The Morning Myth

by Frank J. Rumbauskas, Jr.

  Take today, for instance. I got up 10 minutes before my wife and kids left for the day. As much as I hate getting up at 7:30 a.m., which snarky morning people will laugh at and consider to be very late, I do try to see my kids every day. They’re disappointed when I don’t, although I have a much clearer head on days that I sleep until my usual time. If I do get up even earlier, I’ll go back to bed for another hour or two before getting on with my day.

  If researchers were to single me out and ask me to participate in a study comparing the performance and success of night owls with morning larks, I’d jump at the chance—if I knew it were going to be a fair study.

  By fair study I mean one that measures participants at all times of day—morning, midday, and night.

  However, few do that. Hence the popular myth and the endless articles on websites, blogs, and in business and personal productivity publications touting studies showing that early risers perform better at work and school while night owls fall far behind in performance.

  Well, of course early risers do better at work and at school; that’s because these are activities that, save for nighttime jobs like bartender or police officer, mostly start at eight o’clock in the morning, or nine o’clock if you’re lucky, at least here in the United States, although in my experience work times are trending earlier, not later. American employers just can’t seem to get past Ben Franklin’s lie.

  As a night owl I had to drag myself through school, began to see my grades decline in the latter half of high school, then flunked out of college because I couldn’t get myself to classes on time. It’s pretty tough to pass exams when you missed all the lectures and before everyone had a smartphone to record them! This is why I believe Mark Cuban is right when he says that people now realize that a high-priced four-year university degree is a scam and does not show a positive return on investment anymore. Online universities are going to gradually replace traditional universities as people continue to ask why they’re spending 40 grand a year to go to schools that have massive endowments. Or, I should say, go into debt at a rate of 40 grand a year, then find that their degree is worthless because everyone else has one, too.

  I ended up chatting with someone at Starbucks one day; he was working on his Harvard MBA, remotely. Now that’s the way to do it!

  The other big standout about online universities is that there’s no dragging yourself out of bed to wake up, make some coffee, shower, get dressed and ready for the day, all before having to arrive for an 8:00 a.m. class. Online, you can do it at your own pace. In fact our summer nanny told me that she learned Spanish online from Dallas County Community College.

  But I digress. Those studies that you’ll find all over the Internet with a quick Google search state that morning larks do better at work and school because work and school start early.

  Night owls are effectively down for the count when the study measures performance in the morning. That doesn’t sound very scientific to me. As a science nerd, anytime a doctor prescribes me anything, I read up on it before taking it, and I especially love reading about the pharmacology of drugs. In fact I’ve read books on the topic just for the sheer hell of it.

  And when I read those studies, I can see that they’re done as double-blind, placebo-controlled studies. That means both the real drug and the fake one, a sugar pill, are manufactured to look identical, and what’s more, even the doctors administering the drugs don’t know which is which or who is getting what. Hence the term “double-blind.”

  When it comes to studies on morning larks versus night owls, the studies aren’t very scientific at all. Oh wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here. I’m going to cite studies that are in fact fair and accurate, but you’ll find that if you do your own research, most are heavily biased toward morning people.

  In an article in the July–August 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review, biologist Christoph Randler defends his research showing that morning people perform better at university.

  How did he conduct his “research”? He asked 367 university students what time of day they perform best. (How does someone get into Harvard Business Review with that garbage? I suppose whoever chose to publish that has a morning person superiority complex.)

  That is not scientific whatsoever, and I’ll explain why in a moment. But let’s get back to Mr. Randler’s nonsense for now.

  Mr. Randler said, “My earlier research showed that they tend to get better grades in school, which get them into better colleges, which then lead to better job opportunities.”

  There’s proof of what I’ve been saying all along: Society discriminates against night owls, and Randler just explained why.

  If someone is born a morning lark—and your circadian rhythm is something you are born with and that cannot be changed—they automatically get to sail down Easy Street, do well in school, and get into better colleges and get better jobs.

  This isn’t because there’s anything essentially smarter or better about them. It’s simply because society hands them a “get out of jail free” card when it comes to school and work performance—and even the prospect of getting a good job.

  Randler also says morning people are more proactive; however, when challenged by the evidently anonymous interviewer, Randler admits that it’s a simplification to say that morning people are more proactive. Well of course it is, Mr. Randler. Your study is not a study at all. He also claims that people can shift their sleep schedule, which is incorrect. It’s possible to change it for a time, but it’ll catch up with you rather quickly and you’ll be back to bed late and getting up late.

  Pushed further on his claims that morning people are more proactive than night owls, he admits that being proactive has a large genetic component to it. In other words, that’s also something we’re born with and cannot easily change.

  When asked if companies will one day have to accommodate night-owl employees, something I’m advocating for along with B-Society, he says, “Morning people are very capable of understanding the value of chronotype diversity. Remember, we’re conscientious.” (Emphasis mine.)

