Sleeping late isn't a sign of laziness. Stop the circadian-rhythm shaming

[Jilly_in_VA]

Matthew Cantor

It’s January, the month of new year’s resolutions and other doomed efforts at self-improvement. And what better way to make more of one’s life than rising earlier to seize the day?

At least that’s what the voice in my head says as I hit the snooze alarm for the 10th time at 9.30am. Then it’s time to get up, racked with guilt at my laziness, as if sleeping in were some kind of ethical lapse.

It’s not, of course. People’s sleep/wake cycles are inherently varied, and if you, too, are a late to bed, late to rise person, you’re simply a night owl – or, in clinical terms, you have a delayed sleep phase.

It’s time for this circadian-rhythm-shaming to end. It’s nothing new – centuries ago, Benjamin Franklin made the shockingly biased claim that “early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”. In a 2018 essay in the Cut, Edith Zimmerman wrote that “waking up early gives you a surge of power; you feel superior, smug”. More recently, a Reddit user put it simply: “Night owls suck,” the person wrote. “Your sleep habits are an [obstacle] in the path of every plan that constantly needs to be worked around.”

But night owls, take comfort: as Robin Williams once said to Matt Damon, it’s not your fault. Your daily sleep-wake schedule, called your chronotype, appears to be mostly genetic. Assessments of how common it is to be a night owl vary: experts who spoke to the Guardian had heard estimates around 15%, while a recent study in Finland found 10% of men and 12% of women to be “evening types”. A 2007 study found that the most common chronotype, accounting for 14.6% of people, slept from 12.09am to 8.18am in the absence of “social obligations” – but half the population slept later. In any case, night owls: you are not alone.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jan/29/sleeping-late-isnt-a-sign-of-laziness-stop-the-circadian-rhythm-shaming

THANK YOU! I was born a night owl. You could ask my mother, were she still alive. Nothing she could do would fix that, even when I was a baby and toddler. School was hell until I was allowed to drink coffee, then classes before 10 am were at least possible if not enjoyable.

[LakeArenal]

1. We both fit into it.

11:45pm to 8:45 am.

[tblue37]

2. Also a night owl here.You can see how often I post late at night or in the wee hours of the morning.

[Midnight Writer]

3. I usually sleep from 4 AM to 11 AM.

I break out of that pattern from time to time, but I always drift back into it.

And people do think I am just a lazy SOB, but I stopped caring about what other people think. The gift of retirement is not having to do what other people want you to do, but to just be yourself.

[virgdem]

6. I hear you..

Another "lazy" retired night owl who doesn't give a fig what others think of my sleep pattern.

[MaryMagdaline]

4. I won't hold it against people who can't work late into the night if they don't hold

It against me that I like to start work late morning.

[Deuxcents]

5. I don't have a schedule. One of the nice things about being retired

I go to sleep when I’m tired I get up when I’m ready to. Unless I have an appointment, I come n go as I please. The old lady next door doesn’t like to wake me up so I don’t have to worry about her knocking on my door n there’s no gaggle session w/ coffee in the morning like some do.

[moniss]

7. After

decades of constantly working odd and constantly changing hours I have no such thing as a normal rhythm. When I finally wear myself out during the day I sleep. That might be after 4 hours of work or it might be after 12. If I have to work I work and get the job done no matter how long or short.

But the issue of calling people lazy is a whole other thing. People can have medical issues, depression etc. that can be chronic and nobody has a right to cast that label on them without knowing what's going on. But that issue of casting labels on the average person we see is a part of a larger problem that has grown out of control with our society at large over the last few decades. So many people seem to feel the need to make statements about these kinds of traits of our fellow citizens when in fact it's none of our business. They may not be like us in certain ways or things but is it really our business to examine them and label them on those things? Why do people feel that? This is different than being critical of some official or person over policy action/inaction or business decisions etc. That sort of critique for lack of effort etc. is fine and we all accept that but what on earth would possibly give me the idea that some person I barely know should have their personal level of energy, sleep habits, choice of color for the paint in their living room, use of a particular toothbrush, dislike of a recipe etc. critiqued for approval and conclusive judgement by me? The term busy-body is what we used to use for people who constantly went around running their mouth about other people in this way.

Maybe it's also a media that feels the need to be this way. All I know is that I think our American society could benefit if we taught children to watch their mouth and if more adults and media would just STFU about things that really are none of their damned business.

[friend of a friend]

8. I go to sleep at 8PM and wake up at 7AM.

I have breakfast and I am at the gym at 9:30. 6 days a week I work out alternating upper body 2 1/2 hours of weight training and 30 minutes of cardio and lower body 1 1/2 hours of weight training and 30 minutes of cardio. I would be totally bored otherwise.

[IbogaProject]

9. Yep I'm a night owl

I need close to 9 hours sleep to feel best. I saw a study that those for arise between 930-1030 are the happiest. But that is happy people can sleep because they can and that separates out those that party hard or are depressed and have to sleep in.

[Skittles]

12. um

that sounds like obsession

[friend of a friend]

15. No, I am 79 and just trying to keep myself healthy.

[mike_c]

10. night owl here

My mother was the same way. Since I've retired, and no longer have a work schedule, I go to bed around 3:00 AM and get up about noon-ish most days. I always did the same in summer when I was a kid. Those early morning hours are my favorite, most productive time of day.

[Skittles]

11. I absolutely HATE being up in the morning

have worked night shift for DECADES

[Uncle Joe]

13. I imagine during the really early days it would've enhanced survival of the species,

by making it easier to have night guards when most of the clan or tribe were asleep

Thanks for the thread Jilly in VA

[niyad]

14. Night owl here, but an odd one, as I have never required much sleep. And I have

never paid attention to what is considered "normal", or "average".

I had a person tell me recently, very earnestly, that one HAS to be asleep by 10 pm, bevause that is when REM sleep occurs. I asked her where she heard that. The very greedy quack she sees insisted on that. I calmly pointed out that many people, for example, work swing or grave, many are night owls, every person's circadian rhythms are different, and that the quack's statement made no sense.

Sheeeeesh.

[GenThePerservering]

16. A delayed sleep phase

does NOT automatically mean night owl - it means that the individual has a greater than 24 hour rhythm and will in fact keep advancing forward until they're going to bed at 8:30 in the evening with the little kids, but it just keeps advancing round the clock. It's something that's very difficult to live with because one is neither a night owl nor a lark, and sleep has to be carefully regulated. It's also the bane of hyperactive people - I have both.

My solution was to go into endurance sports - I was stellar at 24-hour events because I had no real rhythm to interrupt, and jet lag isn't a real problem.

However, when I was in the corp world I had to carefully regulate my schedule to 7 hours a night Mon-Thurs, 9 hours Fri and Sat, and 6 hours Sunday night, or I would end up with entire nights every 4 days where I couldn't sleep at all.

[LT Barclay]

17. Sleep habits in the western world are what is screwed up.

It is only designed to serve the purpose of business.
Discover magazine had a detailed article about this. A normal human sleep pattern is about 5 hours, 2 hours awake and another 3 hours of sleep with some afternoon nap. The other important finding is that in a hunter/gatherer society there are only 11 minutes on average where someone isn’t awake.
I’ll probably never be able to retire but I’m getting very frustrated trying to fit my physical needs to corporate expectations.