The author of this post comes across as a raging jackass. I'd never heard of Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome until I read the other post, but it perfectly describes my life. I've never really known how to describe just how difficult it is to get up in the morning, but it is really, truly difficult.
Joe Conway, you said in your post that "every single one of your actions is controllable". If you truly believe this, you should demonstrate it by controlling your impulse to be an asshole.
Does flying to a different timezone incapacitate you or do you adjust in a few days? Does daylight savings time cause you problems or do you adjust like everyone else?
If you can adjust to those things, you can adjust your "normal" sleep cycle and you don't have this rare condition.
The reason you have a hard time getting up "early" is that you go to sleep too late. Just go to sleep an hour earlier than "normal". Too hard? Impossible? If that's so, how do you do it every year when we go off DST?
Well in my case, both of those things do really screw me over pretty hard. I have to allocate a couple days to reset my schedule on any timezone change or the 'spring forward'.
That said, it's not about going to bed earlier, at least for me. You can't solve it that way. What you have to do is stay up later and later, and eventually loop over to a 'normal' time. This involves several days of non-traditional sleeping hours or extreme exhaustion.
1. Patient has chronic difficulty falling asleep at desired time to meet their daily schedules - work, school, etc. Typically patient reports inability to sleep before 2 to 6 am.
2. The patient reports having dealt with these symptoms for at least six months, mostly for multiple years.
3 When not required to maintain their schedule--i.e. weekends, holidays, etc.--patient sleeps without difficulty, and will awaken spontaneously after a sleep period of normal length.
I don't feel guilty for over-sleeping. I've worked out a life for myself where people don't care that I sleep until 11:00. I simply don't schedule meetings or appointments for the morning, or if there's absolutely one that can't be avoided, I go to bed early and set an alarm clock to wake up for it.
It is not being a sissy to know your limitations and preferences and to work around them. If you make a commitment to another person, you should keep it. But nobody is forcing you to make that commitment in the first place. Is it really impossible to schedule that meeting in the afternoon, or to not have it at all?
It's not the OPs place to say what sort of sleep habits other people should or should not have. If he finds them annoying, fine: don't work with them.
I doubt he'd have a problem with you. His issue seems pretty clearly to be with people who do not keep their commitments. If you don't start your day before 11 then obviously don't accept meeting invites before that time and you are golden. Oh wait, you work at a company where 9:00 meetings are normative? I guess that job is a commitment too, isn't it?
That does not seem at all clear to me. To me, the clear meaning is that he is addressing everyone who isn't a morning person, and merely using the case of bad-faith promises as an example of their evils. Based on the article, it's hard to imagine he'd feel differently even if the person did not promise to be there at 9 a.m., because — in his words — "earning your life is supposed to be difficult" and anyone who doesn't "put in the work" is "lazy."
Maybe I read it differently than you, but I read the article as spurred by someone that was habitually late for meetings. More generally, excuse making. Not any particular sleep cycle.
When saying "If you make a commitment to another person, you should keep it." I see you as being in agreement with the post I just read.
I read the original article as a PSA. It was basically saying "this thing exists and you shouldn't feel bad if you have it." I don't see where it was making excuses.
If you recognize that this is a real problem, you can take steps to fix it. Things like shifting your schedule or regulating blue light. Not just "don't be lazy" or "get off Reddit", that sort of attitude doesn't help.
You should read the original post referenced, because this article greatly misrepresents what that person said.
The original referenced material doesn't talk about making excuses. He talks about managing a real physical condition so that you don't miss meetings and don't have to make excuses. It's about understanding that having that condition doesn't make you lazy or a lesser person.
<i>"But nobody is forcing you to make that commitment in the first place."</i>
The author's point is that many people with this "disorder" continue to make commitments they cannot keep. It is Jason Freedman who says "The one who can’t seem to consistently set the alarm clock for A.M. and not P.M. I know how it feels to be the undependable one."
If you are consciously aware of this, yet continue to make these commitments - then the author I believe argues you are a "lazy", "sissy."
This post and the original post set up a massive false dichotomy. Yes, keep your commitments. Yes, pull your weight at work. For many people, that means getting your ass into the office at a normal time.
But in order to get there, you should understand yourself and work with who you are. If a label like "delayed sleep phase syndrome" helps you manage your life, use it. Either set good expectations with your team, or set up systems to help you out.
The ass-kicking rhetoric of this post is true, as far as it goes. For some people, this sort of wake-up call is exactly what they need. But for many people, "just do it" is not a useful message. Feeling guilty is useful if it kicks you into action - but too much and it just holds you down, preventing you from making progress.
Light therapy. Or, you know, modafinil works too. The answer isn't always 'man up', neither is it 'I am a victim'. Just treat it and move on with your life. You're not a hero for getting to work on time, but neither are you a villain for being late.
The world is a big place and everyone has their own circumstance. But I think the point of the Great Big Get-Off-My-Lawn Rant (which I loved) was more that for the vast majority of people in the vast majority of circumstances getting up in the morning doesn't rise to the level of a severe personal handicap.
I mean, I hate mornings as much as the next person, and have slept through a decent number of events. Yet still, when I had kids and had to get up for a crying baby or to change a diaper, I Just Did It, and didn't feel the need to blog about whether I should feel "guilty" about it.
