The Morning Myth

CHAPTER 9 Night Owls Are More Productive: Want to Get More Done? Stay Up Later!

Hearing the words “early to rise” or being admonished by some “wiser” member of society—usually someone older who merely claims to also be wiser by default—to get up earlier and rise with the sun, or whatever the nonsense-du-jour happens to be, I cringe.

There’s nothing more off-putting to a night owl than to have it in the back of our minds that we have to get up very early the next day. This is why we don’t plan things that way. I know I personally have trouble sleeping if I have to get up early, which entirely defeats the purpose of “get up early to be more productive.”

In addition, I experience an uncomfortable level of anxiety when I must get up earlier than my normal time. That’s because, when you get up at your natural waking time, your adrenal glands pump out cortisol, the stress hormone, to wake you up. But when you get up before that happens, the cortisol spike occurs when you’re already awake, hence the anxiety. And now that medical science has found that high cortisol levels—and not cholesterol—cause clogged arteries, it’s downright harmful to our health, which will be covered in a later chapter.

No, we night owls don’t plan to get up earlier to get more done. We simply stay up later.

After all, there’s no good reason to fight nature, and science has shown us that our internal clocks are not a choice; they’re given to us at birth and they’re ours to use, or misuse, as we please. And ...