on tricycles and mornings

[baratron]

I've known for years - nay, decades - that I am Not A Morning Person. I only realised how serious the issue was when I attempted to go back to full-time work. I am so very Not A Morning Person that it is impossible for me to maintain a "normal" sleep-wake cycle. This is a statement which no one else has the right to argue with, by the way. Believe

Comments

[brooksmoses]

*grin* Whereas I've learned that, if something substantial absolutely needs to be done before 9:00 (or sometimes even 10:00), getting up early never works -- especially if I'm running out of time and staying up late anyway, the only way to actually get it done is to stay up as late as it takes.

The problem is that there's not really an option, when I'm too sleepy to get up and do useful work at 7:45am, to say, "Sod it, I'll stay up late last night and finish it."

[brooksmoses]

Oh, I certainly have no problems trusting you on that -- all I have to do to imagine it is a simple mental reflection at midnight, and figure that your mornings are like my evenings and vice versa!

Definitely good that there are some of both of us.

[baratron]

I'm sure it's entirely normal to be brain-fogged and bleary for a while in the morning.

No, it's not. It may be normal for you and for some other people but it isn't normal for me. I own up to being one of those freaky mutants who leap out of bed with the most energy they'll ever have in the day.

I wonder if there's a correlation between being an A- or B-type person and when you have most energy? I mean, I'm pretty sure that most people who naturally wake up early in the day also wake up with a huge amount of energy; whereas most people who naturally wake up late also wake up groggy. There must be people who naturally prefer to sleep later and then wake up with a huge amount of energy, but I don't know any of them :P

My suspicion is that most A-type people wake early with lots of energy, most B-type people wake late and are groggy & half-dead for hours, and most "normal" people (that 70% who prefer to wake up at an intermediate time) are sleepy for a while (say, half an hour to an hour) but are then fully awake.

I was in bed and

[baratron]

Unfortunately, the recognition that functional adults have different sleep-wake patterns is in its infancy. Previously, it was recognised that hormonal disruption during puberty affected around 70% of teenagers at any given time, but it was thought that only "broken" adults maintained this into adulthood. I have an official diagnosis of Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, which is useful for prodding people who say I'm just lazy. But ideally, it would be recognised as a difference - and indeed, an advantage, rather than a disability. Like so many other things in the social model of disability, it's only a disability because of modern society's expectations.

tirnoney has a theory that the different "types" developed when we were primitive hunter-gatherers. The majority of people would go to sleep when it got dark and wake again with the light. However, the prevalence of wild animals and other threats meant that there always needed to be someone to keep watch at night. We B-type people are the ones who would have stayed up until 3am to guard their