How to Survive as a Night Owl in a 9-to-5 World

Would you rather watch a sunrise, or count the midnight stars? Do you have your creative energy and optimistic zeal when you pop out of bed in the morning, or when everyone else has gone to bed for the night? Or how about this—if you had to wake up at 6:00am, would you look and feel more like Mary Poppins or Oscar the Grouch? 

Your answers will depend on your chronotype, a biologically hardwired tendency for your body and brain to function best at certain times of day. Most of you are somewhere in the middle—you don’t love waking up at 5:00 a.m. for a run, but you’re not the type to be buzzing with energy after midnight either. But many of us have more obviously advanced or delayed chronotypes. That is, we could be extreme morning larks or night owls.

Why Do Night Owls Have a Bad Reputation?

I’m personally a night owl. Back in college, I never signed up for classes starting before 10:00 a.m. and I could comfortably stay up past 2:00 a.m. partying—I mean, studying—without my energy flagging. And there was no problem with that in college! I had no 7:00 a.m. rounds or 8:00 a.m. meetings, so my body and brain could happily live on the schedule they wanted to. But the further I get into my professional career, the more my biology has to cater to the big bad world, which is designed by and for morning people.

I blame Benjamin Franklin. When he said, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,” he didn’t follow that up with the caveat that this is only true for morning people!

I blame Benjamin Franklin. When he said, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,” he didn’t follow that up with the caveat that this is only true for morning people! If he were speaking to the rest of us, he should have said, “Staying up, sleeping in, makes you healthy and happy in your own skin.” But unfortunately, his admiration for morningness has contributed to the stereotype that late risers are just lazy or immature.

Night Owl Coping Mechanisms and Health

And it's not only a problem of bad reputation. People with delayed chronotypes (i.e., night owls) are at greater risk for psychiatric disorders, addiction, hypertension, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and even infertility. But this is not because owls are inherently unhealthy. It’s because we are forced to live a life of misalignment—our biology does not match up with our external demands, and this causes us to have less healthy habits for maintaining our biological clocks. For example, if you’re a delayed chronotype person, I bet you sleep in on weekends. You try to go to...

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