Are you a morning person or a night owl?

I am a night owl who is now reluctantly a "morning person" because I have a 2.5 year old. I miss the night.

I used to be a night owl - I still can be, with the right circumstances, but I'm much more of a morning person these days for actually doing anything productive. I feel most useful and effectual before noon, and even on weekends I often wake up by 5am. My bedtime has been shifting earlier and earlier. It used to be I'd go to bed around midnight or 1am. That was a decade ago. Now it's 930-1030.

Years and years of having to wake up early for work have changed me, it seems. The underlying truth still remains...

I love early mornings and late nights because it's a time of solitude for me.

Night owl without a doubt. When I was younger I used to really struggle with getting up for school or anything in the morning really. Now it’s not as bad and it does feel nice to get up early (once I’m up and actually doing the thing I woke up for). But even if I temporarily get into an early morning routine my body naturally makes it drift until I go to bed later and later. As a teen I’d regularly stay up til 3 or 4, but these days though I rarely go to bed beyond 1am.

I love the feeling at night where your obligations are done for the day and it’s quiet and you can just relax without thinking about what needs to be done that day

For the first 20-something years of my life I was a night owl. Once I started working, I started getting up around 7am and now with kids, I'm usually up at 6-630 and in bed no later than 10pm, so I've definitely shifted over to being a morning person.

Staying-up late was nice, I would usually hit the sack around 3am, but I wasn't doing much either. I'm much more personally productive as an older, morning person than I ever was as a young night owl.

I am most definitely a morning person. I start work at 6:30, which means I'm usually out of the house by 5:15. I've more or less been a morning person since around age 20, when my body decided to begin waking up at 7 am. Before that, I was totally a night owl, routinely staying up til 2 am but sometimes as late as 4 am.

Now that I'm living as a morning person, I much prefer morning person life. It's nice to have the option to watch the sunrise and hear the dawn chorus. I like going places early on the weekend when traffic is light. And now that I'm older, I feel less like I'm missing out on stuff by going to bed early, because a lot of my peers go to bed early, too.

My sleep is a lot more easily interrupted by light occurring at night time, though. This factor is kind of new for me, as up until turning 30 I could basically fall asleep anywhere, whatever the circumstances. Now I need dark and quiet.

Yeeeessss…?

Ongoing issues with sleep have caused me to change my sleep schedule pretty dramatically. I was an early bird at one time when I could still do CPAP therapy but ages being unable to do it has caused terrible sleep, which made me groggy in the morning, which made me shift all my stuff to the evening, which made me stay up late because that was when I finally had energy. This was all with the background of my job basically only happening in the afternoon.

The past few weeks have been marked by pretty bad insomnia. Last night I went to sleep around 3:00 AM and got about 4 hours sleep.

I'm definitely not a morning person but employment kinda forces me to no longer be a night owl haha. Throughout college, I regularly stayed up until 2am and would wake up at 10am, regardless of day. I'd rarely have an early morning. With work, I now wake up at 6:30am/7:30am depending on the day, leaving my home by 8am/9am, return from work around 5:30-6:30pm, and then I'm in bed by 11pm.

I think I definitely do prefer waking up early on the days I want to be productive. There's something about early morning tranquility, sort of like late night tranquility, that makes it easier to be more productive. However, at the same time, I also do prefer staying up late. I love the peace and calm while I'm comfortable in bed watching YouTube or some TV show.

I've definitely changed over the years. When I was in high school and in college, I experimented with some truly odd and awful sleep schedules. For a few weeks, I had a sleep schedule where I'd sleep from 9pm to 3am, wake up, work from 3-5am on school homework, and then sleep again from 5am-8am. It was on odd compromise to sort of experience a morning person schedule without committing to it. For a week when I was in university I had a 5am -2pm sleep schedule. That was truly dreadful haha. I had accidentally fallen into this schedule after a friend mentioned he was on it and I decided to try it for some reason. I had it for a week and pulled an all nighter to then break from that cycle. I certainly would not recommend it (unless you work the evening/night shift).

I have mostly been a night owl, and I think I prefer it overall. This semester is the first time in years where I have had to get up before 730AM because I had an early morning class.

It was a bit of an adjustment but I actually have been enjoying it for the most part. I kinda like getting into bed and getting up early now. I like having a bit of a routine in the morning, and on the days where I teach later I can have a slower morning and sometimes get some work done. One thing that has helped me get into this new sleep schedule is just no longer playing games or looking at my phone past 10PM. I'm hoping I'll maintain that when the semester ends, but I know with how my brain works how easy it can be to stay up late when I don't have any commitments the next day.

