Ask HN: Night owl, health, and career options
This is my two cents, I&#x27;ve asked something similar a while ago (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8946451" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8946451</a>), there&#x27;s some really good answers there. Unfortunately, I&#x27;ve tried them all but there was always something kicking me back in the &quot;old night owl habits&quot;.<p>To give you an idea, my typical (great) day in the holidays was something like bed around 1am, wake up at 9am&#x2F;10am.
Same as you this was difficult to accomodate when you have to wake up at 6.30am-7am the latest to go to the office.<p>What drastically changed everything was the discovery that I could wake up at 4am &quot;like a breeze&quot;. I&#x27;ve started reading more about sleep cycle (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sleep_cycle" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sleep_cycle</a>) and circadian rythmn (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Circadian_clock" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Circadian_clock</a>) and by that I mean trying to take that on account and apply it.<p>After much experimenting, I&#x27;ve found out I have 3 &quot;wake up slots&quot; where I can wake up with no efforts and feeling refreshed. During the last months they changed a bit but finally stabilized to : between 4.30am-5am, at 6am sharp and between 8-9am. Same with falling asleep, I can fall asleep in 20min or less if I&#x27;m in bed around 10pm or around 11pm. Anything after that and I have trouble to fall asleep - the owl is still around! :)<p>List of benefits is quite long but here&#x27;s the best 3 for me:<p>- I&#x27;m in an &quot;auto-piloted equilibrium&quot; ; if I go to bed a 10pm I automatically wake up at 6am. If I go to bed at 11pm, I will still wake up at 6am but the evening after I will feel the urge to go to bed at 9.30pm already. I&#x27;m just not fighting it and oblige.<p>- Since my sleeping pattern is balanced, I don&#x27;t feel worried or gloomy about sleep anymore (the &quot;pff i will wake up late feeling like shit again&quot; thoughts). I know that it will welcome me (which in turn makes it better). Mood improved a LOT.<p>- I don&#x27;t need no stinky alarm clock in the morning. I set one up just in case but I haven&#x27;t heard it for a long time.<p>Aside of that what helped also was to use a light box in the morning and having something to do right away ; I usually look forward watching a lecture on youtube while having my morning coffee.<p>Interestingly, it&#x27;s been a month that I changed jobs for a full remote position. I thought the owl would come back (with a vengeance) but actually it is not the case at all! I&#x27;ve now completely ditched my alarm clock and I&#x27;m always up between 6-6.10am and slowly using the previous commute time for other things (sport mostly).<p>As said above, the owl is still there, I just give it free reigns over the weekend and not the week days =)