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To me I like both being an early riser and a late night owl
but I would lean toward early riser as getting more accomplished as you are heading into your day vs. night owl winding down your day.
For the past year I have woken up at 4am and really enjoy the morning to get tasks done without interruptions.
Obviously if your doing tasks at 1AM will not be interrupted either
30 years of getting up at 5am qualifies me as a former early riser. I was alert and productive until about 4pm and then exhausted. Hit the bed at 10:00 or earlier. To my astonishment, I retied to find I am really a night owl like my husband and we get lots more accomplished at night... while you might need to hit stores and such in the day, the idea of being able to get up leisurely and get ready the same makes each day pleasurable... if we feel like we want to go do some work at 2 am, we can. There are days we stay up until almost 4. I guess whatever works for you is what makes sense.
I agree. I'm an early riser, and LOVE the time to get things done while everyone else sleeps. If I sleep late, I feel lazy and tend to get less done.
I am the same way, and I used to be the late riser. I stayed up late whenever possible and I had a hard time getting up in the morning and was often late to work. That whole schpiel about "well, I'm just a night person" is a crock. It's a choice.
I changed myself. Now I rise at 5 a.m., partly because I have to get to work at a certain time, lol, but I am never late to work unless it's the train's fault. If I sleep past 7 on the weekends I feel as if I've stayed in bed too late. The morning is the very best time of the day, and overall, life is better when you follow the old "early to bed, early to rise" way of living. It's more natural, I suppose, going back to before we had electricity and television and all those other things.
Of course, a person who works on off shifts isn't going to be able to do this.
In other words, the results of each of the two different studies probably reflects the bias of the researcher.
There are two kinds of productivity -- Personal productivity and productivity within the context of a larger organization. Because no matter how productive you are at 9 at night, you still have to bounce ideas off of fellow workers, call people up on the phone to research particulars, etc. etc. etc. And those people have to work a normal 8-to-5 workday.
I'm not by nature an early riser. But if I'm really busy, I'm up early and knock out the work. That way, I can show what I've done to my clients, get reactions, and move forward.
In the same sense, I once had a boss who routinely worked until 2 in the morning and didn't come in until noon or 1 p.m. He created chaos every day, chiefly because the people who worked a normal schedule. He was never available to sign off on decisions in the morning, and his time in the afternoon was jam-packed--chiefly because he was never there in the morning. And he was always expecting his team to work until midnight as a result.
He was eventually fired, and I was named his successor. Profitability increased, morale improved, and if I asked team members to work past 6 p.m., it meant something.
In short, if the only person you have to be responsible to is yourself, then you can be productive any hour of the day. If, on the other hand, the world doesn't revolve around you, then you just have to be productive early on and deal with it.
Good analysis. If you create something and others review, you need to get in before the reviewers (or do the creating the night before so it's in their inbox when they come in) while if you finalize or review, you need to work late enough to finish that as well.
I have seen very productive people who work very late or very early schedules, although its true that these are individual contributors who work alone.
I think it also does not make much sense to set yourself up to work hours that disagree with your basic nature. The nightowl can tend bar, the early bird become a barista.
Our of college, I worked for a while as a programmer. Mornings, being a total, not functional morning person, I did stuff one could do in your sleep, which I may have been doing occasionally. But frequently work extended past 5:30 and I never had a problem staying late, and was wide awake. My boss worked out a deal where I came in at ten and left at seven. I missed ALL the traffic (at 5:30 or 6 it took an extra hour) but I was in my element. Nothing ever got done early since the computer room was busy with production runs and wouldn't run anything for you.
This wasn't an extraordinary business, just a small banks data processing center. By being flexable, it worked out better for everyone. You can "cater" to your employees to everyone's benefit if you want to, and will probably be far more functional a business. At 8 I got really good at moving papers around and nobody bothered to talk to me before break. They were utterly wasted hours which they got better use out of when I got in later. And in the winter when I couldn't see the tree infront of the front window at home since the fog hadn't burned off yet, I wasn't going to be there anyway.
And no way could I 'become' a morning person. Many a person has tried and given up.
The morning is the very best time of the day, and overall, life is better when you follow the old "early to bed, early to rise" way of living.
Sez you
I'm an early bird, myself, but wouldn't make such set-in-stone statements. In three decades of work, I've experienced the entire range of schedules, from first shift to third, observing dozens of coworkers. When I worked third shift and had to give turnover to people coming in at 8am, I had to wave a cup of strong coffee under the nose of some. One guy, I had to practically slap awake. As I was talking to him his head would nod-nod-nod then *thunk*, fall face down to the desk. Out of aggravation; I was tired and wanted to go home; I berated him on getting enough sleep. His reply was always "I went to bed at 10! I just don't sleep well that time of night!"
That people have bio-clocks has been proven; many have to force themselves to work hours that aren't natural to them. I was a third shifter for 10 years - a schedule that definitely went against my normal pattern - and am now in recovery from that abuse. Yet I worked with people who thrived on that schedule and couldn't understand why I was so tired even though I had gotten 9 hours of sleep during the day. That such sleep was only gained by taking a sedative was an indication that those hours weren't right for me. Now that I'm semi-retired I can live by my 'up at 5am, asleep by 9pm' schedule and feel like a human being after having kept vampire hours for so many years. But I know that many of my former coworkers will be rolling out of bed at that time and feeling like crap.
I have had delayed sleep phase syndrome my entire life so I am a devoted night owl.
From personal experience, people who get up early tend to get a lot more accomplished in their life. The world is geared to 9am - 5 pm. If you get up at noon and out of the house by 1 ish, there is no way you can accomplish much before 5 pm. Whereas people who have been up since 6 have the whole day.
That having been said, I am very productive at night. But unless you have a job that is not time-related, there isn't much you can get accomplished because everybody else is home eating dinner, watching television and sleeping.
I have always wished that I could be a morning person.
20yrsinBranson
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