Reading time: About 1 minute
This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world for material to help other writers. Today I discuss a blog post about wake up time…
I have been a morning lark for the last 20 years. This means I wake up between 5:30 and 6 am without an alarm. (And I go to bed between 10:30 and 11 pm.)
But I wasn’t born that way. In fact, until I hit my 40s, I was a dedicated night owl. I typically went to bed at 2 am and woke up (highly reluctantly with the aid of a loud alarm) around 8 am.
Note that I didn’t try to change my wake up time. It just happened. (Doctors tell me the shift was probably the result of hormonal changes.)
And following this dramatic change, I noticed how much our society favours morning larks. Work usually starts at 9 am if not earlier. School starts at 8:30 am, if not earlier. And we look kindly on expressions like: “The early bird catches the worm.”
But I was interested to learn in a recent post by productivity expert Chris Bailey, that research shows no benefit to early risers. Here’s how he puts it:
“Research highlighted by circadian neuroscientist Russell Foster (including in his great TED Talk) has found that the time we wake up has no bearing on our socioeconomic status. In other words, those of us who wake up at 5 a.m. are just as successful in life as those of us who wake up at noon. (There’s no need to feel guilty if you wake up a bit later.)
“This makes sense when you think about it. Imagine two identical days, one of which begins at 7 am and the other that begins at 10 am. What matters far more than when we wake up is what we do with our time after we get up. How deliberately we act matters far more than what time we happen to get up at.
“You can rest easy if you like to rise late, early, or somewhere in between. When it comes to your productivity level and how well you do, how deliberate your days are matters far more than what time you get up at.”
So, if you’re not a morning lark, don’t worry about it!