I mean, really: don't we have more important things to argue about? Isn't there a new Javascript rendering abstraction layer or something?
Well, in my opinion, it's pretty crippling in 'polite society' not to be a morning person.
I've lost jobs over it, relationships, all sorts of fairly major personal issues.
My point is that there are solutions that enable people to fix this problem, if they are so inclined. This sort of excoriating article disregards the real pain people experience, and the other sort of article disregards the real issues that 'just never do anything in the morning and don't try to adapt' causes.
Rather than starting with modafinil, melatonin should probably be the first step. It might help, and people do not report tolerance after prolonged use the way they do for modafinil.
Melatonin is fine if it works for you, and you find the right schedule to take it on, and you don't get terrible nightmares from it. Somehow I usually meet 2 of those criteria at a time.
As someone who has used it for this exact purpose, it's enough to use it occasionally to enable you to keep your sleep schedule in check. If I don't manage my sleep schedule well, I end up waking up later and later, and having to loop over. Modafinil perhaps once a month allowed me to reset without having to burn a couple days being useless.
I have no trouble keeping my commitments, even if they entail being somewhere at 7am or partaking in the standardized work day. Getting up "early" and forcing my self to sleep before it's time is not optimal for my functioning, however. I fail to see how doing something sub-optimal is supposed to be a sign of heroism.
Joe Conway asserts that nobody functions well within the Standardized Sleep Cycle, which is simply wrong factually but more importantly if he actually believes this nonsense it's mind-bendingly malicious of him to advocate something that has no upside just because it's more macho.
To the douchebag author: Having a different sleep rhythm does not mean someone is a sissy. It doesn't mean they're lazy or unable to keep appointments. Your whole post is a huge straw man argument, and it's unpleasant to read due to you being so full of yourself.
Let me close this comment in my time-honored tradition of pissing off both sides equally: I think those fuzzy syndromes and disorders are bullshit. Humans are diverse, we're not as standardized as evolutionary psychologists would have everyone believe. Stop trying to be "normal", stop trying to make others "normal". Being "not normal" is not by itself a disorder or acronym-worthy.
Having a different default circadian rhythm does not mean you're sick. Nor does calling people sissies make you more manly, but that's for a different discussion.
Like the author of the blog mentioned in this post, I too find it hard to wake up in the morning. But, so what? I don't feel pity for myself or try to blame my desire to sleep longer on a "disease". This blog post really hits the nail on the head.
That isn't an excuse to stop trying—there are things you can do that often help: a combination of correctly timed melatonin and light therapy can shift your circadian rhythm back towards normal. Nonetheless, it's an actual medical condition.
To everyone else: if you think you have this problem, do something about it. There's a healthy chance you can fix it.
And since it's easy for you to overcome that problem, it must mean everyone else who struggles with it must not be trying. It can't possibly be harder for them than for you, after all!
Nope! I regularly spring out of bed feeling wide awake, well rested and ready to start the day a good hour or two before I need to get up to get to work on time, and that time immediately after waking up in the morning is often my favorite part of the day.
Of course, the flipside of this is that I'm often ready to pass out by 9 PM.
If you're in a coma, is that your fault? If you have narcolepsy, is it your fault? If you wake up having hit a snooze button that you didn't consciously push, is that your fault? If you have a medical condition that makes it harder for you to wake up than for 99.8% of the population, is that your fault? There's a line somewhere, and I don't think the author of the original article crossed it.
I think the point here is that everything today is considered a "medical condition". While that makes sense from a medical perspective, all it does is give people excuses for not dealing with their problems. "I can't get to work on time, I have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome". "I can't focus in class, I have Attention Deficit Disorder". These are genuine difficulties that afflicted people will have to face, but don't ask the whole world to change to fit your circumstances.
Note, I was in and out of specialist children's hospitals for a good year or two while doctors tried to diagnose the reason my brain works differently to theirs. I have a certain set of psychological challenges I have to overcome, but I don't sit around whining about it all day.
all it does is give people excuses for not dealing with their problems.
Even the original article didn't do that. The author lists several steps he took to improve his condition. He just wanted people to avoid useless guilt, he didn't give them a free pass.
here's some specific quotes I'm taking aim at here:
She was so relieved simply to know that she didn’t have a problem; or more specifically, she was relieved to know that her problem was real. For she had gone all these years thinking that she was just lazy.
For all of those of you out there suffering under the weight of your inability to wake up early each morning, consider this one giant pardon.
the post comes off as one giant "it's ok to put your hand up and say 'I have a named medical condition so can I be excused from class'". That could just be my biased interpretation though as I've come across such a mindset before and tend to react very angrily to it. If that's not the message at all then consider my rant misplaced.
It seems like you're pulling out all the stops to avoid the uncomfortable point: the vast, vast majority of us are normal and don't have a convenient excuse for our poor sleep habits.
>If you wake up having hit a snooze button that you didn't consciously push, is that your fault?
Absolutely. 1000%. Move your alarm. Hide it. Make it not turn off until you do math problems. Have a friend call you. Set your computer to set off such an unholy alarm that your neighbors will hear. Buy one of those alarm helicopters that flies around the room until you catch it. Do what you have to do.
It is your responsibility and yours alone to wake up early enough to meet the obligations that you made for yourself.
