I’m certifiably a night-owl and definitely not a morning-person (to the point where I employ licensed caregivers to yell at me in the morning - my psychologist recommended it!) - but I wouldn’t attribute it in any way to being “social” - for some reason I just find it significantly easier to be focused, motivated, and productive after 6pm than any time before.
I used to attribute it to my horrible procrastination and how only in the night before a school or uni homework deadline I’d crank something out out of desperation, but it’s still an ongoing habit with my current day-job (er... night-job?) where deadlines aren’t really a thing (I love my boss) but I still feel most-productive in the evenings.
I’m ASD+ADHD[1] too - and I see similar things with other people I know with similar diagnoses. I believe they’re all related.
[1]: I really dislike the “ADHD” label because I’m not hyperactive in any way - or resemble stereotypical symptoms - if I could rename whatever it is I’ve got I’d call it “Motivation deficit” or similar.
Been diagnosed with ADHD as well since my 20s. One could say I'm introverted, but struggle with hyperactivity in thought processes. My whole life I've had issues with both organizing my environments and thoughts, finishing one project before starting another, time management, list making (end up making lists within lists within lists), and bunch of other things. This sense of self loathing that comes in waves from all this. It definitely has some upsides when it comes to conceptualizing digital art projects and prototypes for business ideas, but those aspects are also the curse of it all... because shit never gets finished and I move onto the next thing after some time.
Idk why I'm writing this. I guess it was just on my mind and felt like joining in the discussion.
> Born in a different time and ADHD wouldn't even be considered a real thing.
Up until the post-WWII era desk jobs were pretty rare. You'd be in a factory or a farm, or something else not-desk-related.
Anecdata: I did a working holiday in Australia and worked on a farm. No issues with ADHD or other focuses -- exercise, sunlight, no caffeine, and not-desk-related work kept me on task. I notice a big difference even now with carbs and sleep patterns, and how they effect my focus.
Genetically we're still cavemen, and are equipped to always be swatting mosquitoes and looking out for bears, not sitting still and thinking through abstract bit-shifting.
I display 100% of the issues you two listed, but for me medication hasn't helped. granted I only tried one medication for a week, but it didn't really do anything.
“Medication” is an ill-defined term because amongst the currently prescribed substances in the US and most of the EU there’s very different mechanisms-of-action. Strattera, for example, is worlds apart from Dexedrine (...or Desoxyn, if you’re an extreme case).
Most drugs need at least two weeks to start having any effect - and the drugs that are shorter-acting (AMP-family mostly) still have a “breaking-in” period before they have the desired effect.
Some people who have ADD get worse on Ritalin. Check out Healing ADD by Daniel Amen. In there you will find recommendations for 7 different types of ADD.
Meditation (and abstaining from alcohol) is the only cure for ADHD that i have found after years of misery and ritalin et al. I wish i could give this message to all the people who suffer from it. One must keep at it every day for half a year to have some success with it, so its hard.
You employ licensed caregivers to yell at you in the morning?
Can you explain more? Are you implying you are paying a nurse to open your door and yell at you "get out of bed sleepyhead?" Or is your insurance paying?
Do they actually drive to your house and do this? Do they do anything else for you?
> You employ licensed caregivers to yell at you in the morning?
Yes. I use sites like Care.com and WellBeyondCare.com to find them.
> Are you implying you are paying a nurse to open your door and yell at you "get out of bed sleepyhead?"
They aren’t nurses. The going rate for a caregiver in the US is only slightly above minimum-wage which is awful - especially considering the “human” value of the work they do for us and our loved-ones.
> Or is your insurance paying?
I pay for it myself. A good chunk of my income is 1099-based and my CPA said I can deduct my caregiving expenses as a business expense because without their help I wouldn’t be working anywhere near as many hours as I do otherwise.
I pay them $30-35/hr - with a 1-hour minimum. They pay for themselves as far as I’m concerned.
> Do they actually drive to your house and do this?
Yes. They come-by around 6-7am and spend about 15-30 minutes with me before they go off to their main day job, so I imagine it’s a nice little (easy!) side-gig for them.
> Do they do anything else for you?
I’ve had a few that stayed for a full hour - they’d make me a proper cooked breakfast while I’m spending 20+ minutes just waking up in the shower.
...it’s like living with my parents again.
My generation likes to joke about “bed gravity” but it’s a real problem :/
This is so great. I've considered it many times. Do these people offer help with administrative tasks as well? Sites like upwork and taskrabbit haven't really delivered. (edit: looks like you're in Redmond. I'm in Seattle, so local tips are welcome)
I spent the last two years mulling over hiring an assistant, and told a friend I had $1000/mo for this in a heartbeat. Got in a fender bender without insurance (I could afford it, just never got the paperwork together), and my friend pointed out that had I gotten the assistant, they would have paid for themselves merely by mitigating the cost of that one incident.
