Friday open thread: early birds and night owls
Sep. 26th, 2025 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12I'm a morning person. I have been all my life, to the extent that universalising statements such as 'all teenagers have body clocks that mean they need to sleep in and start school much later in the day,' have been causing me to roll my eyes since back when I was a teenager. In those days, I was getting up at 6 in the morning to do an hour's piano practice, or go to gymnastics classes or piano lessons before school, and that sort of thing! When I was an undergraduate, I used to get up at similarly early hours of the morning, and work a bit on my essays or presentations or Honours thesis before class; on days when I had no lectures or tutorials to attend, I'd stay at home, work on university work and read the books my editor had sent me to review and write the requisite review, and quite frequently finish up everything before lunchtime, after which point I would spend the afternoon lounging on the couch reading novels. Working from home during the pandemic suited me perfectly, because as long as I was around for scheduled meetings and online teaching, my workplace trusted me to manage my own time, so I'd frequently start work around 7am and finish in the early afternoon. I have literally never slept in later than about 8.30am in my entire life — my body doesn't let me.
The drawback to all this is that my energy decreases alarmingly each hour after lunch, and by the time I've got to about 3 or 4pm I'm basically useless. Since I work regular 9-5ish hours, I tend to store up brainless tasks for the last couple of hours of the day, and I've never been able to do much that requires any intellectual effort in the evening. All-nighters — that staple of teenage and university life — are incomprehensible to me, and I'm in awe of people who are able to produce meaningful work in such circumstances.
My prompt today is very much in light of all of the above: are you an early bird or a night owl — or do you switch between both states? Have you always been this way, or did things change at a certain point? How well does this all mesh with your lifestyle?
The drawback to all this is that my energy decreases alarmingly each hour after lunch, and by the time I've got to about 3 or 4pm I'm basically useless. Since I work regular 9-5ish hours, I tend to store up brainless tasks for the last couple of hours of the day, and I've never been able to do much that requires any intellectual effort in the evening. All-nighters — that staple of teenage and university life — are incomprehensible to me, and I'm in awe of people who are able to produce meaningful work in such circumstances.
My prompt today is very much in light of all of the above: are you an early bird or a night owl — or do you switch between both states? Have you always been this way, or did things change at a certain point? How well does this all mesh with your lifestyle?
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