There is a subtler point to be made that is (perhaps unintentionally) hinted at by the author of this article and sp332. At what point does a disruptive, repetitive, and persistent behavior go from being simple laziness or irresponsibility to a "disease"? If you believe that the mind is a purely physical thing and therefore that all behavior is the result of the body's composition and environment, then the only thing you can do is draw a line somewhere and call one group of behaviors "disease" and the other group "irresponsibility."
You're not. Go live amongst the trees and be a beautiful independent spirit and write a great American novel.
All this author is saying is that if you CHOOSE to make commitments and then fail to honor them, you're not an awful person, but yes you should feel guilty for that. On that, I agree.
When you accept a job, or a meeting invite, you are making an explicit committment to a work schedule or an appointment. That is a personal committment that you chose to make. If you sleep through it, you failed your committment and should feel like it.
But that has the feel of saying that Newton didn't invent calculus because of the work Archimedes did with infinitesimals. And in Turing's case it's without a Leibnitz-esque independent co-discoverer figure muddying the water.
Turing is the Babe Ruth, Wayne Gretzky, and Michael Jordan of computer science.
Judging by the fact that the word "sissies" is in the title, I don't think Joe Conway has any interest in giving some gay person any credit. He's a real man, you know.
Plus, attacking other people as lazy doesn't mean you yourself have to put in the work to familiarize yourself with history before making historical claims. Going to the library is too hard for my generation.
I never imagined that the nerd-flame-war that would cause me to take a HN break was over waking up in the morning, and not about bashing some poor database or microbenchmark.
Actually, I think this post, which is also causing me to take an HN break, is not very surprising from that perspective. It highlights one of the worst tendencies of HN I've been worried about a while.
HN is actually quite good on technical issues. People disagree, but it's rarely completely idiotic. There is smart stuff, and information is exchanged, and the overall level of debate is good.
But on philosophical issues, it's frankly not very good. There is a lot of knee-jerk bigotry. I mean this post leads by calling people "sissies", a clearly homophobic term. It also has a complete disinterest in science, and is longer on trolling and provocation than reason or intelligence. It worked. Got to #1 on HN!
Simple sound-bites, strong opinions, and posts that I can only really describe as in the "lifehacking" genre on the one hand, or the "political/social provocation" genre on the other hand, are what's the worst about HN. These are usually embarrassing at best. And in the best case they get flagged off the front page. The moderators are also clearly worried, because provocative titles often get changed, which sometimes leads to the posts fizzling without being flagged. Reduces damage, at least.
Anyway, as you say, time for a break. I'm sick of Joe Conway and his ilk of arrogant, ignorant assholes. Before chiding other people for being lazy, maybe these ignorant fucks should get off their asses and visit a library. They aren't stupid, but they're ignorant. Science and intelligence is about more than blogging whatever comes to the top of your head after 10 minutes of thought. You need to read. You need to think a bit about whether the first reaction that comes to mind is correct: is this really the position you want to write a manifesto about? Do you have data to support your contention that an alleged condition is imagined and actually the people are just lazy losers, and "suck it up" is a good prescription? Or are you just expressing a reactionary, right-wing political view borne more out of politics and prejudice than rationality and evidence?
Since when did "sissies" become homophobic? I recall as a kid not even knowing what gay or homosexual was, i.e. the 80's, and being a sissy simply meant someone who was afraid or a "scardy cat". It was far more analogous to wimp then anything else.
It's calling a man effeminate as an insult. That's not solely used to stigmatize gay people, but that's one of its main uses, along with stigmatizing gender-nonconforming people. I don't see much of a way to salvage it as anything but a right-wing, culturally reactionary term, any way you spin it; at best, it's imagined-1950s-gender-role garbage.
It was used when I was a kid too. But when I was a kid, people also used the words "Jewed" and "Gypped" to mean "got ripped off", and "gay" to mean "bad". In retrospect those those were all... not so good. And now I'm an adult who is capable of reading and gaining knowledge about such things.
This post smacks of reactionary prejudice. Some people are different than me? Something must be wrong with them! I am better than you because I wake up before you! You have got to be kidding.
If this post was written 40 years ago it would be directed at women telling them they actually have it pretty good. Hmm wait I actually saw that same thing just the other day.
These ignorant arrogant people need to figure out why they don't have even a smidgen of empathy and quit blaming us for being "bleeding hearts".
sissies plural of sis·sy (Noun)
Noun
derogatory. A person regarded as effeminate or cowardly.
derogatory. An effeminate homosexual.
Stay classy!
> We used to value hard work. It was the cornerstone of our society. We invented computing, the telephone, the automobile and modern medicine. We invaded Normandy. We traveled to the moon.
Sounds like history was invented in the US too, by Joe Conway. Computing was invented by Alan Turing (incidentally a gay man) or Chales Babbage, both of which are from Britain. The telephone was incrementally invented by many people, some of them from the US but most not [1]. In particular, Graham Bell was born in Britain, lived in Canada, then in the US, and then again in Canada. The automobile was invented by Ferdinand Verbiest from Belgium. Modern medicine was invented by (among many others) Louis Pasteur, a Frenchman. Most of the troops in the invasion of Normandy were not from the US. The first spacecraft to the moon was from the Soviet Union.
I didn't like the tone of this article at all. I'll spare us all and put aside the causality vs. free will debate, but saying all of our actions are controllable is ridiculous.