I can totally relate to how this seemingly absurd expense is an absolute no-brainer for people like us.
> Do these people offer help with administrative tasks as well?
Some of them do - you need to ask around. Every one of them has been lovely to me, but some are more capable of administrative and PA work than others - consider that most of them usually do work like being an orderly or care-assistant in a care home, for example).
But give it a go! You can mention in your job posting that you’re wanting to give it a try for a week at first and take it from there, for example.
No special paperwork is needed as far as I know - as it’s not the same as having a domestic-employee like a live-in nanny or au-pair.
Shortly after getting diagnosed ADHD at age 34 (same as you, no hyperactivity just motivation dysfunction) I tried out some ADHD coaches and found that it was a total waste of time and money because they weren’t physically present, telling me to my face the what/when/where of my day. What you’re describing sounds like exactly what I really needed, but I don’t currently have the income to support an expense like that unfortunately. Maybe in 5-10 years...
I do pay far more than the going-rate, and it is 5-6 days in the week. You could give it a try for much less and still pay more than the prevailing wage for caregiver work and have it for 1 or 2 days in the week and see if it works for you.
Not GP but I've found medication is the difference between "adulting" okayish and not adulting at all (bills slip by, staying focused on work is excruciating, house looks like a tornado hit).
I've also found I'm a hyper-metabolizer. Ritalin lasts about 90 minutes before crash, amphetamine about 6h, and straterra just makes me derp. There's a hysteresis effect to the crashes - topping off with more IR isn't the same as preventing a crash.
Current protocol is 15 mg Vyvanse (yes the dexamph prodrug that's supposed to last all day) when I get up around 9, another 15mg around 1300. And actually thinking about switching to 3x. All in an effort to get a really stable blood plasma. Otherwise, I turn into a zombie and can't make dinner.
Still a struggle, and side effects abound, but well worth it.
Yes, it took some experimentation but we (my psychiatrist and I) have found that Vyvanse works quite well. It’s not a perfect solution, but it makes daily life a bit more predictable than when I am left to my own devices. I actually found that microdosing psychedelics was the best medication, but unfortunately I don’t have a steady source for that.
But as I said - it literally pays for itself: say my time is worth $100/hr[1] and paid on an IRS 1099 schedule - so it’s a deductible expense. The extra 3-4 hours it gets me ($300-400) is worth the $35 opportunity cost, because that’s $5,000+ extra monthly income - so minus the $1000 as a pre-tax deductible business expense then that’s $4000 I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Spreadsheets don’t lie!
Even if I was paid on a W-2 basis, I could probably pay for it using pre-tax money from my HSA - though that would sap all of my HSA contributions though.
I imagine a film about kind middle-aged ladies bringing coffee to a young, possibly hungover, technology worker who suffocates on his own pillow at night would not make for good entertainment.
I've wanted to wake up at 5AM for the last... maybe 5 years, so I could do side projects before work; but I've always ended up waking up at the latest time where I can shower, get dressed and take the bus to work so I'm not late to the daily status meeting. Being able to have that 3 more hours every day is probably worth some money.
Although 5 years of that service (let's say minus the time I'd be on vacation) is about $40000...
Have you considered (or perhaps tried) sleeping until you naturally wake up? Also, if you don't mind: do yo need to be awake at such early hours or do you just not want to spend more time sleeping than you currently do?
> Have you considered (or perhaps tried) sleeping until you naturally wake up?
Yes - I'll sleep-in for up to 12 hours, sometimes more - which then means I won't feel tired until ~6am the following morning - or later, and then I end-up with a strange 36-hour body-clock in my head while my body feels bad.
> do yo need to be awake at such early hours or do you just not want to spend more time sleeping than you currently do?
With my current job I don't need to be up at a certain time, but I actually feel sad and it lowers my self-esteem if I sleep through daylight hours - and on the times when I miraculously do wake-up naturally at sunrise I feel a kind of satisfaction with myself.
Even so, I'm still not actually all-that productive in the mornings until the afternoon (which makes it a good time for meetings!), but I'd rather be slightly less productive than feel sad and depressed.
You seem to be more extreme version of me in that regard :) I'll sleep for 9-10 hours and end up on a 25-26 hour rhythm.
I can get myself to 24-hour rhythm with melatonin, which I do, but it doesn't reduce amount of sleep I need so I'm left with a shortened day.
Unfortunately, after getting used to waking up without alarm, I find getting up forcefully really painful. And I doubt it would help productivity much, because I'd be half-zombie if I do it more than 2 days in a row.
