
Night owls and early birds have different personality traits (2014) - fezz
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/night-owls-and-early-birds-have-different-personality-traits/
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TeMPOraL
The description of night owls seems to be in agreement with my experiences.

It's also fucking hard to be a night owl. For me, this is the single biggest
issue my bosses had with me in every job - because they can tolerate someone
coming at 12:00 to work only for so long. I tried everything I could think of
- sleeping longer, not sleeping, drinking shitton of coffee, not drinking any
coffee, melatonin before sleep, adrafinil in the morning, winding down early
with alcohol, winding down early with sedatives, etc. and none of it works - I
can maintain the "early bird" schedule for at most few days, any longer and
I'll be feeling miserable and sleeping on the keyboard - _and then_ my body
will force me back to night schedule anyway, by means of sleeping through even
loudest of alarm clocks, or suddenly crashing in the late afternoon and waking
up at 1 AM, or something.

BTW. it's 04:17 for me right now, and I'm supposed to be at work in 5 hours.
Wish me luck.

#HNTherapy

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ScottBurson
There are workplaces that can tolerate people coming in at noon. Took me years
to find one, but they do exist. Keep looking :-)

~~~
Menge
In my experience, they are easy to find in the US:

Get a job at a company with East and West Coast offices at the East Coast
office. Always offer to help on the projects and areas that have mostly West
Coast resources and leadership.

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pnathan
> In the study, researchers looked at the lifestyles and personality traits of
> 700 Spanish psychology students from two universities. The subjects ranged
> in age from 18 to 32 and included slightly more women than men.

This is a big deal - college students are not a representative sample of the
general population when it comes to behavior. There are going to be
confounding factors galore here; I can only hope the researchers took care to
untangle them.

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TeMPOraL
This may actually work for their benefit this time; college is the single time
besides pre-school when a person is basically free to arrange the time however
they feel like. Before college you have to be at 0800 in school, after it you
have to be at 0900 at work.

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pnathan
That's a relatively reasonable critique on the face of it. On the other hand,
work schedules tend to vary dramatically, particularly around social classes.

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Puts
Personally I've had periods in my life where I've went to bed at 9 PM and been
up at 5 AM, but also periods where I've been awake til 5 AM and slept til 4
PM. So I don't really believe there is any such thing as morning or night
persons, just excuses to not change your habits.

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ergothus
Isn't it possible that you are just more flexible to changing your cycle than
others?

I need a lot of sleep - I'm very jealous of my coworkers that can stay up
until 1-4 am and still be at work at 9. Meanwhile I need 8 hours of sleep
minimum, or after 3 days I'm a zombie. Just last night I slept for 11 hours
(no exaggeration) because I crashed after too many nights short of sleep.

I'm also a night owl - I wake at 7, and come night time I force myself to bed
at 11 - I could be up for hours, but not if I want to wake on time, and while
waking earlier would be great for my schedule, I can't just shift my 8-hour
sleep window - I've tried.

It's possible that I and others with similar situations are just making
excuses (and presumably that's true for at least some), but it's also possible
that you are using your single experience to denounce others.

Please don't assume that because something is easy for you that it must
therefore be easy for everyone, and that others that claim otherwise are just
lazy.

~~~
Puts
> Please don't assume that because something is easy for you that it must
> therefore be easy for everyone

But I didn't say changing my sleep cycle has been easy, and I didn't even say
I've managed to do it by my selves. Or that I even would have healthy sleep
habits at this moment. But depending on mental health, diet, exercise,
employment vs studies. These things have made me have all sorts of sleeping
habits, and my personal belief is that these outer circumstances has had much
greater impact on my sleep then anything in my genes. And that's why don't
like this idea of morning and night persons as it only enhances thee feeling
that you can not change your ways.

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Pinatubo
"Night owls" as defined by staying up late are more likely to suffer from
insomnia. Groundbreaking research here.

~~~
mirimir
Being a night owl is a matter of preference. Having trouble winding down and
sleeping is a problem. You can have insomnia whenever your day ends.

~~~
philipov
If your day ends in the middle of the night, and your job doesn't cater to
that, you have insomnia for sociological rather than physiological reasons,
but it is insomnia just the same.

~~~
mirimir
I don't have jobs with such requirements.

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mirimir
My wife and I just had a great laugh over this. The descriptions of night owls
and early birds fit us perfectly. I gotta say that I love being a night owl :)
And she loves being an early bird. But she's picked up some bad habits ;)