If trying like hell not to have to wake up early in the morning makes someone a sissy, then I'm the king of sissies.
This reminds me of a quote from Crowfoot, once a chief of the Blackfoot tribe:
"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."
Life's short. Enjoy it. If that means not waking up at a certain time, then don't. But, also, don't complain when you have to deal with the consequences.
I speak as someone who shaved almost two hours off of his regular rise-time in the last few months. Wherever the blame lies, at least look for some of these "big wins":
* Do you actually get enough sleep? Can you show when you actually went to bed and when you got back out?
* Do you avoid bright, blue lights (e.g. florescent bulbs or monitors without Flux) close to bed time?
* Do you have a ritual of some kind that gets your mind and body ready for bed?
* Have you had an actual sleep study checking for sleep apnea?
* Does your diet or other factors give you heartburn or other physiological sleep interrupts?
If you can devote 1-3 weeks to checking one of these at a time, that can address a lot of sleep issues.
I'm not sure you got the point of the article. You seem to be a "blind rage" mood today so I'll try to make it a little clearer.
He's not saying "it's not your fault." He's saying you have a real medical condition that needs to be treated. He also points out how to treat it and manage the condition, so that people will not continue to have their oversleeping issues.
What you're saying in response amounts to telling a person with depression that they're a buzz kill and should just cheer up.
People need to understand that chemicals play a huge part of how our body functions, and that not everyone has the same chemistry going on in their bodies. These chemical abnormalities can have a huge impact on your life and show up under a wide range of different conditions - depression, anxiety, bi-polar, ADHD, etc. These are real conditions caused by real physical things and, just because you can't see them as obviously as a broken arm, doesn't mean they're not real.
Your ignorance and lack of understanding isn't a virtue. It's not something to be proud of. Educate yourself.
Exactly. Machines should do all the "hard work" that I do not want to do at any given time, allowing me to spend my life cruising. We don't innovate to continue "working hard", we do so to make life easier in some way.
My top tip for making sure you are not a zombie in the morning is:
Don't eat a late dinner. Eat before 7 pm.
Go to bed between 9.30 and 10.30 pm.
If you want, use the time before second sleep[1] to catch up on reading.
Get up when your alarm rings at 6 am. Every damn day.
These are all points you certainly can control yourself.
This is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever seen at the top of Hacker News. It's true, some people are just lazy, but the "author" you refer to is Jason Freedman. He's a successful YC founder who probably busts his ass harder than 99% of the people on this site. He isn't making an excuse, he's trying the fucking HELP. He still gets results, he sold a company already and 42Floors seems to be doing just fine. Everything I've ever heard about him has been positive.
People like the OP are the reason we can't have nice things.
What a prolix pile of raw, unthinking emotion. The original post was kinda silly, but it was miles ahead of this irrational Puritanical drivel.
If you believe that life should be hard, then you are welcome to make things hard for yourself. Personally, when something is hard, I treat that as a problem to be solved so that living a good life is as easy as possible. I think my approach will be more fruitful in the end, but hey, it's your life.
Any disorder is a problem to be solved by some, while being an obstacle which others let stop them. If it's important enough, you'll be there, awake and early.
By being late, you're communicating that your job isn't the most important thing in your life. If that's true, we should be honest about it.
Every generation is full of the weak and the strong. We're all weak in some ways and strong in others. We've learned to subsidize one another.
This post is stupid. Not everything can be fixed with 'will power'. There are inherent physiological differences across people, you need to stop assuming that everyone else experiences the same 'reality' as you.
My only issue with this article is that the sepia filters ended up selling for "only" around $750 million, or so I recently learned on Hacker News.
It's not about the esoteric medical conditions that each of us might have, if we look hard enough and go the right doctors. It's about our responsibility to fulfill the obligations we have taken upon ourselves.
It's a common problem, and so worthy of a solution.
I'm not sure the "get over it" solution is working. It's accepted that developers will work without wearing full suits. This isn't different, maybe allowances should be made for productivity's sake.
Missing appointments is a different thing, and is unacceptable. Is day to day flexibility really that big of a problem?
I am pretty sure I have some version of DSPS, or maybe I am just a night owl. I've tried for years to fix it, going to bed hours earlier, locking my smartphone in a drawer, setting 12 alarms 2 minutes apart, taking pills. Nothing worked. Exercise helped a little, in that I was tired earlier in the day, but I am still useless until 10:00.
So you know what I did? I stopped trying to fix it. I realized that I might never be one of those people who get to work at 8am and I shifted my schedule. I am much happier now. This was the tone of the original article, and I take offense to this article telling me I am lazy.
While I do appreciate the overall goal of the message, I must say that I completely disagree with his statement:
No one likes waking up in the morning.
I for one actually do like waking up early in the morning and have been like that as long as I can remember. I also have some friends who think like this as well, so be careful when making generalizations :)
If hard work in excess happens to be one of the reasons you find it hard to get up in the morning, you may confidently disregard this post. It is not meant for you; if it actually is meant for those sorts (I am not the author), it shouldn't be.
Grow up on a farm. Do a stint in the military. Go to college while working two part time jobs. Experience crazy shifts in semiconductor fab. Work for startups. Get lots of responsibility. Now wonder why kids can't show up on time. Get off my lawn!