I fit the same attributes. ADHD (with hyperactivity in this case) and can't really get anything done before 8pm usually. There isn't a force I've found that will actually wake me up and get me to start my day, and I naturally slip into a 4-6am bedtime to 3pm wake time. Lost my job recently in large part because of this (not the first time). I'm kind of lost atm for the nth time and probably burned out. Could you elaborate or your circumstances or whatever you care to? Any misc advice is always welcome as well.
Edit: Read the rest of your replies about caregivers
Diagnosed with ADHD 10+ years ago in my 20s. Can be very impulsive in behavior and hyperactive when it's bad. Since about 28 or 29, I flipped from being a night owl to being a morning person. I usually wake up between 5 and 6, depending on when I went to bed the night before. Haven't used an alarm in about 8 or 9 years. I just wake up when I'm done sleeping.
I started lifting weights 2-3 times a week and I changed my diet from being carb-based to being protein based. In my 20s, I'd eat a bowl or two of spaghetti, or a pizza for a meal. Now, a meal is generally a protein source, a carb source, and a lot of vegetables (e.g. chicken and rice and a lot of kale, or steak and potatoes and a lot of broccoli). I think the most significant change was the diet, because in periods when I was injured or couldn't lift weights, I still sleep well.
I also started getting a bit more on a schedule. Eating breakfast between 7:30 and 8:30, lunch between 12:00 and 1:30, and dinner around 7:30, etc. has really helped my focus and attention and poise. It feels like the volume is turned down on the ADHD and it's much easier to remain calm and in control throughout the day.
Edit: I think I also have a mindset about this. I refuse to give myself permission to use ADHD as an excuse for not being the person I want to be. I think the thing I'm most scared of is looking back on my life with regret at the things I failed to do because I used some diagnosis as an excuse to not put in the work necessary to be the person I wanted to.
Great to hear you managed to put yourself in a good place. I'm 28 now, diagnosed last year (in so much as I was prescribed medication based on an official evaluation). These are pretty common sentiments from people who have managed to wrangle their lives, and I'd say that I've already adopted them for the most part. A big contributor to why I lost my job was that I didn't have anything else to do, and I couldn't just get up and do the job that wasn't that stimulating and have that be the day. I'm a skateboarder, I go to the gym, I hike, and do some calisthenics, my diet is mostly fruits and proteins, but aside from not eating 1kg of pasta in one sitting, I haven't seen any profound changes. These are all things that everyone should do, but most people also wake up on time for work. So while these are important aspects of your life now, what was the path you adopted that helped you get there?
1. It might help to know you’re not alone (at all). I’m lost and burned out for the (n+1)th time myself.
2. For me at least, recovering from burnout needs to be an active process. Time alone does not seem to heal it, and actually seems to calcify it. I’d try volunteering or some sort of non-work related “work”.
3. Staying up (extremely) late is mostly behavioral for me—e.g. not being satisfied with my day and wishing I had done more, so I cling to the “day” and stay up til the birds chirp. Then I’m stuck in that schedule for a long while. I have no real solution to this and it’s not really advice, it’s just an observation that might resonate.
4. Try not to label yourself in such a way as, “I am ADHD, therefore I cannot do {x, y, z}”. Especially with mental health, it’s more accurate to think of it like, “I have a cluster of symptoms / patterns of behavior that could probably be classified as a type of ADHD”. Some of those patterns you may be able to control directly (like with meds or therapy/strategies/habits), some you may have leverage over indirectly via feedback mechanisms (e.g. relieving underlying sources of anxiety/burnout could help your sleep, which will keep burnout in check).
5. If you’re able, try doing a volunteer trip that forces you to go to bed and get up early. More specifically, if you like the outdoors, do a backcountry trail crew trip. It’s easier to fall asleep when there is social reinforcement, constant physical tiredness, few artificial lights, and plenty of weird sounds in the blackness. I did one week with (trailcrew.org) after an intense burnout period and it had a lot of benefits for me.
6. You could always find a more flexible job (remote, flex schedule, etc). If you work with a healthcare provider, you should be able to get reasonable accommodations—if you’re in the US you have this legal right. Go through HR, not your supervisor. If your company doesn’t have HR (startups?), try working for a megacorp where their incentives and ability to accommodate are probably higher. (PS: “Reasonable” doesn’t mean that it has to make managers feel warm and fuzzy, it just means you can’t insist on, say, teaching schoolchildren between the hours of 8pm-4am, for example. If anyone whines about “fairness”, just say: “I have an alternative work schedule for personal reasons” = “f..k off”). Anyways, don’t set yourself up to get fired because you didn’t arrange for fair accommodations—advocate for yourself.
I am the same. During the quarantine I’ve moved back to going to sleep at 3-4am. However, I have a kids and when the school year is in session I have to get up at 5am to start getting them ready. So that gets me up and going so that I can make it into work at a decent time. So, I guess my misc advice is to find some sort of responsibility that forces you to get up early.
