You NEED To Wake Up EARLY

Your WebMD link says this verbatim:

"night owls tend to be more depressed, have a higher dependence on caffeine, and use alcohol more," Sharkey says. But the news isn't all bad. A recent study in Belgium found that night owls are able to stay more focused as the day goes on, compared with early risers.

Morning people, however, also have advantages. "Larks generally sleep better, have more regular sleep patterns, and have more flexible personalities," Sharkey says. They also tend to be happier and feel healthier than night owls, according to a recent study from the University of Toronto."

I'd rather not be depressed, or depend on caffeine, and just because you are more focused throughout the day does not mean you are productive with it.

Because of that, I am hitting the sack right now. I will see how this works for tomorrow

It’s hilarious that RogozRazvan accuses me of confirmation bias when I clearly stated “If you can wake up early in the morning, great! But if you're a night owl, also great!” while RogozRazvan never encouraged or at least accepted the possibility that night owls are equally efficient. If he did, I would not have even posted a reply.


The evidence presented by me was to show that there is evidence to the contrary. In simple words, I wanted to give hope to the night owls.

As I clearly stated in my post, been a night owl has genetics involved in it. Here are further peer-reviewed research papers pointing to the fact:

Why night owls are more intelligent

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...5381191300921X

http://citirx.4arc.com/csta/pdf/30le...al.pdf#page=76

The mammalian circadian timing system: from gene expression to physiology - Springer

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture00965.html



Also, I would like to encourage everyone to reference peer-reviewed articles in future postings because they are considered to be critical to the establishment of a reliable body of knowledge and to prevent this thread from been filled with opinion pieces rather than scientific facts.

Thanks

I would be happy to explain. It’s a little complex, so let’s start with a similar, but unrelated example, to better understand the article.

One of the clever ways to find-out whether a person was born before 1972 (in the US) is to ask that person whether he/she received the smallpox vaccine. Since the smallpox vaccine was stopped in 1972, if a person has received it, the person was definitely born before 1972. Why would you even ask this question? Obviously if that person is refusing to tell you his/her age.

Now let’s look at the article (bearing the above example in mind). The sleep-wake cycle in humans is controlled by a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. The cycle, known scientifically as the circadian rhythm, pre-disposes a person to become an early bird or a night owl.

The Savannah Principle states that human brains are quite capable of dealing with situations and entities that existed in our ancestral homes (caves and the Savannah), while having difficulty dealing with situations and entities that didn’t exist in our ancestral homes. For example, ALL humans can walk/run on two legs (which is quite a feat although we do it without conscious thought), talk, climb trees, find a healthy mate (beauty/handsomeness are just romantic words for health) etc…

But would all humans understand the Special Theory of Light (STL), even if a physicist is to explain it to them? No. Only a handful of humans will be able to comprehend the equations. Why? Because understanding the STL was not required for our survival in the caves. The humans who do understand the STL are considered to be intelligent, because “they can understand something that other humans can’t understand”. Intelligence is a relative factor. An IQ test measures a person’s intelligence relative to that of the general population. So even though been able to talk and understand speech is an IMMENSE neurological achievement, it’s not considered intelligence because most humans can do it. So we can theorize that General Intelligence evolved to solve evolutionary novel problems (like understanding calculus). Humans who have higher degrees of general intelligence have (for lack of better words) “novel brains”.

Now here’s where night owls come-in. In the Savannah, all humans went to sleep early and got-up early. Why? Simply because they didn’t have lights. Fire? Fire was discovered recently; I’m talking way before that discovery. Any human whose brain made him/her stay up at night is likely to get eaten by predators like lions, leopards and snakes (who unlike humans, could see very well at night). Therefore, the number of night-owls in pre-history is negligible.

Fast-forward to modern ages where we have discovered fire and electricity. Today, the night owl population has exploded. Why? Because staying-up at night doesn’t mean ending up as a lion’s breakfast. Since we know the number of night-owls in pre-history was near zero, we can theorize that modern night owls are the product of ‘novel’ mutations. The keyword is ‘novel’.

Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa theorizes that the Savannah Principle people holds stronger in less intelligent humans than the more intelligent ones. In other words, the less intelligent humans have all the instincts necessary to survive in the wild while the more intelligent ones may prefer activities that allow them to achieve more in the modern World, but would get them eaten in the wild. In fact, I remember Bill gates saying that he would have ended-up a lion’s dinner if he was in the wild.

Since the early-to-bed, early-to-rise is a primitive feature of intelligence (Savannah Principle), Dr. Satoshi hypothesizes that people who possess it have lower levels of intelligence (as perceived by modern Intelligence tests). However, they will be better at surviving in the wild than the ‘intelligent ones’.

According to Dr. Satoshi ‘s research, the night owl phenomenon serves as a visible cue, allowing us to distinguish between humans who have the Savannah Principle strongly (the less intelligent ones) and those who don’t express the Savannah Principle strongly (the more intelligent ones). In other words, he’s saying that since it’s hard to deduce the intelligence of a person by analyzing the DNA of that person, we can instead use the “night-owl, early-bird” phenomena to deduce the intelligence. Much like deducing the age of a person by asking whether he/she got the smallpox vaccine.

Sorry for the long post.
Hope that helps.

P.S. I'm a night owl. I always think it's much more peaceful at night, when there's no buzzing of cars and people and what not. Here's a Lenovo commercial on this phenomenon (I don't recommend Lenovo though ):

So you don't socialize? Or eat? Or surf the web? o.0

hahaha nice one!

Yeah I agree it's important to get up early because in my opinion you can get so much more done while everyone is sleeping. It depends on your living situation also. Sometimes, the morning is the ONLY time to really have peace and silence without any type of distractions.

But I think you also have to remember, "it's not about how many hours you sleep, but what you do when you aren't sleeping." I heard that in a video once..

So it's not only important to wake up early but to make those extra hours count...

I have done both.

I had an afternoon shift job many years ago.
Got home around 2am and to bed around
3:30, up at 10am. It was OK but I prefer
early rising.

I like to get up by 3am or earlier because
I enjoy meditating for 2 hours of so when
it is quiet. I also read for 45min or so.

All of this before I start work. I feel like
my day is already successful if I start out
doing this daily routine.

I only need 4-5 hours of sleep.

Getting the correct amount of sleep and making the most of my time is more important to me.

I tend to wake when it's light and the time of that happening will vary from season to season. I also like working in the peace of the night.

The Internet by its term is international and that might involve people having to cope with timezone differences whilst they are collaborating with others from different countries.

"The early bird catches the worm" assumes that the birds are neighbours.