Nicer version that would've sufficed: (which I think the OP actually intended to convey, but is such an ass as to be incapable)
If you have obligations to other people, keep them. If you know it will be very hard to make that 8am meeting, ask if it can be rescheduled or if it is really necessary for you to attend. You should feel guilty when you make an obligation and break it.
Some people are night people (me included). If you are one of those people that can barely drag yourself out of bed before 9am, then accommodate for that when possible.
That being said, I completely see the otherside where people have so much trouble getting out of bed, even with obligations they intend to keep. I find that in this case, it's usually a matter of importance. I'll wake up at 6:30am to go catch a flight because I'm not going to lose a $500 ticket. I have a hard time waking up for some arbitrary 9am "on-time" value that my boss set at work.
I had an experiment once where I worked from 1pm to 9pm, by choice. I was significantly more productive, and having a slot for "business hours" stuff that can be done before work meant I never needed to leave except for when I caught lunch/dinner. I can't do that at my current job, but I at least don't have a "hard" time at being to work until 10am, which is when stand-up takes place.. and I've missed stand-ups before, but they're just important enough that it motivates me to almost always wake up on time
> That being said, I completely see the otherside where people have so much trouble getting out of bed, even with obligations they intend to keep. I find that in this case, it's usually a matter of importance. I'll wake up at 6:30am to go catch a flight because I'm not going to lose a $500 ticket.
I've lost such tickets no matter how much I wanted to. I've tried both going to bed early and setting a million alarms, and deliberately staying up all night (then passing out in the early morning) even though I knew the cost to my alertness and long-term health if I pulled it off.
It must be fun to think that if afflicted people just "wanted it more" it would no longer be an issue. If we just "wanted more" to get to your arbitrarily in-person arbitrarily 10am meeting, I guess we would just do it. We must not "want" the job enough.
Why didn't the guy just post a link to his blog post in the comments on the other article? Maybe that is frowned upon on this site. Seems like the right thing to do to me.
The saddest thing is how morning persons have managed to make a virtue out of their biological clock and that their preferences are so deeply ingrained in society now.
> it does, you know, make sense to conduct society's business during daylight hours.
Not necessarily! In hotter parts of the world, they deliberately avoid conducting business during the middle part of the day. (That may come with earlier rising, offset by a siesta.)
It's also an age thing. As you get older, your sleep moves in the early direction and you also need less of it (if you're in good health). My dad's 61 and sleeps 9-to-3:30. I seem to be headed in that direction. I'm usually up by 6-7 even if I go to bed at 2:30, so the smart thing for me to do is sleep earlier.
It's biology. Giving it a moral weight is nonsense.
Well, I think I'm going to be disrespectful and uneducated for a minute.
Listen, don't throw me inside your "generation" when you mean "lazy american SF hipster startup guys".
I live in Brazil, my life is like this: I sleep @ 11pm and wakeup @ 4am... I take 4 hours trips to work because I don't have a car. When I get to work, I have to lead a team. I go to gym, 3 times a week. I hold a bachelor in CS. I maintain good/famous projects in Github. I study regularly(currently trying to learn some erlang). I speak two languages well, my mother language and english.
I came from a fucking poor family where you wouldn't even UNDERSTAND of what's like to live there. I'm 24 and I don't have a fucking driver's license.
I earn 50% of a american shitty developer and I lead a team. Cars are at least 4x more expensive here than your country that have been winning the world by making wars and slaving people in a smart way that human rights doesn't really consider it slavery.
So, fuck you and "YOUR" generation. Stop making HN SHIT just publishing fucking damn articles and shitty blog posts. Stop fighting against the other retarded people that just wanted to make excuses.
There's actually people here like me that are desperate for doing something interesting for the humanity. So, shut the fuck up.
Seriously? Would you say the same thing to someone who is suffering from PTSD? Just "man up" and get over it? No way, unless you're a complete idiot. It's easy to throw people down and attempt to discredit an attribute of "how their brain works" when you don't suffer from the problem. There is _no_ need to put people down in this manner.
The obnoxious tone of this article seems to have obscured the fine point which it sets out to make. This is not about how some sleeping patterns are superior or inferior to others, or how you're a better or worse person depending on when you get up.
This is about how if you agree to so something, then you must do it. Thus, if you are scheduled to attend a meeting at 7:30 or 8am, then you must go to it: otherwise, the word that describes you is “irresponsible”.
If mornings are a problem for you, you need to make an arrangement _beforehand_ with your coworkers and/or employer: this is the way that you can avoid being a total self-centered dick.
Conway asserts that the referenced post says "you are the victim here". But I think he (Jason Freedman) says that a subset of people who have extreme difficulty ("...it’s more than just the normal struggle to wake up in the morning") getting up may have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome and not know it. As someone with an autoimmune disease that affects my sleep, I don't think physiology can be glossed over.
As well, I don't think he (Jason) was trying to create victims; he links to his advice and ends by saying "it is on you to decide to do something about it".
But having trouble getting up in the morning is not being a sissy, not for everyone.
As someone who has delayed onset sleep disorder this person has no idea what he is talking about. Sure, maybe he knows since people who just have crappy sleep habits. To generalize in a rant is a little ridiculous.