> So, I guess my misc advice is to find some sort of responsibility that forces you to get up early.
What I find is that my judgement is impaired in the morning - and that I don’t act rationally: it’s like I prefer that nice feeling in my head I get when I’m half asleep - if I had responsibilities I’d just disregard them because at that point in time I value being in bed more than anything else.
It’s why alarm clocks, sunshine, Hue light bulbs with a Wakeup routine set, all don’t work for me :(
I think this is a great description of that feeling, and one I share. It's led me to the thought that at the moment, I just won't be able to do something in the morning I'm not intrinsically motivated to do more than just continue sleeping. Extrinsic rewards don't seem to do that, but meeting friends for a sporadic event like coffee early in the morning, or a hiking trip do. I think you've solved this in a novel way with your caregiver.
Those don’t work for me either. But having kids does. I guess being responsible for the welfare of another human is enough for me to overcome my need to sleep.
I'm ADD myself, and a night owl most of the time, and you've got me wondering if I get into a groove in the evenings because I'm less hyperactive and more relaxed. There's a kind of peace to the night time for me. Maybe it's the lack of outside pressures, maybe it's tiredness, maybe it's something else, but I find it weirdly comforting.
That's interestingly enough exactly the reason why I like to get up at 4-5am and work before anyone else gets up. It's calm, no distraction (even less so than late at night) and I'm well rested for the night.
I really don't think I could agree more, and I was actually discussing this with my housemate last night. He's very much a morning person, and literally can't grasp the fact that I stay up late and enjoy it. Let alone the fact that I actually get more stuff done at night and in the evening than during the day, especially after everything's closed and people are asleep. It's just so much easier to focus (well, as easy as it can be considering focus is something I struggle with).
Also, reading your first two paragraphs makes me wonder, again, about whether I might have ADHD, especially without the hyperactive part.
ADHD is terribly misnamed, and doesn't usually manifest as physical hyperactivity in adults. It's an executive function disorder. This means things like time blindness – difficulty conceptualizing and persisting tasks into the future, and difficulty keeping short term goals in mind.
I think about it like packet loss, but for intent. With healthy executive function, one's goals and intents are persistent streams that can be held on to like a train track. (This is based on other people's description of how their mind works – I would consider that ability a superpower). With ADHD, the tracks will just fall out like a trapdoor every so often – sometimes every few seconds. You have to reinitiate the connection, but because the thing that failed is the same thing that remembers what to connect to, I have to reestablish what I want to do in the first place, and it's usually not the thing I was doing before. So I end up shooting around in semi-productive bursts, unable to see things to completion.
The other counterintuitive thing is hyperfocus – people with ADHD periodically experience the inverse. I spent nearly every waking moment in the last 3 days working intently on a software project I'm interested in. Short bouts of intense concentration (especially if you don't feel in control of their application) do not mean you don't have ADHD. They could mean the opposite.
My personal theory is that those with ADHD have compressed dynamic range of the dopamine behavior/planning feedback loop. Neurotypicals have a smoother control loop with more resolution. ADHD brains have less DA throughput, but the brain still tries to "crank up the gain" to compensate. The result is a response curve that's closer to a step function. Every molehill of a task feels like a mountain because the activation energy is high. Conversely, once you get in the groove, doing anything else feels like trash because the current hyperfocus is so rewarding.
Haven't found a ton of research to back this headcannon yet but there's evidence that the D1/D2 ratio is extremely important.
I think the article actually states that early risers are more social and empathetic. It was worded in a very confusing way and I had to read it a few times.
+1 for ASD and being a night owl. I have tried anything reasonable to get on a "normal" schedule, but the only thing that sticks is sleeping from 4am-noon. 12+ years on this schedule, which started immediately after I left corporate.
I don't believe I fit the criteria for ADHD (maybe I do?), but I certainly have challenges with executive function. And those reduce a bit once the world goes to sleep.
I'm a night owl as well. 3am would be about bedtime for me if I had my way. What happened after you were able to follow your natural rhythm? Did you feel better?
I'd say the biggest difference is that I feel like I'm not held back in terms of focus and energy. This isn't to say I have a ton of energy; I don't. (that's a separate thing) But the energy I have isn't held back by messing with my circadian rhythm.
I'd liken it feels going to a more "normal" schedule to...someone who feels fine waking up at 7am every day, shifting to then waking up at 2am every day. It's probably not going to work out too great.
I grew up when ASD and ADHD couldn’t be comorbid diagnoses - and as I wasn’t hyperactive or fidgety, and was considered professorial or studious it was never brought up. Academic problems caused by “not applying oneself” only started around the time I was 15-16, prior to that I just coasted my way through primary and secondary school with high grades.