Night owl. Sleep from 2 to 10. Work from 11 to 5 and then again from 11:30pm to 1:30am. I usually accomplish more during the night session.

i’ve always been a night owl, no matter when i sleep, if i wake up at 0500 i am wide awake and set for the day. i can easily manage on very little sleep for several days, which isn’t healthy, but very convenient.

I am and always have been a night owl, and my job reflects that. However, I'm starting to get to the point where perhaps "the grass is greener" and I want to move to days. I feel I don't get enough sun (and have the Vitamin D deficiency to back that up), and am pretty unproductive outside of my job on workdays.

For the most part I'm waking up in time for work, then going to sleep shortly after getting home. And despite that, my sleep is still inconsistent.

Absolutely night owl - waking up early is an entire process for me and even at noon I'm rarely feeling at 100% unless I'm strongly caffeinated or just having a really good day. There might be some untreated ADHD at play here but it's all speculation until I get the courage to see a psychiatrist.

Meanwhile at night, I could take over the world. It's hard to make myself go to bed, at the expense of my sleep schedule, and my brain is swirling with ideas and things I wanna do.

I am writing this at 3:30am, way past my bed time, by the way.

Great question! Neither...both?

There are things I do better in the morning and things I do better at night. For example, I do some types of work better in the morning; writing as well is best done on a morning schedule. For a time I used to wake up before 6 to rush into my big commute, barely beat the traffic and be in the office around 7, did most of my work in the morning, barely anything got done after lunch. But I can also program great in the afternoon, as well as all sorts of other things.

So the important thing is when do I sleep better?

Definitely in the morning. So I'm a night owl I guess!

Fun fact: I exercise in the evening.

After having the time to really "mess" with my sleep schedule and experience all sorts of variations of it, I've come to realize the notions I used to have about it were wrong. I don't know what the science is on this supposed dichotomy and if it really exists or if it's something we've all sort of culturally determined about ourselves that isn't actually set in stone.

I always thought of myself as a night owl, and in some ways it's still true, in that, there's something about the quiet of the late night and just a certain way it hits me that feels "right" in a way, but it's more of a preference than some "hardcoded" attribute of my self, and honestly the quietness of super early mornings is similar

I have learned that if I get the proper amount of sleep, I can also be a "morning person", something I would have never thought possible 20 years ago. But, when I look back, most of my morning struggles all had to do with sleep deprivation, health, bad choices, vices, etc. It's also possible my preferences or behaviors that developed had to do with some neuro-related things that I've just never had addressed

Also hated a lot of school and have hated a lot of jobs I've had, so when I've been in those situations I've gone months at a time sleep deprived due to stress and "revenge bedtime procrastination" (where you stay up later because it feels like you're postponing having to experience the next day because you dread doing it all over again)

The only reason I wasn't able to be a "morning person" is because I was responsible for sabotaging any chance of it being possible in addition to the external factors. I have now learned that while I may have my preferences, as long as I approach it right, I can be a night owl, I can also be a morning person, I can also be anywhere in-between, if I've got my habits and sleep health and so on in order

I used to be a night owl, often staying up till 3 am on weekends. Then I got a certain animal in my life that required I get up early and exercise it before the weather got hot, meaning about 10 am. This also required about an hour's drive to get there so I was up around 6:30 to get out and rolling by 8. And even though this only went on for a couple years I never really went back. Now age has me going to bed around 10:30-11 and I wake anywhere between 6 and 7:45.

I think at heart I’m a morning person, but most of my life was spent as a night owl. Life circumstances helped me get away from the “bedtime is at 12 am or later” lifestyle - namely, some screaming cats that absolutely demanded breakfast at around 630 AM every day. That and having a partner who needed to commute for work meant earlier bedtime and honestly, that did feel pretty nice, even though half the time I would feed the cats and go back to bed until 8-9 since I work remotely.

Nowadays I’m back to night owling and I feel unhappy for it, though it’s a bit of a vicious positive loop of negative feelings keeping me up -> go to bed late -> not have the energy to stay awake past cat feeding time. There is something about getting past that first 5 minutes of tired gloominess and feeling energized to get the day going after; I don’t really get that equivalent in the evenings or late night. But it takes a bit of mindfulness to get that routine going and I’m still not back to that yet.