Hey, everybody! A straight, white, cis man misses the good old days, when we wrote off anyone who wasn't straight, white, cis, or male as "not allowed to be successful." The best days were when women couldn't vote and before the Civil Rights Act was passed! We valued hard work then! Ignore gains in productivity since then! "Sissies" is still an insult indicative of moral superiority! Anyone with executive functioning less than mine will receive less material wealth than me because that's how to achieve a maximally just and happy world!
Hey everbody I am liberal pro feminist who will shout down and demeaning anyone or anything that says something I don't like! That is what you sound like....
Article says more about author's worldview than anything else. Motivation by guilt works really well, until it stops working, and then you're in trouble. What do you do when you simply don't feel guilty about doing something like sleeping in?
I read the original article, I didn't see the part where it said it was OK to be late for meetings. If you say you will be somewhere at a certain time, you better be there.
As someone who has struggled with the effects of sleep apnea since I was a child, I humbly advise you to "Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle"
> Just today, it was reported that three kidnapped girls fought for 10 years to finally escape – and you can’t wake up 10 minutes earlier? What would they give for just 10 of your wasted minutes?
Oh, this is the worst argument. Someone did _INCREDIBLY_HARD_THING_X, so why can't you do _THING_Y_, which almost certainly is going to be easier than X?
I'll flip this one on the head: someone doesn't think it's their duty to adjust to your silly requirements just because a previous generation paid their tithes without complaining.
The entire point is, for many people "quitting reddit" is not going to help. At all. And if you don't get it, then boo-hoo, stop reading things that make you write silly rants.
The OP sounds like an angry curmudgeon. He/she can't cut someone some slack if they're running a few minutes late? I'm glad I've never had to take a meeting with this person. This isn't about whether or not someone is disciplined enough to get enough sleep - this is about OP's rigid inflexibility. Things happen - your child has a tantrum at breakfast and spills something on you, your car has a flat, your cat dies. If life's inconveniences are too much for OP, he/she should consider working solo.
This really sucked to read and it's not because it made me aware of my failings and what to change, it's because it realized no matter how effective I am at what I do and no matter how much I try to counteract my body's natural tendencies (increasing stress and likely lowering health and shortening my lifespan) and no matter how much I try to be responsible and give times I can commit to, jerks like this guy will always find me "lazy" and make a point to badmouth me to others.
Never mind that there are actual studies by experts (who this guy is not) describing the condition and never mind that the original article was all about finding ways to counteract it. OP's lazy. And I'm lazy. Not only that but we're not just lazy but maybe we have some good traits, it's a deep and overarching character flaw that means we are not even decent people.
Best that this guy come in real quick and make sure that we don't even for a second stop beating ourselves up and feeling guilt to the core of our being.
Ever since high school when I was expected to start maintaining my own schedule, I had trouble getting to sleep and trouble waking up, and not for trying. I would set alarms and try all the smug tricks and it didn't matter. Literally I would turn the alarms off and disable the alarms despite how many obstacles, passcodes, or puzzles I put in the way. It's never been a matter of waking up and then deciding I wanted more sleep.
I tried everything: exercising late, not exercising late, reading, lying awake and trying to just sleep, caffeine to wake up, avoiding caffeine, alcohol, melatonin, herbal teas, narcotics, and on and on. Hey, that effort doesn't count. I'm lazy.
I would try to make reasonable compromises at work and instead of simple (legally required) accommodations I would be reminded that I'm lazy. And then usually the manager or coworker would make a point of scheduling a brand new meeting for 08:00 or 09:00 on a regular basis. They'd either smirk or outright tell me it was to teach me a lesson. On account of my laziness.
I've tried to get involved in community events. Some unconferences were put together on Saturday at 09:00 (be there even earlier if you want a t-shirt or a chance to speak). So I'd make my best attempt to get up extra early, fail, and get there and all speaking slots were filled up and no swag. Suggested maybe we should have a way to sign up ahead of time and got told that if you cared about the community you would bother to put in the effort to come early. Because we don't want to hear from any lazy people.
I had a client project with a friend lately. I estimated the whole thing, laid out requirements and prerequisites (I thought I was being responsible but I guess that was trying to plan ahead a way to be lazy). Worked my ass off, then a series of shit happened from the client and my friend freaked out, probably because he hadn't followed through on any of his business-related responsibilities. Called me at midnight after I'd worked all day (all day) and said he needed me to write a report and then wake up to call the client first thing in the morning. I said I could work on the report the next day and we could call in the afternoon, but was rebuked because if I couldn't bother to keep traditional hours (he said, calling me at midnight) then I was going to make us fail and all was my fault and this was why I was a failure. I still talk to that person but I can never see him the same way and never trust him for business again.
It doesn't matter how much extra time you put in, how good you are at what you do, and how carefully you plan what you commit to. People will pull the rug out from under you and then blame you, and for many other things there is an out or reasonable people will disagree. But no one ever disagrees that I'm lazy.
Now I am lucky enough that I can just barely drag myself out earlier in the day now. But I can't do it sustainably and I take no credit. All I can think is it's that I've gotten a little older and my body needs slightly less sleep or the pattern shifted slightly. One thing that does often help me personally is that software that tracks your sleep vibrations on the bed to wake you at a light-sleep time. The developer of that should be chastized for enabling laziness. I don't know how long it will last. My only hope is to pull it off long enough to get into an essential role or to make it impossible for an employer to squirm out of ADA requirements.
But I should never hope for too much career success. After all, at heart, I'm lazy.