Growing-up, I think I weirded-out people far more then I annoyed them - hence the primacy of the ASD diagnosis - my last psychologist said he couldn’t tell I was ASD at all until I told him - I think I’m just good at hiding it, but I definitely still have problems.
It also went unnoticed with me for the longest time. I only noticed the issues when I had finished high school, because before then I could do pretty well just doing all my assignments the night before. It didn't occur to me I had an attention issue because it wasn't like I had a hard time paying attention exactly, I just couldn't be bothered to pay attention to the things I should have been paying attention to. If someone had suggested it to me at 18 I would have thought they were an idiot.
I remember talking to the psychiatrist who diagnosed me the first time:
"So did you fidget in class?"
"Not really, I mostly just got the work done quickly so I could read or talk with friends"
"Okay, so you still weren't actually focusing on the lesson"
"Well no, but the lesson was pointless and boring"
"Do you draw patterns on your teeth with your tongue?"
(Me, currently doing that while he was talking to me) "Uh, yes - how could you tell?"
"It is a common thing for patients with ADHD who don't fidget in obvious ways"
It was around there I starting taking the idea a lot more seriously
> I've been told it can often be misdiagnosed as either or both of these two
The ASD and ADHD diagnostic criteria are still too broad and imprecise. I welcome DSM-V's changes from discrete Autism conditions to having an actual spectrum - but I feel the same should be done for ADHD because so many of ADHD's diagnostic criteria, even for the "Inattentive type" (let alone the Hyperactive-type) really don't apply to me.
I know a lot of people in real-life in geeky/nerdy fan subcultures and so many of them exhibit those "odd" behavioral traits of ASD - and I've asked them about it and they tell me they got tested for ASD but got an ADHD diagnosis instead - and I don't like that, because the diagnostic criteria for ADHD in the DSM doesn't really cover non-normative social behaviour at all (that's ASD's territory).
> The ASD and ADHD diagnostic criteria are still too broad and imprecise.
One analogy has stuck with me. Defining mental disorders is like drawing up the constellations. The individual behavioral traits are the stars, and the constellation’s boundaries are as much a function of the culture who defined them as they are a function of how clustered these stars/traits really are.
And like constellations, those clusters are only observable together from a particular vantage-point (the earth), as soon as you go elsewhere (e.g. Alpha Centauri) the stars are in a totally different place and the constellations, as originally defined, simply don't exist.
Yeah, I spent some time growing up at a huge American international school in South East Asia that had a large G&T program in the elementary school with separate classrooms and teachers and I was in there for English classes only in Grade 4 - I still didn't have a good head for mathematics at that point (heck, I didn't until I repeated the last 2 years of Sixth Form some 10 years later).
I was kicked out of that program when I entered Grade 5: they said I wasn't applying myself in the class (naturally). In Grade 4 the class' "objective" was to write an anthology book (we got them printed and bound and everything!) - at the end of the year my anthology was physically the thinnest compared to the ~7-8 others in the same class (this was Southeast Asia - there's a lot of overachievers with Tiger Moms there, I remember one girl's book was almost an inch thick - I didn't know how that was humanely possible for a 10 year-old...).
When I was in primary and secondary school I did have IQ tests and other cognitive ability tests done by the educational psychologist assigned to me and I had results varying from 125 to 135 - but I don't put too much weight on them. There was an ASD test for face-reading ability that had a question I got wrong because I said there was nothing abnormal about a drawing of a face without eyelashes (what...). What's weird is every time I've taken the GRE (for Masters degree course applications) I've scored 97%+ percentile in the language questions... but only 75%+ in the quant sections - but that's because I keep on missing some quant questions because I run out of time. I know I can apply for extra time but ETS' instructions on their website for getting extra-time are contradictory and confusing.
In secondary-school in the UK for our GCSE qualifications the year-group's subject classes were split into ability groups and I was in the highest ability group in all of the subjects (but that really isn't saying much though). My second sixth-form did have a G&T program but no-one told me about it and I didn't think to apply - I imagine those who were in it had referrals from their feeder-schools whereas I was an individual student coming from a different Sixth Form (I was 18, everyone else around me was 16). I don't think I would have coped with the workload anyway - and I don't know what, exactly, if anything, a G&T program would have helped for A-Levels really - I only know one person who did 5 courses at A-Level and he wasn't in the G&T program.
Call me naive, but I was surprised to learn that G&T programs are still a thing in industry: When I got my first job after uni at Microsoft in Redmond I learned about their semi-secretive "HiPo" ("High-potential") employee program (think: SDEs and PMs who get fast-tracked for Director roles or executive positions beyond). To get in to it your skip-level will inform you in a private meeting, and you can't apply or ask to join (some joke that asking to join it instantly disqualifies you for life - or something).
Well, it's not just about school, G&T programs and A-Levels. If you haven't, I sincerely and whole heartedly recommend you look into it.
