{"id":4442,"date":"2016-06-12T10:13:23","date_gmt":"2016-06-12T04:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=4442"},"modified":"2016-06-12T10:13:23","modified_gmt":"2016-06-12T04:43:23","slug":"early-bird-night-owls-body-clock-sleeping-pattern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=4442","title":{"rendered":"The Early Bird Might Catch the Worm, But What About Us Night Owls?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

S<\/span><\/p><\/div>

taying up beyond 12 o\u2019clock is a battle I fight daily. What makes this so hard is that the 12 o\u2019clock I\u2019m referring to isn\u2019t at <\/span>midnight<\/span><\/a>, but at noon. While the sun shines brightly down on Mumbai\u2019s bustling, lively streets, I\u2019m yawning and fending off sleep as if the humidity was a cosy blanket. \u201cEarly to bed, early to rise, makes one happy, healthy, and wise\u201d sounds like good advice\u2026 unless you\u2019re like me. Being an early bird makes me cranky, lazy, and stupider than usual. And in a world that still believes \u201cthe early bird gets the worm\u201d, does the inability to wake up at the crack of dawn mean I\u2019m less likely to succeed?<\/span>\n\nWhen I was younger, my mother used to blame my mid-day grogginess on bad habits like playing too many video games at night or staying up reading a book after bedtime, but now I know that was just character assassination by a different name. The world looks less kindly on those who prefer late nights to early mornings. An article in<\/span> The Harvard Gazette<\/span><\/i><\/a> quotes a study which \u201csuggests that being genetically programmed to rise early may lead to greater well-being and a lower risk of schizophrenia and depression.\u201d The title of the article proclaims, \u201cEarly Birds May be Happier than Night Owls\u201d, and when even Harvard is writing my kind off, there\u2019s cause for concern.<\/span>\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ll do permanent damage to your body\u2019s rhythm,\u201d my <\/span>mother<\/span><\/a> would say, when she realised the thing that went bump in the night was her own son. Well, it\u2019s too late now, because I\u2019m not, and never will be, an early bird. What I am is a night owl, and morning people are my natural enemies.<\/span>\n\nBeing a night owl was never a conscious decision \u2013 I don\u2019t derive any secret joy from knowing I\u2019m awake while the world around me slumbers peacefully. However, as long as I can remember, whether as a student preparing for final <\/span>exams<\/span><\/a> or as a professional racing to meet a deadline, my productivity has always spiked at a time when most people are snuggling up to their pillows. This, then, is the curse of the night owl. The way modern society is structured, night owls must fight their internal body clock and sleepwalk groggily through the daylight hours, barely scraping through before sacrificing their sleep once again as their creative juices start flowing after dark and they can do real work.<\/span>\n\n

With improved understanding in how the biology of night owls works as opposed to early birds, there may come a day when working from home in my boxers at 3 am becomes a reality.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nToday, rising early and working through the day, before winding down as night approaches is a culturally accepted way of functioning. But this leaves night owls like me behind, as we\u2019re just not as chipper as the people who have already reached peak efficiency even before breakfast. And this could be a modern problem. During the 1960s, a scientific theory known as the \u201c<\/span>Sentinel Hypothesis<\/span><\/a>\u201d was postulated, claiming that humans evolved to have varying sleep schedules, so that several members of early human tribes could be awake and watchful of threats while the majority slept. Night owls might be genetic descendants of these primitive sentinels, except without campfires or sabre-tooth tigers to watch out for, our skills are now used for all-nighter <\/span>Netflix<\/span><\/a> binges or bouts of feverish creativity.<\/span>\n\nIf, and this is a huge if, I was able to transfer my night-time energy levels to my office\u2019s working hours, I like to think Mark Zuckerberg and <\/span>Elon Musk<\/span><\/a> would be my personal assistants by this point. Now, that might be a reach, but it\u2019s true that being at odds with what society considers a normal schedule does leave me feeling like I\u2019m not operating at full potential. It\u2019s no fun needing a cup of coffee just to check your email inbox when you get in, nor is the feeling of drifting off into a fugue state by lunchtime something I would recommend to others. And the worst part is how just as you start to feel ready to interact with your fellow humans, they\u2019re ready to call it a day. <\/span>\n\nBut despite the way normal society seems stacked against night owls, there\u2019s still some hope for us. In 2017, the<\/span> Nobel Prize for Medicine<\/span><\/a> went to the three scientists who discovered the \u201cmolecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm\u201d, or, in plain English, mapped the functioning of our body clocks. With improved understanding in how the biology of night owls works as opposed to early birds, there may come a day when working from home in my <\/span>boxers<\/span><\/a> at 3 am becomes a reality (I hope). It\u2019s a light at the end of the tunnel for night owls, and the source of that light isn\u2019t the sun, but a little reading lamp that\u2019s turned on when it shouldn\u2019t be. <\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being a night owl was never a conscious decision \u2013 I don\u2019t derive any secret joy from knowing I\u2019m awake while the world around me slumbers peacefully. It\u2019s no fun needing a cup of coffee just to check your email inbox in the morning, nor is the feeling of drifting off into a fugue state by lunchtime something I would recommend to others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":4443,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[7896,5689,7897,7898,7899,7900,7901,5908,7390,7902,4727,6834,7903,7904,4774,7905,4729,7906],"class_list":["post-4442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-body-clock","tag-coworkers","tag-creative-juices","tag-early-birds","tag-energy-levels","tag-harvard-university","tag-humans","tag-morning","tag-night","tag-night-owls","tag-office","tag-productivity","tag-research","tag-sleep-cycle","tag-society","tag-waking","tag-workplace","tag-worms"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Early Bird Might Catch the Worm, But What About Us Night Owls?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Being a night owl was never a conscious decision \u2013 I don\u2019t derive any secret joy from knowing I\u2019m awake while the world around me slumbers peacefully. 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