What a self-righteous douchebag. I'm a fully "respectable" 10-to-5:30 sleeper and it doesn't make me morally superior to anyone else. It's a combination of biology, age, and lifestyle circumstances, two of which I have no control over and one which I have little control over.
No one likes waking up in the morning.
That's not even true. That's a false-misery play: make people feel bad by presenting the view that everyone else is suffering, when it isn't true. Most people have no problem getting up at a traditionally socially acceptable time. A few people do, and a lot of it's biological.
Just because someone has conjured up a “label” for the way your brain works doesn’t give you a free pass to break your word.
I guess this guy hasn't worked a real job yet and learned that normal people don't get to choose what their meeting schedules are. I agree. If you fully voluntarily (being told you must by a boss doesn't count) agree to do something at 6:00 am, then you get the fuck up and do it no matter how tired you are. However, I don't think he understands that most people end up in meetings they didn't voluntarily agree to attend.
The problem with the typical workplace is that it's built on promises that weren't made voluntarily, and many of which don't actually exist, but that's another rant.
Boo-hoo, get off Reddit and go to bed earlier.
Actually, there is an insight here. Morning or night person, most of us lose our good judgment at a certain level of tiredness and start staying up when there isn't a good reason to do so. This is a tough call, because sometimes it's useful to stay up until 3:00am but usually it's not. The problem with sleep deprivation is that you often don't know how tired/impaired you are. You might even feel the opposite, though your objective performance is terrible.
Earning your life is supposed to be difficult.
Posturing. Bullshit. We get it, you have a big dick. Congratulations.
Is there anything worse than a sanctimonious early-riser who thinks that work is more valuable because of the time of day that it occurred? And how much waste do we all incur because of these indignant shits who insist that everyone must awaken simultaneously, get in our cars simultaneously, choke the streets and freeways simultaneously, line up at Starbucks simultaneously, arrive at our jobs simultaneously, etc. etc. etc. I dare anyone to try and design a worse system. A few of the worst early-risers I've worked with were the first ones to leave work, often crowing about how if others arrived as early as they did, then they too could race out to join them on the freeway, or at the nearest Hooters.
There is a lot of value in having everyone in the office at the same hours. It ensures that communication occurs in a timely manner.
I work at a software company as a Sales Engineer, and part of my job is to answer questions clients may have. There is nothing more annoying than having to respond to the client's question with "I'm sorry, I was going to ask one of our developers but it seems they have gone home for the day." Note that this sometimes happens at 3pm, because the developer decided to come in at 5.30am and left at 2.30pm. Also note that similar things happened when I was working in tech support, and critical issues had to remain unresolved until the next day because the developer wanted to leave early and catch the swell for that day's surfing session.
Bottom line is that there are a lot of fields (especially customer-centric ones) where the turnaround time for inquiries has to be extremely low. There are two ways to do this:
1. Give everyone Blackberry's that they must answer at all times
2. Have everyone come in at the same time
In my experience, customer facing professionals are often quite bad at gauging the actual importance of client concerns, and good at magnifying them. I certainly was.
Scheduling adequate coverage is ultimately a concern for upper management. If they allowed "critical issues" to go unresolved on anything other than a rare occasion, the issues were probably not critical to begin with.
It's not necessarily only about the importance of the actual concern or question.
In my experience, customers appreciate it a lot if you get back to them in a timely manner (~30 minutes), regardless of how trivial the issue or question is. It helps you build a reputation as a reliable businessperson, and further helps you build a good relationship with that customer.
Of course customers like being acknowledged, but that's the responsibility of whoever is actually interfacing with said customer. IME, it's pretty unusual to need developer input just to adequately respond to a client. It's also quite unproductive to run around context-switching developers every time a minor issue arises.
This is why I specifically mentioned that this is an upper management concern. Those in client facing roles often default to wishing to provide the best possible support to their customers at all times. It's a good instinct, but that doesn't mean it's always the pragmatic course of action.
We try hard not to context-switch developers. For most issues, email is used, and that allows them to respond whenever they want - as long as it is within the same day.
But if the issue has been outstanding for a day, then we resort to instant message. Context-switching does occur there, but that's the price one pays for leaving at 2pm the previous day when a lot of customers were still at the office working.
Eh, just because somebody is in the office doesn't mean he's available at a moment's notice. Couldn't the same argument be made against meetings? It can't be any less annoying having to say, "I'm sorry, I was going to ask one of our developers but it seems he's in a meeting."
In fact, in either case, I'd say something like "I don't have a great answer myself, but I'm checking with the developer in charge of that feature and I'll have all the details for you by $TIME."
If they are in a meeting, they will most likely be out within the next 30-60 seconds, which is when they will see my email/IM and respond. If they are out for the day, that's at least a one-day delay.
They agreed to attend meetings when they accepted the job offer. If you aren't capable of doing what is deemed necessary for your job (whether its actually necessary or not is a separate question) then maybe you are in the wrong job.
Did the job offer say "must attend morning meetings"? Some job offers specify work hours and most don't.
If the person took a job offer knowing that there would be 7:00 meetings and then didn't show up, then I agree with you. Some job offers include hours so there are no surprises. Many trading firms start at 6:30, for example, and that's fine as long as both parties are clear about expectations ahead of time.
