I’ve always been a night person. My natural rhythm is to stay up moderately late and sleep in. I was never an out all night kind of guy, but I’d crash at about 2 or 3AM and get up around 10 or 11AM. If left to my own devices, I’d get about 9 hours of sleep before waking.
Then I got married. My wife is much more of a morning person. With rare exceptions, she’s never asleep past 7AM. Not even on weekends. Our kids are pretty early risers too. In the beginning, I resisted this trend. I’d stay up late (my wife having fallen asleep on the couch, usually rather early) doing my thing. She’d be up in the morning and I’d sleep in. This was silly, the unnecessary overlap in our schedules, but I was immature and irresponsible, so I did it anyway. The day was going on without me, and it gradually began to irritate me more and more. I felt like I was missing something. I reluctantly began to cave in.
So my schedule shifted earlier. But I still resisted. After all, I’d say, I was still a night person trying to live a morning person’s life. And unwillingly. With great heaping gobs of coffee to assist me.
But finally I began to realize something. If I wanted to be productive, if I wanted to actually do something with my day, I had to get rolling before the sun was up. There wasn’t time to lay around sleeping. People depended on me. If I didn’t get up, I was reacting to my day, always playing catch-up. I was putting an undue burden on my wife, who was up long before I was and wound up having to take care of the kids alone. In addition to that, I needed a jump start on everything I wanted to accomplish. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being up before everyone else is. You feel like you have the advantage. Except that’s not just a feeling – there’s plenty of evidence to indicate that you really do.
Steve Murphy, CEO of publishing company Rodale, says, “A line in a William Blake poem inspired me to think differently about my day: ‘Think in the morning, act in the noon, read in the evening, and sleep at night.’ This has made a huge difference in my life. Now, I take out a yellow pad every morning and write my thoughts for the day, which allows me to be much more strategic and proactive than reactive.”
I used to think my most creative time was late at night. And while I do get ideas then, I very rarely execute on them at that time. I’m usually too burned out. I’ve learned through experience, though, that my absolute best time to create things and get work done is first thing in the morning – something I would never have known if I hadn’t started rolling out of bed.
I rarely get a chance to use that time to the best of my ability right now, because family obligations and my work schedule put a crimp on the early hours. So I’ve decided I need to start getting up earlier. I usually get up around 6:30AM, so today I got up at 5:30AM. After a 5AM alarm. With mixed results. But I got out the door closer to on time, felt less rushed, and didn’t make my daughter late for school (a common occurrence, since I drive her in.) I plan to keep shooting for earlier, until (hopefully) I can do a 4:30AM wake-up. That may be a bit aggressive, since I don’t get to the office very early, and consequently get home rather late. And many evenings, I work until midnight or 1AM on projects or business ideas, which doesn’t leave much time for sleep – which is usually interrupted by a kid with a bad dream or a crying baby anyway. But it’s a goal, and if going to bed earlier helps me to make better use of that early time, I’ll do it. As the days get warmer, my daily walks are going to need to get pushed into the darker, cooler hours, and early morning is just the time to go for a brisk stroll and brainstorm the day. I suspect it will become an important part of my process for fueling creativity.
I used to make excuses. Used to say I couldn’t get up, that it wasn’t my fault, that I was just wired a certain way. And maybe I am. But overcoming our nature is one of the things that every human being with an intellect and free will has the capacity to do. In fact, it’s what we should do, when it comes to things that hold us back. What I’ve realized about myself is that I made excuses because I was lazy and didn’t see the point. I’d rather have stayed up late watching TV or playing a video game than get up early and have to do something I didn’t want to do. Namely: work.
But once you find work you enjoy, you look forward to it. Productivity is no longer a dirty word. It’s an exciting one. Even if you don’t love your day job, make the most of the time you have throughout the day to do the work you do love. Even if you don’t get paid for it. In addition, find the things about your job that you can take satisfaction in, and do them well. Look for the fun challenges in the work, rather than expecting the work you do to simply satisfy you on every level. Get an edge on the competition and position yourself for future career growth. And make time to do creative projects that have nothing to do with the bottom line (though don’t be afraid to monetize them if you can!) just for the sake of doing them. Just because they’re fun!
I’ve come a long way since the days I would sleep half the day way. I now realize that getting up early is worth it, even thought it’s not always easy.
How about you? Are you a night person, or a morning person?
I think of myself as a morning person with really crappy habits. I fluctuate wildly, going through phases where I will go to bed at ten thirty and be up with the birds, and others when I stay up, frankly wasting time on the internet, and it’s all I can do to drag my pathetic self out of bed before eleven.
I think the question of whether you are a “day person or a night person” isn’t about your current or past sleeping habits, which can be affected by a great array of things. For instance, my current habits (up way too late, in bed way after I would want) are a result of medical issues. When I was first recovering from treatment I was sleeping nearly all the time, and that was precisely what I ought to have been doing. In the first few days after either chemo or surgery, I was only up at most about five hours a day, obviously. And even in the following weeks and months, these huge and dangerous medical things have had a big effect, so I was sleeping at least ten hours a day, falling asleep on the sofa at ten and not waking up until after eight. This was also the period when I had to have someone in the house with me all the time to help with daily things like shopping and cooking and cleaning.
