Considering the surge of productivity I tend to get at midnight, I thought this was the perfect topic to write on regarding this article.
I believe the world is very morning people-friendly, but not evening people-friendly. It is unfortunate.
Now, this is not to diss morning people at all. Before the invention of the clock, we would wake up at dawn and go to sleep at dusk. With the invention of the clock and the concept of speedrunning life, our society began to run on efficiency, which was convenient, considering most of the population to be most efficient in the morning.
This is a problem for us night owls. I find myself to be most productive from 5 pm to whatever hour my insomnia allows me to go to bed. I mean, I am currently writing this article at 1 AM. You can probably guess I am not a morning person. I take forever to wake up, and even longer consider myself tolerant of people for the day. My roommate knows not to interact with me for the first half-hour after my alarm goes off.
By the time I am ready to be productive — answering emails, socializing, doing homework — everyone else is tired; office hours are closed, and everyone else is already done with their homework. When I was asked how I can have energy at 10pm, my answer was, “Either due to me being a night owl, or me being nerfed with insomnia and learning to use it to my advantage.”
Doctors say college students need seven to nine hours of sleep, but they did not say where those seven to nine hours of sleep had to occur.
One of the main downsides of a night-owl friendly world is the late hours, obviously. However, sleeping in late would kind of balance that out, or so one would think. And if more people were night owls, I do not think it would make a difference anyway.
I am blessed to be in a career field where it does not really matter if I wake up at 5 am or 5 pm. I doubt I would survive a career where you must wake up at the crack of dawn. That sounds just like torture.
Another debate I could stir up is: Why, or how are morning people so ready in the morning? Over the summer, I roomed with a morning person who would get up at 7 AM and would play some sort of preppy music, unfortunately with no headphones. Mind you, work did not start until 9 AM.
It took fifteen minutes to get there.
I am more curious about how morning people do it. I imagine it feels nice, like coming out of an “everything” shower. I have never been able to be “ready” to get up for anything – not even Christmas as a child. I remember my younger sister always woke me up. I would ask her to tell the family to wait for me before opening presents.
If I could wake up and choose readiness, I totally would. I apologize on behalf of grumpy morning people, but you must understand that we need a bit to gather ourselves to be ready for the day. As someone who is already bottom—tier level at socializing, I feel that chattery morning people do not give me enough time to process what they are even saying – which makes me come across as grumpy.
To those who say, “It is a mindset,” I suppose you have a point. I could just wake up and mask. However, I have not unlocked that life skill yet.
