It's a common theory that there are two kind of people in this world: 1) morning people, and 2) night owls. Morning people are those who can get up early with ease and tend to work well during the morning. While night owls prefer to work late into the night and hate getting up early. If you're a night owl and looking to improve your productivity, here's why you might want to consider changing your habits and try becoming a morning person.
It's not how much you invest, but when! I've been reading Shawn Stevenson's new book, Sleep Smarter, and in it Shawn describes a golden window of sleep opportunity or as he calls it, ‘Money Time'. During this window from about 10pm to 2am you get the most beneficial hormone secretion (i.e. melatonin) and recovery. So even though morning people and night owls may well get the same 8 hours of sleep, if you're missing this key window, you're likely to wake up feeling worse. So yes, you may get stuff done between the hours of 10 and 12pm while the morning people are asleep, but by waking up feeling worse you're decreasing your overall productivity for the day.
Our bodies have been designed by nature to go to sleep and recover when the sun goes down. That's why this window exists; it's natures way of saying ‘it's time to go to sleep' and when optimum growth and recovery can begin. Not only that, but our bodies have a natural ‘second wind' at about 10am when melatonin starts getting released. Your body does this to increase your internal metabolic energy, repair, strengthen and rejuvenate. If you're asleep at this time, then all good. But if you're awake the increase in metabolic energy will make it harder getting to sleep later and will affect how well you sleep when you do eventually nod off.
It goes without saying that without quality sleep, you're going to feel cranky and sluggish the next day, which is going to kill your productivity. So if you're a night owl, do yourself a favour and seriously consider going to sleep around 10pm. The increase in energy and productivity levels over time is going to pay dividends.
Disclaimer: all of these awesome facts come from Shawn's book, Sleep Smarter. It's a quick and easy read with 21 tips for improving your sleep quality.