Understanding the impact it has on adult life too is both fascinating and revealing.
I sadly can't recommend any English book on it, since all of those I read were recommended by French people, but I really insist; please do look into it :-)
Also, if you haven't already and are still open to seeing a psychologist, try finding one with some (preferably significant) experience with gifted adults :-)
Anyway, I apologize if I come of as too insistant or intrusive; it really is a personal and sensitive subject to me.
The procrastination link is an interesting one. I used to put things off until the day they were due, waking up at 5 in the morning to finish papers etc. But it wasn’t until later in life that I started identifying as a ‘morning person’. Procrastination often seems to be our body / mind subconsciously optimizing for future peak performance.
Diagnosed with ADHD but not at all a night owl. After a day of procrastination I'd rather go to bed at 6pm and get up at 2am to work than trying to get anything done in the evening.
I might be an outlier but I feel the time of day when I can focus best and my general ability to perform tasks are independent of each other.
But there might also be some selection bias on HN. I have the feeling that in tech night owls outweigh early birds more than in other areas (maybe except for designers).
I have the same schedule, but I'm ADHD only. My doctor said that the Hyperactive part means more then just always moving. Before my medication my mind would jump around a lot I would have trouble focusing. So while physically I'm not hyper, mentally I was.
I only noticed my mind starting to jump around after I got addicted to Dexedrine... I do wonder if (in my case specifically, not other people) if it's a case of the drugs inducing the symptoms rather than the symptoms justifying the drugs...
It is to be noted that they found "evening types" people had greater grey matter volume in an area of the brain called the precuneus, NOT in the whole brain.
Also it is not clear whether more grey matter makes the individuals "evening types" or the other way around. This study does not discuss that. So jumping to theories about personality traits seems quite far fetched.
Evening types were younger than morning types in their sample of studied people. It is known that there is a decrease in grey matter volume between adulthood and old age, whereas white matter volume was found to increase from age 19-40, and decline after this age (Bartzokis et al.). So it is not surprising that their data showed evening types (younger people) had higher grey matter than morning types (older people).
That would be interesting but I am not sure if this study is solid to even show existence of this arrow. That assumes that there are no confounding variables but just a one directional arrow either way. However several confounding variables likely exist (maybe age, maybe more things we haven't thought about) that could give rise to reduction in gray matter, change in sleeping patterns, so on and so forth.
Since this is not a behavioral study where experimentalists can actually control for confounding factors (like in animal studies), this correlation/causation arrow likely is a spurious observable effect. An ideal experiment would involve studying say lab animals in a controlled setting where "everything else being equal" one group sleeps during day and other during night and then observe their gray matter. Perhaps similar studies already exist but this paper doesn't refer to anything.
If mean age between MT and ET can be significantly different (
p<0.001), is it unimaginable that the these two groups would show significantly different gray matter too?
Takeuchi H, Taki Y, Sekiguchi A, et al. Regional gray matter density is associated with morningness-eveningness: Evidence from voxel-based morphometry. Neuroimage. 2015;117:294-304. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.05.037 from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26003859/
> 432 healthy men and 344 healthy women (age, 20.7±1.8years)
> We demonstrated that morningness (less eveningness) was associated with (a) lower regional gray matter density (rGMD) in the precuneus and adjacent areas, (b) lower rGMD in the left posterior parietal cortex and adjacent areas, and (c) higher rGMD in the bilateral orbitofrontal cortex. Further, our exploratory analyses revealed that (d) higher rGMD in hypothalamic areas around the bilateral suprachiasmatic nuclei were associated with morningness.
I thought it was a study about birds and I was confused why they were trying to apply all these human traits in the article. I then came over here and downvoted two commentors for also confusingly talking about birds.
I much prefer the original title of the study: Diurnal Preference and Grey Matter Volume in a Large Population of Older Adults: Data from the UK Biobank
That's an interesting page. Perhaps off-topic, but I'm never sure where meta can be discussed so I guess a subthread of a subthread might be reasonably out of the way / collapsable.
Some of the changes are clearly good: "Article: Learning how to learn (with 20 study references)" was changed into "Learning how to learn" which is indeed what it's about (the article prefix is useless, the "with 20 references" sounds a bit like WikiHow's "with pictures!"). The "google relentlessly continues to attack on X" title was changed to just "google add experimental flag to do X" to make it more objective, also good.
But those are the minority: another titles was first edited to change "54" into "fifty four" (how's that useful?) and then edited again to omit the number altogether (how is that more helpful to the reader?). The "CDC denies tribes" title was changed to not mention the CDC at all, now the tribes are simply "thwarted" (hiding info, why? AFAICT nobody else was involved in the thwarting). The interview date "May 2020" was removed (helpful how?). "My daughter and I made a site to explore the ~3.5M photos from the ISS" was edited to remove the 3.5M number (just why?)...