If the offer letter or contract specifies hours (rather than some flimsy, shifting-sands "please your boss" social expectation) then people should not commit if they can't meet the professed needs, I agree.
However, if we're talking about a typical job where hours are not specified before signing, then you are in the wrong and you should quit while you're behind.
There is a concept of 'normal' and if your sleep cycle is so far out of 'normal' that it interferes with your ability to do 'normal' things, then it is your responsibility to determine if that will be a problem before you accept the job, not the employers. Even in the case of trading that you brought up, if starting at 6:30 is normal in that field, then the employer shouldn't need to bring up in the offer that they expect you to start at 6:30. If the employee is moving to a new field or to a place that has a different corporate culture, it should be their responsibility to find out what 'normal' is.
You opened yourself up here but I'm going to leave it as an exercise to the reader as to what the last three moves look like. I'll give a hint. The second of the three doesn't matter.
> Did the job offer say "must attend morning meetings"? Some job offers specify work hours and most don't.
But there is implicit assumption in a job offer that meetings ought to be attended on time. Sometimes, meeting times are decided based on mutual convenience. Sometimes, they are dictated by your boss. Nothing wrong with that.
People can claim "implicit assumptions" all they want. Most rapists believe in an "implicit assumption" that the woman wants to have sex with them. That doesn't make it true.
I can't tell if you're trolling or serious, and I'm not sure I even want to know.
You basically Godwinned the discussion, dude. Except you used rapists rather than Hitler. There are ways to make your point without resorting to ridiculous hyperboles.
>>Did the job offer say "must attend morning meetings"? Some job offers specify work hours and most don't.
Well, the job offer also did not say "must wear a suit and tie everyday" or "must treat coworkers with courtesy" or any other implicit part of being a working professional in the corporate world.
I gave it as an example. The point is that there are many things you have to do everyday - some trivial, some not - that are not going to be spelled out in your offer letter. You can either do them, or find somewhere else to work.
Not true at all. I may be completely backwards, but I LOVE waking up in the morning. The original article also seemed pretty sure that NOBODY likes to wake at 3am. Are you kidding me? Nothing makes me happier and sets a better mood for my day then when I voluntarily wake up at 3am, even if my day job starts 10am.
Having said that, I might have the condition outlined in the original post. I'm a severe over-sleeper, and I'll always sleep more in the morning if allowed to. It seems contradictory, but it's a matter of determination and discipline clashing. I have the determination to wake up early and feel wonderful for it. When I wake up before 7am, if I have slept enough, I wake up excited and energized. If I sleep until 8am or later, I feel miserable, and it snowballs from there on; I get frustrated with myself for having lost my productive morning and oversleep even more. Often this enter a vicious cycle of sleeping late and waking up later, and it's hard to break out of it. And even when I get a good habit going, it takes just a couple parties to shred my following week's schedule to pieces. I'm still hitting my mid-twenties. Productivity or my social life?
This. I, too, am a "morning person," but that doesn't mean I'm physically superior to anyone else. I agree with the sentiment of this comment above. If you have obligations, then be committed and fulfill them, especially if they're voluntary. But calling someone a "sissy" (which I feel is a derogatory, antiquated, and unnecessary term) just because it's difficult to wake up in the morning comes across as self-righteousness.
I don't think so. It's a rant about people who don't want to do hard things. Go reread — the overall thrust is not "keep your promises," but rather "do hard things and don't complain about them." He says this pretty explicitly several times.
> However, I don't think he understands that most people end up in meetings they didn't voluntarily agree to attend.
So? A job is a contract between you and your employer. If you don't want to honor it, choose a different contract. If your boss wants you to come at a certain time, show up at that time or change the boss.
Those who show up for meetings on time are morally superior to those who don't because they can't control their sleep.
> If your boss wants you to come at a certain time, show up at that time or change the boss.
No, there is no moral obligation to silently put up with any mistreatment your boss dreams up. You are always free to negotiate — the counteroffer may be "you are not worth this trouble and you're fired," but hey, that's business. It's not a divine judgment from on high.
For example, my boss once asked me to come in an hour earlier than I had been. By the OP's thinking, I should have just said "Yessir!" Instead, I said, "That'll be massively inconvenient for me. What is it that's prompting this?" It turned out that she just had some extra work that needed doing by a certain time each day, so I came up with a more efficient way to get this work done that wouldn't require changing my schedule around. She ended up thanking me because I saved everyone time. TL;DR: I said no and came out looking better for it.
If your boss wants you to come at a certain time, show up at that time or change the boss.
You realize that in most firms, that also means (even if it's a large company and there's no point in it being that way) changing companies, right? And also that it takes about a month to do that, and that you'll usually be fired if you get found out for looking? And also that people who change companies "too often" get the "job hopper" label and get raped by closed-minded idiots who never grew out of thinking the way you do, right?
I am fucking sick of arguing about the real world with Internet "libertarians" who've not spent significant time in it. Go back to pretending to be a 16-year-old girl who's "soooo confused".
> am fucking sick of arguing about the real world with Internet "libertarians" who've not spent significant time in it.
I couldn't agree more with this statement. There's a certain blend of inexperience and privilege that pervades some discussions on HN, and it's unfortunate.
Joe Conway, you said in your post that "every single one of your actions is controllable". If you truly believe this, you should demonstrate it by controlling your impulse to be an asshole.