But unfortunately, the result now that I’m feeling a lot stronger is that I’ve skewed my sleeping patterns, still sleeping late, but staying up later and later at night. This week I’ve really struggled to force myself out of these habits. And there’s the key to whether I’m naturally a night or a day person. I’m desperately struggling against what feels like an unhealthy pattern, one that leaves me unproductive, tired and with my days perpetually off kilter.
As you say, when I’m getting up early, I own the day. I am portioning out blocks of time to achieve a specific set of goals, and I usually do them all. Prayer time, exercise time, drawing time, shopping/cooking/housework time, work time, relaxation and hanging out with friends time. It all actually gets done. But when I’m off my preferred schedule, I feel listless and unfocused, I aimlessly waste time on the internet while feeling guilty and like a human waste of skin. I can’t get anything more than the bare requirements done ie: work, and my life becomes extremely unfun. I really hate the sleep-til-eleven days because it just feels wrong.
That might be some kind of Protestant work ethic hangover deriving from a set of unrealistic and unhealthy societal expectations… blah blah blah… I don’t think it matters. What matters is how I feel about it, and what I can do to make myself as mentally and morally healthy as possible.
I think the whole question rests not on what your inclinations are (to extreme laziness for me) but in the difference between how you feel at the end of the day if you’ve got the things done that make you feel like a real, useful, functioning adult who can make deadlines, please your boss, keep up your social obligations, maintain your health and a decent living environment and work toward future goals. Live fully, in other words.
And I really do think it is a matter of deciding to do your life on purpose. It has way less to do with your “natural rhythms,” and way more to do with how you decide you want your life to run. I think the whole “natural rhythms” thing is just too easy to blame for a lack of self-control. “Oh, I stay up watching cat videos til two am because I’m ‘naturally’ a night person. And if ‘society’ wants to label me as lazy, it’s not my problem.” Bullshit. If you’re staying up doing nothing useful, if you know you’re too tired to do anything really functional after midnight, you should damn well be in bed. If you’re not, then you’re avoiding life. And that’s a bad thing.
Oh, dear. I do seem to be having a problem with this. I think I’m going to take a melatonin tonight at eleven and see if I can fix it.
And I really do think it is a matter of deciding to do your life on purpose. It has way less to do with your “natural rhythms,” and way more to do with how you decide you want your life to run. I think the whole “natural rhythms” thing is just too easy to blame for a lack of self-control. “Oh, I stay up watching cat videos til two am because I’m ‘naturally’ a night person. And if ‘society’ wants to label me as lazy, it’s not my problem.” Bullshit. If you’re staying up doing nothing useful, if you know you’re too tired to do anything really functional after midnight, you should damn well be in bed. If you’re not, then you’re avoiding life. And that’s a bad thing.
Damn straight, and well said.
I am late nights. I’ve stayed up late and slept in daily since high school (home schooling gave me that ability). College continued the trend, of course, as did being a youth minister. In my line of work, you have to be around after school and into the nights for the kids, but not so much in the mornings. My love of the late night continued.
Now that I’m married with two daughters under 2, my ability to sleep in is gone, so I was just a zombie for half the day.
So I “caved” just like you said. For Lent, my sacrifice is to wake up every day at 5:30, pray, then write or read. For a week I had to get up at 4:30 for a particular project I was working on, and I’ve never been more productive.
Another difference waking up early is better for productivity is late nights lead to much distraction. I’m way more tempted to watch TV or screw around on the Interwebs at midnight than I am at 5:30AM. Or, if I do find myself reading tech and political blogs in the wee hours of the morning, I’ve found that I do not look at them throughout the day, eliminating distractions from my regular job (this post excepted).
More than anything else, there is no sense of playing catch up. It’s done. There’s peace before the sun comes up. I think it was Jefferson who said that you should always be awake before the sun.
Gomer,
Interesting. Glad to hear that your experience is matching my own. I’m sure there’s someone out there who will say they made the switch and wound up less productive, but I don’t think I’d believe them. 😉
Too many successful people agree on this point for it to be a fluke.
actually rhythms CAN have a lot to do with it. .i have a condition called delayed sleep phase syndrome,but those who don’t believe in those kinds of disabilities will naturally claim that it’s BS. i’m totally disabled due to this condition.have been since 21 years old and am 57 now.i sleep days and am awake nights.it’s been impossible to reverese the order as a permanant schedule////.
Hi Dennis,
Thanks for your comment. I don’t doubt that conditions like yours exist, and I don’t mean to downplay them. I’m referring specifically to people who don’t have such conditions, and aren’t debilitated by anything but their own willingness (or lack thereof) to change.
I know that even for those of us who have (or are still) made/making excuses, rhythms play a role. I am always by nature going to be a night person. Right now, I know I should be in bed so I can get up early, but my mind is active right now and it’s hard to shut it off and go to sleep.
My contention is that for those of us who can control our sleep schedules through better habits, there seems to be a real advantage to getting up early and tackling the day head on.