Not even the author can edit a title iirc, this is all needless moderation at best or harmful at worst.
How many of those 'useless' edits were changing the title back to whatever the actual page title was? Keep in mind that sometimes site owners change or A/B test page titles.
There's a bit of 'Change it to feel like we're doing something' going on for sure; it's human nature. Go to any HOA, school board, or other minor political meeting to see it in action.
Not all of it is without choice. I used to be a night owl. I woke around 10am, worked from 11am until 1am or sometimes later. The invariant was that I generally slept between 9-10 hours.
I also suffered from seasonal affective disorder and winter time depression with short days in Canada. To help with this I started spending time outside during the early part of the day and generally ate my lunch outside if possible. This helped somewhat. This switch to prioritizing sunlight exposure also made me consider that sleeping while the sun was up and working in the dark was a strange choice.
For more than the last 25 years I've intentionally time shifted to ensure that I don't waste daylight hours sleeping. If I'd follow my natural sleep rhythms I'd almost surely drift later, I'd we waking several hours after sunrise and working in to the evening. Even though I have to have some discipline about using an alarm clock and only allowing myself 1 day a week to wake naturally it is not actually that hard because I do it consistently. I could also easily stay up late one night, but getting up at the same time every day makes staying up harder.
My intentional time shifting isn't that dramatic of a "hacking" of my natural inclination. It has made a difference with seasonal depression and I've found that social activity works better with a time schedule aligned to daylight hours. It is easy to read a study like this and conclude that personal choice plays no part in determining your "fate". You have some flexibility and choice to do what you need to do. An inclination is not an outcome.
Your experience is not the same as many other people's. There are tons of cases of people who perform markedly worse when they have to get up earlier, even if they're getting enough sleep.
This is a choice for some people. It's not for others.
I am the same, I will naturally go to bed late and get up late, but unfortunately the world doesn't revolve around my schedule, so I make a point of trying to have decent sleep hygiene and going to bed early enough to allow me a decent amount of sleep.
so they say that having little grey matter (like early birds) correlates with "empathy, agreeableness and cooperation."
But maybe early birds are only so empathatic and agreeable because their day/night cycle is not always disrupted by how the world is set up? Whereas us grumpy night owls having a case of a bad monday morning is maybe just because we have to stand up early and don't want to?
This corona virus holiday's given me the opportunity to revert to my preferred working time. It's taken tremendous restraints not to harm those who give me eye/head aches from interrupting my sleep.
It's maddening how early risers in my family just can't understand why anyone would stay awake overnight and start their sleep when others are just waking up.
it seems people are nicer in the early morning. getting the milk or newspaper, saying 'good morning' to each other, walking to a nice sunrise and stuff. and it seems that the extra gray matter is like the way people can 'think too much' about things, especially with social stuff. i can see how that also leads to social problems and psychiatric problems, as well as the wanting some peace at night to have a relaxed mind, and that social thinking to be quieter. sounds like social media at night should be avoided.
Possibly. Anecdotal, of course, but I pretty much consistently don't want to communicate with anybody before 3 PM, whether in person or digitally. Now late at night, however, I'm a total social animal.
I find it counterintuitive. I would've thought that a night owl is more compatible with being a social person. Much of our social exchange happens in the evening (you rarely meet friends before work). Getting up at 5am as an early bird doesn't really give you any more time with other people compared to getting up later. So why night owls should be less sociable confuses me.
Not really. Even today, because of work, much of our socialization happens during the day time. For most of human history, the vast majority of people were asleep at night. So it's unlikely our night owl ancestors were terribly social.
Based on my own night-owl life, I'd suggest that might be because people might be more sensitive to social interaction (thus these interactions being more disruptive), and thus need the calm of the night to pursue their hobbies and readings. Edit: that does not resist deeper analysis: one can as well evade social interactions by studying in the very early morning after getting up.
A universal of all primitive/ancient cultures is that they were much more social at night. Hunter-gatherers hunt and gather during the day, and tell stories at night. Early birds get social capital and reproductive access through exploiting hunting opportunities before other people are up.
Night owls get social capital and reproductive access through telling cool stories and being popular. It therefore makes sense that being social and being a night owl are correlated.
Are they less social because they desire less social interaction, or are they less social because when they're awake they're around fewer people. Possibly critical distinction there.
Speaking for myself, I pretty much don't want to communicate with other people before 3 PM, however I'll happily stay up til 6 AM socializing with friends.
Correlation or causation? Do people that get up earlier have to work more? Possibly live in more difficult conditions? Maybe are more addicted to caffeine? Just kinda spitballing here.
"We also know that reduced volume in this area has been associated with empathy, agreeableness and cooperation, so it ties nicely with behavioural data that suggests early chronotypes tend to engage in more pro-social behaviours than evening types."
