I have always been a night person. Raring to go at 10 p.m., just about when my husband is ready for bed, and even after seven years he is still perplexed at the energy levels I have during the nights. At the same time, I’m not so good in the mornings. Never have been. I take at least half an hour to get up from the bed, I keep hitting snooze the entire time. Then I need half an hour with my coffee. I’m a slow riser.
I’m, what chronobiologists call, a “night owl”.
For years, I tried to be a morning person. Every article, every study, my parents, the society, fed me with sayings, like “the early bird catches the worm”, and I would think to myself, what does the night owl get? So, in my journey of being an entrepreneur, I tried emulating many entrepreneurs’ morning routines in the hopes of finding that key to success.
But did that work? No. Because science has now confirmed that being a morning person or an evening person may be built into our genes. This may explain why those of us who are early-to-bed, early-to-rise types, or late-to-bed, late-to-rise types, find it so hard to change our behavior.
What we can do is embrace our body clock and work with our chronotype to increase productivity. Is it important to figure out if you are a lark, an owl, or a hummingbird?
Very broadly, larks are folks who get up every morning with a spring in their step rise up along with the sun’s first rays. Owls, are most productive at night, burning the midnight oil. The rest are called hummingbirds where some of us are more owlish and some are more larkish and some are in between.
Take the quiz and tell me what statements you identify with the most!
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