Tag: morning

Why is healthy only associated with morning people?

Someone doing yoga in the open air
Took me a long time to find a good picture, and when I saw it I thought about someone doing yoga in the evening. Although it could be someone doing yoga in the early morning – dammit!

So this bugs me… and I can’t be the only one?

When ever there is advice on being healthy, there is the typical advice of going to bed early and wake up early. Indicating the only way to be healthy is to be a morning person? (if you don’t subscribe to the notion of morning larks and night owls then this might sound like bull to you from the start)

I’m not the picture of health but I think its something which needs a rethink?

It’s clear some people are morning people, some are night people. Heck some are evening & afternoon people. Equating this with health feels like lazy nonsense.

I understand in the age before electricity, indoor lighting and 24hour access to a lot of things (including gyms, travel, etc), it made sense that maybe healthy people fitted the profile of someone who went to bed during darkness and got the most sunshine during the day. However maybe things are different now? Especially now Owls can work the hours which fit their natural circadian rhythm. Surely the effect of trying to fit into a world made for Larks has a negative effect and so the amount of people who are healthy Owls will increase over future generations? Just a thought?

Looking into the universe
Look what you are missing out on…larks!

Maybe if I read the scientific papers, I might be convinced one way or another. Although this or this doesn’t help my case. Although… there is this and this ha!

But I’m more thinking about the perception of larks as the image of health, pictures of people doing yoga during the sunrise, etc. My nonscientific advice follows this one, should an owl try to turn into a lark?.

Whether you’re a lark or an owl, you still likely need seven to eight hours of sleep.
• If you don’t get enough sleep, what time you go to bed or rise won’t matter-you’ll still experience the side-effects, from depression to a lack of concentration to problems with coordination.
• If you break your natural sleep cycle by forcing yourself to get up early, you’ll be tired, less attentive, and not nearly as productive throughout the day.

Something else to keep in mind: Not all “high-powered” people are early risers. Though we do hear stories about tycoons who don’t need more than four hours of sleep at night, these are the exception-not the rule.

Last year, scientists discovered that our skin cells may hold the clues to whether or not we are larks or owls. That’s right: you’re internal clock may be pre-programmed to be an early riser or late-nighter. So don’t mess with Mother Nature. Go to bed when you are tired, and get up when you are well-rested. Period.

This is consistent with everything I have read to date, also begging the question I answered at the start?

Of course I wrote this at night and published it at night.

Long live the night owls!

Working with my night owl self

Over the last 9 months I changed by work hours from 1000-1800 to 1100-1900. I use to get up out of bed at 0800, giving myself 2 hours to wake up, shower, have  breakfast and get to work on the bike. Generally I would be a sleep about 0100 meaning 6.5-7 hours of sleep.

If you feel like you heard this stuff before, you most likely have, here and here and even here.

Now with the change in work time, I’m sleeping by 0200 and awake just after 1000. Meaning 8 hours of sleep.

I can’t tell you how much better I feel!

Some have asked what if I slept 8 hours but shifted your hours towards the morning?

They misunderstand what it means to be a night owl vs a morning lark. As explained in this business insider. There are big differences.

Staying awake well into the night and having to wake up early for work can be problematic for people who identify as night owls. As the AsapSCIENCE team points out, most societal activities occur between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., putting night owls at risk of sleep deprivation.

Its not something you can not just simply switch. Even more importantly is the direct effect of the time.

At the very beginning of a workday, the difference between morning and night people can be obvious; morning people seem to be getting everything done, while night owls are slow to get going. But that difference may not last.

One hour after waking, early birds and night owls perform equally well in reaction time tests, AsapSCIENCE reports. Ten hours after waking, however, night owls perform significantly better than morning people in similar tests.

I mentioned to colleagues I was recording and editing podcasts at midnight without too much of a problem. Heck I’m writing this blog at midnight right now.I scheduling blogs, microblogs, emails and texts (before I switched back to Google Messages) has been a great way to going unnoticed. Not that I really need to but people always worry when there is a email sent at 0100.

Simple as this, 8 hours of sleep starting at 0130, for me is better quality sleep than going to bed earlier at 000 and waking up earlier at 0800. I have 5 years of sleep data which also points in the same direction.

I’m a night owl and theres little at this stage which is going to change. The pandemic has been good to me on this front.

Tell us about your morning habits?

Early morning Manchester

Got a message on Twitter which originally thought was spam from HabitClock.

We are looking for the morning routines to inspire people with our new app HabitClock. You can help us by sharing the morning routine you wish to gain. Thank You!

I thought it was kind of interesting so I submitted my own morning routine.

This is what I wrote…

I am woken by my lightclock. I get up straight away going to the nearest loo before checking my phone and Google Now for what I need to do for the rest of the day. At the same time, I trigger the latest Tech News Today (Twit network) on my XBMC raspberry Pi setup (Xbian) via my HTC phone. The podcast is usually about 45-50mins long.

Then I go to my kitchen boil an egg or two using my egg boiler. While that is boiling I jump in the shower, dry myself, have a shave and brush my teeth the sounds of my FM shower radio tuned into the podcast via a FM transmitter.

The eggs usually finish just after I finish in the bathroom and I can continue listening to the podcast on a FM radio in the kitchen, while I make toast and tea.

By the time the podcast is finished I have eaten, checked twitter, torrents and most important emails. And I’m ready to hit the road street to go to work. I pretty much time where I am in the podcast with how late or early I am. Although my body clock does go out of sync when the daily podcast is running long or short that day.

And that is the honest truth, although most of the time, the podcast does finish way before I’m leaving for work. So I usually start another one which slows me down again. Also forgot to mention looking at tasks and using Any.do, but heck it will do. Also reminds me I need to hook up the last.fm reporting to xbian.

Of course you can submit your own here.