It's Okay To Get Up Late

There is a huge amount of pressure in modern society to get up early in the morning. If you sleep late, it's thought to be a vice and a sign of laziness.

But the reality is that most people fall into one of two camps. They're either Early Birds or Night Owls. Personally, I'm a Night Owl. My natural rhythm is to go to bed at 3 in the morning, and sleep until around 10am. If I have to get up earlier than that, I am useless until after my second cup of coffee. Strong coffee.

If you look at an historical perspective, however, this malarkey about getting up and working a 9-5 day is a relatively modern invention. It is possible that with our always-online computer-age society, we're slowly drifting away from a fixed working day again.

The fixed working day came about as a result of the Industrial Revolution, because factory owners wanted to regiment their workers and have predictable fixed-length shifts.

Before the Industrial Revolution, at least in medieval Europe people didn't get 8 hours solid sleep. Instead, there were two "sleeps", each of about 4 hours length. You'd go to bed at dusk (electric lights hadn't been invented), wake up and potter about by lamplight after about 4 hours, then after an hour or three, go back to bed and wake up at dawn.

I suspect the Spanish practice of the midday siesta has it's roots in a similar pattern, of sleeping through the most awkward part of the day. But pressure from other countries business demands appears to be forcing the Spanish to comply with "modern" habits.

Image created by AI in NightCafe Studio

But to come back to the Early Bird/Night Owl dichotomy, recent studies have been able to take advantage of fitness watches, with the technology advancing enough that they can track sleep. Used with the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies, they have revealed something interesting.

The most successful groups have a spread of sleep patterns, and it is rare for everyone to be asleep at the same time. One study found that in a one month period, there were only 18 minutes where everyone in the extended family was asleep simultaneously.

From an evolutionary perspective, the advantage is obvious. If someone is always awake, there is far less chance of a leopard or other predator sneaking up on the group. Having a spectrum of sleep preferences improves the life expectancy of everyone in the group.

So if your sleep patterns don't fit what modern society expects of you, embrace it !

Find a job which works with your natural routine. Ignore the self-proclaimed experts who say that you have to get up stupidly early and do an hour in the gym before you even think about starting work. Or go to bed with a cocoa at 9pm, if that's what works for you. Work out when you are at your best, and do the most mentally demanding things at that time of day. If you need 9 hours sleep a day, or can get by on five or six, that's fine !

But it is important to be mindful and self aware. While it is normal for your sleep pattern to change slowly over a lifetime, if there are any sudden changes you should get them investigated. In my case, finding I was getting by successfully on less than three hours a night led to some tests that indicated thyroid problems.

Apart from that, though, find your natural routine and make the most of it ! If you're at your most awake at 2am, that sounds like an excellent time to make Hive posts 😁

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