Not a morning person

Some time ago, I read this blog post by a friend, Darby, about writing in the morning as a non-morning person. She has pointed out something that I’ve subconsciously noticed for a long time: most productivity/creativity articles & books are written by morning people, for morning people.

Everywhere I’ve looked (and, apparently, that Darby has looked too), the “trick” to consistent productivity is to get up an hour earlier than you would otherwise and spend that hour in undisturbed creative heaven. I had long suspected that it wouldn’t work for me but couldn’t shake off the thought of — what if I just hadn’t tried hard enough? Darby has done the heroic thing of forcing a morning routine onto herself for an entire summer and proved that a non-morning-person cannot be turned into a morning person through sheer willpower.

As it happens, I am currently in the writing workshop that Darby mentioned in her blog post. Today we talked about writing little and often and how to find small trunks of time throughout the day to write. And, of course, people start to talk about restructuring morning routines or getting up early. I mentioned the problem of not being a morning person. (A few students have since identified themselves as morning people and none has identified as non-morning-person, so I suppose it really is rare to be a non-morning-person in academia?) The professor running the class (also a morning person) said that I should find a way that worked best for me. While it’s true that everyone needs to find what best works for them, it’s also true that you get a LOT more support and guidance if you are a morning person.

If you ever catch me first thing in the morning (by that I mean before 9 am), please keep in mind that I’m not trying to be rude and I’m not having a stroke. I just can’t form coherent sentences before breakfast. Seriously, though, there have been many occasions where I want to tell my partner something (things like “can you turn the fan off” or “do we have enough time to go out for breakfast?”) and cannot get a comprehensible sentence out. And, no, I don’t respond to caffeine and so coffee doesn’t work.

Although I have not done the heroic thing that Darby did, I had done stuff to try to force myself into one of those “if you did this your life would be so much better” (aka “here’s how to be a better morning person”) habits. For starters, I need 11 hours of sleep. I used to be very depressed by this because I feel like my life is effectively shorter than other people’s. Everywhere I looked, the recommended time is 8 hours. People say that if you sleep longer on one day, it’s because you’re sleep deprived on other days, which might be because you have poor sleeping habit and/or your schedule is not regular enough.

So, I resolved to go to bed at 10 pm and setting an alarm for 8 am. I would go straight to bed when it’s time — no in-bed reading or phone use. And I would get up when the alarm got off. Again, no lingering in-bed post-waking-up.

I did this for a couple of weeks during my master’s. I was sleepy by late afternoon in the first week, but I thought it was because my body was adjusting to the new schedule. (To be honest, though, my schedule wasn’t that irregular before then.) I did not feel refreshed in the morning, but that might come eventually, I thought. Then, the Friday of the second week, I came home after a morning seminar, and passed out on my bed.

I took a ~2-hour nap and did feel refreshed afterwards. I realized I wasn’t getting enough sleep, even though I was getting at least 9 hours every day.

Another thing I tried is exercising in the morning. People say it wakes them up and energizes their day. If I engage in any sort of moderately-demanding exercises (including yoga), the remaining time of that day is just wasted. I simply would not have enough concentration left to do anything cognitively demanding. I now schedule my exercises later in the day when I don’t have to do anything serious afterwards.

So, yeah, there you go. I think it’s important to share idiosyncrasies like these. Lifestyle recommendations are always tricky, because it is almost never possible to do studies that are controlled enough to reveal any sort of mechanistic structure underlying these practices. Even if 400 of the 500 people who tried it had significant improvement, it is almost always impossible to say whether the same mechanism doesn’t apply to the 100 people for some reason or whether they just haven’t tried hard enough. If the improvement from those people who do improve is genuine, then the practice is considered “effective”. The people who don’t find it effective are then asked to try harder. It feels like a circularity there somewhere.

Kino
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1 comment

  1. I am also not a morning person, and totally unable to get work done when I wake up an hour early (even though I love coffee and have the coffee ready). Here is what has worked a bit for me. I use “morning” time as after a regular start to the workday, till I eat lunch. If possible, I use that time for non-email writing. Saving email till the afternoon seems to help me spend less time on it and still get a morning chunk of writing. Or afternoon reading, teaching prep, etc.

    That point about productivity books being written by morning people for morning people 👍 🔥

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