As a night owl, I hate when generic observations are made about us. I hate it even more when they're backed by scientific research and fit perfectly.
Even though I am also a late chronotype too (I don't like calling it "night owl" if you are not a owl though, because I am not a owl), I don't hate it when stuff is backed by scientific research; I think is better that way, rather than making accusations which have not ben scientifically tested.
> Eveningness, meanwhile, has previously been shown to be associated with an increased risk of psychiatric disorders and personality traits such a neuroticism.
Hey, I resemble that remark. I think it's also interesting that it's _more_ grey matter that causes it, usually I think I hear of many brain issues coming from a lack of matter or deterioration in an area.
Here is an interesting point for discussion that I hope others may chime in on. What is the difference between being a night owl and experiencing jet lag? With enough discipline, one can recover from jet lag in a matter of days. Why then do some people believe themselves condemned to be a night owl or early bird?
For me at least I can train myself to go to bed at 10PM with discipline, but if I miss one day I find myself back into the natural groove of going to bed at 2AM. I do not expend effort to sleep at 2AM, I expend effort to sleep at 10PM. When I am jet lagged my body is confused and does not quite know when 2AM is, but eventually it figures it out and we're back to square one (Google "zeitgeber" for how it figures this out, but subjectively I assure you my body does the adjusting, not me).
This is a great question, and I wish more people were interested in how the biological clock works.
As a night owl, you basically get jet lag every day.
Jet lag means that your internal, biological clock is still adjusted to the sunrise/sundown times of another time zone, because you traveled faster than about 1 hour of timezone difference per day, i.e. per jet - that's why it's called jet lag.
There is no discipline to recovering from jet lag. Depending on the direction and the personal biological clock (they're all slightly different) it takes roughly 1 day to recover 1 hour of jet lag. So the craziest you can get is 12 hours off, which will take a week and a half to recover from.
Imagine your internal clock like a clock that you can only change the time on by about an hour per day. If you bring it to a timezone 3 hours away, you'll need to turn it by 1 hour for 3 days in a row.
"Easy" jet lag (e.g. US coast to coast) is about 3 hours, and so will only take a few days. Plus, you can miss 1-2 hours of sleep for one night and not feel that different - so it's easy to "power through" or not notice the jet lag.
Longer jet lags, like from traveling from the US to Asia, will be much more noticeable, and will often take a week or even longer to recover from. This is where you get people waking up at 2am unable to get back to sleep, and drop like a rock when the afternoon comes around.
It is slightly easier for most people to delay their sleep than to pull it forward, because the typical person's circadian rhythm is a bit longer than 24 hours. So flying from the East Coast to the West Coast results in slightly less jet lag than the other way around for most people, or at least they're able to recover slightly faster.
For night owls, if they would usually wake up at 10am and the sun comes up at 6am where they live, but really they have to wake up at 8am, they basically have a 2 hour jet lag every day. It's as if they're flying across 2 time zones every day.
This night owl will never "recover," because there isn't typically ever a sunrise at 4am at the place, which would trigger that person's circadian rhythm to wake up at 8am. You can try using tricks like light boxes (very powerful lights) to simulate the sunrise, but most commercial models are not particularly effective.
I can move my rhythm about 30 minutes forward using a commercial light box. But it gives me headaches, which I don't get from the sun. There was a post recently here on HN where somebody built his own, very bright light simulator by using LED strips. These were about 5x more powerful than the commercial light boxes, if I remember it right. He was using it to treat seasonal depression in the winter, but it should work for adjusting the circadian rhythm as well.
So these people don't just "believe" themselves to be condemned to being a night owl or early bird. It is relative to the sun, and it is malleable to a degree, but only to a degree.
I have been taking my temperature every day, maybe a few times a day for over a month. I was just curious to see how helpful this is related to COVID-19. Anyway, what I did see, for what it is worth, was my temperature change by a lot over the course of a day, by over a degree. And I can guess what my temperature will be based on how energetic I feel. I am not a morning person and the temperature is higher later in the day, peaking from around 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM. It returns to around the wakeup temperature at maybe 11:00 PM or midnight. I am guess the temperature profile for a morning person would look different.
I used to attribute it to my horrible procrastination and how only in the night before a school or uni homework deadline I’d crank something out out of desperation, but it’s still an ongoing habit with my current day-job (er... night-job?) where deadlines aren’t really a thing (I love my boss) but I still feel most-productive in the evenings.
I’m ASD+ADHD[1] too - and I see similar things with other people I know with similar diagnoses. I believe they’re all related.
[1]: I really dislike the “ADHD” label because I’m not hyperactive in any way - or resemble stereotypical symptoms - if I could rename whatever it is I’ve got I’d call it “Motivation deficit” or similar.