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The Case for Going to Bed at 2:30AM

3 points by hmppark7 ↗ HN
With all the talk about waking up at 4AM or 5AM like super human productive freaks, it's refreshing to find an article about someone who sleep at 2:30AM. As a hardcore night-owl, this article makes more sense.

http://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/2/27/14726418/delayed-sleep-late-bedtime

2 comments

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joeandrews315
"Night owls aren’t the lazy, distracted weirdos the early crowd makes us out to be. When the rest of the world winds down, we work, create, and tinker on our own schedules. Each evening, I watch the typical bedtimes pass by and wait for that jolt of energy and inspiration that comes well past twilight." I think there is a misconception of night-owls being lazy. Why are only early risers praised http://getliner.com/NRKBZ?hacker=true
BillBohan
Just some personal observations here.

I have read that most software breakthroughs occur around 1:00 AM and have found this to be true in my personal experience.

In the military I worked in a shop which was manned 24/7. Normally the shifts were 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM, 4:00 PM - midnight, and midnight - 8:00 AM. One month they changed to two shifts, 8:00 AM - 8:00 PM and 8:00 PM - 8:00 AM. The next month they moved everybody to the other shift. I worked each of the 3 normal shifts for several months each. For me the most difficult was midnight - 8:00 AM because of the difficulty sleeping in the daytime in a noisy barracks. I found that for me the best way to cope with this was to work a shift, stay up all day, and work another shift, after which I would sleep for 12 hours.

In civilian life I worked normal 8-5 jobs and it has always been difficult for me to get to sleep and wake up early. One time I worked a normal shift, worked through the night with no interruptions, and worked the next shift. I was able to accomplish more in that time than I normally would have in two weeks.

Now that I am retired I go to sleep when I am tired and get up when I wake. There is no discernible pattern to it.

It is much easier to stay up later than it is to get to sleep earlier. The easiest way to adjust to a new sleep pattern is to stay up later, delaying sleep until it has moved to the desired time. You can move it by two to four hours a night this way. Trying to sleep earlier you can only alter your sleep cycle by about half an hour a night.