people
stay awake from 1100 to 0500 or something like that and test under those
conditions that oppose their natural schedule.

It gets worse:

>>During the week prior to the SWP, participants were required to adhere to
their normal routine as much as possible; e.g. have a normal sleep duration
(approximately 7.5–8.5 h per day) and maintain regular sleep schedule (e.g.
approximate bed time of 11:30 pm ± 60 min, and waking up at approximately 7:30
am ± 60 min each night/morning).

So they forced night people to live on morning people's schedules, but not the
other way around. (And yet the night people still performed better!) And the
study was only done for one single day, which doesn't seem likely to have any
bearing on how people actually perform over a sustained period of time (such
as a regular job), but just how they might perform on an occasional holiday
like New Year's Eve.

Combined with such a small sample size, this study doesn't really seem to
indicate much of anything except that the researchers could potentially have
done a better study.

~~~
wott
Thing is, night people are forced to follow morning people schedule almost all
life long (school, work, etc.). So they are used to wake up (too) early, and
since they are night people, they can't sleep in the evening nevertheless. So
the "awake from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m." is more or less the rhythm to which
they are used (even if it exhausts them). The lazy bunch called morning people
are not used to undergo this.

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pertel
From the article: "Twenty-six volunteers (13 male, 13 female) with an average
age of 25 participated in the study"

That's a very small sample size, so I wouldn't put too much confidence in the
results before more robust research is done.

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guelo
26 British, probably white, self-selected, prestigious university students.

~~~
arkitaip
The world's most studied population...

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sheeshkebab
All this reminds me of good old times when I had no kids - we used to debate
when to code better and how many hours of sleep someone needs (8 was the
minimum apparently).

Then kids happen, and you are lucky to sleep 6 hours, everyone becomes a late
night AND morning person at the same time, and write code any time of the day
(and actually better, since you start valuing every minute).

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Hydraulix989
I really wish this wasn't so "pro-morning people." The framing should have
been "Researchers uncover why late-night people should not work in the
morning," since we're the ones being discriminated against by society.

~~~
sidlls
I read this as being unfavorable to morning people: they perform about the
same wrt accuracy on tasks in the morning, but worse later in the day.

Also, in the bay area at least the "discrimination" you mention is inverted. I
rarely see co-workers in office before 9:30 or so, after I've been at work for
over two hours, and I'm almost always the odd one out for things like meetings
and organizational items (e.g. team lunches, farewell lunches etc.).
"Discrimination" isn't the right word, though.

~~~
Hydraulix989
Maybe true for _some_ software engineers, but I know people here that have to
be in the office by 6 AM for sales calls with the East Coast.

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fizzbuzzbazz
Night owls are likely just more accustomed to focusing at night, both with and
without a full night's sleep prior. No doubt a morning person could become a
night owl with an adjustment period.

~~~
Hydraulix989
That's not what the medical research suggests. You can "force" yourself to
follow a different schedule, but your natural chronotype is biologically-
determined, so you will never truly adapt.

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moon_priestess
Do you have a source for this? I'd love to read it!

~~~
sporkologist
This seems good: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-j-breus/night-
owl-s...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-j-breus/night-owl-
sleep_b_4276411.html)

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jerrytsai
tl;dr This "finding" of this study: if people take longer to accomplish the
same task, they are more accurate in accomplishing the task.

Please spare us from more tiny sample studies.

~~~
tzs
A tiny sample size can be sufficient if the effect under study is strong.

Is your criticism based on looking at the paper and determining that this is
not one of those cases?

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bbcbasic
What if I'm neither a morning or night person?

~~~
chongli
I think I may be both. Perhaps I just hate sleeping and would rather be awake
and living all the time!