  Oh yes, that’s right. You get up at 5:00 a.m. and get right to work, and somehow that makes you more conscientious. Silly me, a worthless, lazy night owl, for not recognizing your superiority over us. Must I bow down to you, master?

  When I mentioned earlier that his research method was simply asking a few hundred students what time of day they perform best, that was not scientific at all. I happen to know Dr. John Lott, author of Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don’t (Regnery Publishing, 2007). As a career economist and statistical analyst, he uses very complex methods to come to his conclusions. These include mathematical models that may be the Tobit model, the probit model, generalized linear model, and many more.

  In any case, these models use very complex mathematics to arrive at conclusions and also use large sample sizes. In other words, walking around a campus with a clipboard asking students when they perform best, with a very small sample size, and without running the answers through proper statistical analysis, is garbage. And for all we know he did it in the morning when the morning larks were out and about. His study—more like survey—does not note any times of day, making it even less reliable and believable.

  In a Google search of the phrase “morning people do better at work,” one of the first articles that came up is based on—wait for it—Randler’s unscientific study. An article on Lifehack.com by David K. William cites Randler’s “research” to claim that morning people are more proactive, despite the fact that Randler, when pushed, admitted that proactivity is largely biological.

  The same article also claims that morning people are less prone to bad habits and drug abuse; however, there’s no additional research to determine if night owls are more inclined toward drug abuse and alcoholism because of the difficulty and discrimination we experience living in a morning-centric society. At least that’s what I believe based on my own experience—the bad old days
of drinking a whole bottle of wine to get to sleep early, then chugging endless coffee in the morning to try and fight through the fog.

  It also claims that morning people procrastinate less, because night owls push things off to the evening to get done. Well, that’s when our brains light up and get to work. It’s not procrastination. It’s merely a different schedule, but, like all people guilty of discrimination, a fear of something different spurs reactions like this.

  And finally, he says that morning people tend to be happier. However, he does admit that this may be largely due to the fact that night owls continually experience a disconnect between their natural sleep cycles and society’s morning expectations. Yes, he’s right—I was unhappy having to get up early every day. This is why I was hell-bent on never having a job again, and I achieved that goal back in 2003.

  The article ends with, “For morning people, everything is as it should be. Morning people are happy with the typical day’s schedule.” That sounds to me like a frank admission that society puts night owls at a distinct disadvantage and that we suffer in many ways as a result.

  More Morning Garbage from Leading Business Publications

  Fast Company, which ironically named me one of the top 30 most influential people online even though I’m a night owl, published an article by Stephanie Vozza about why getting up early and becoming a morning person will make you better at your job.

  Let’s tear this one apart, point by point:

  “You Have More Energy.” Maybe natural early risers do, but I’m useless for the entire day if I have to get up early, and that’s the case with most night owls.

  “You Have Fewer Decisions to Make.” She says that working during the early morning hours offers the bonus that it’s before regular business hours. Well here’s a heads-up: The same is true at night. Morning person or night owl, we all get the same 24 hours every day.

  “You Can Stop Fighting Distractions.” I don’t have any distractions at night when all the morning larks are asleep because they can’t go the distance.

  “You Can Take Advantage of the Calm.” Night is far calmer than morning. If I have to get up early I hear cars, trucks, dogs barking, and all sorts of distractions. Late at night there’s none of that. It’s pure quietness and productivity bliss. I’m sorry, Ms. Vozza, but you’re spewing nonsense and fueling society’s bias against night owls.

  It’s astonishing to me that such prestigious publications would publish “facts” that are entirely based on one person’s bias and are not backed whatsoever by research.

  The Problem with Studies Favoring Morning Larks

  What this all boils down to is an endless parade of research studies that conclude that morning people perform better at work and school.

  As you now know, that’s because these studies don’t account for the fact that morning people do better at work and school because those things start in the morning! Night owls, on the other hand, are left to fend for themselves.

  Morning Madness

  You’ll find hundreds of articles and studies concluding that morning people are more successful in their careers and in their education; however, they do not use proper statistical analysis models to account for the fact that work and school are, by default, favorable to early risers. Night owls are completely ignored and our sleep tendencies are not accounted for.

  When you come across these flawed studies, always remember that they’re measuring the performance of individuals in the morning. If they were to do studies measuring performance in the evening and night hours, early risers would be left in the dust.

  CHAPTER 5

  Fighting Your Internal Clock Is Harmful to Your Health: Getting Up Too Early Can Actually Give You Diabetes

  Yes, you read that correctly: Early rising, for those to whom it is unnatural, can literally give you diabetes. Could this be why we have an explosive epidemic of diabetes in America right now? All because of arrogant people who say things like, “Remember, we’re conscientious”—but not when it comes to night owls’ health, evidently. Oh, and did I mention it can cause heart disease, too?

  In any case, medical researchers have uncovered a problem that night owls face. They call it social jetlag.

  It’s the result of, you guessed it, night owls being forced to conform to a morning-centric society. And it’s downright harmful for your health. This is why it’s so important to educate employers not only on the loss of productivity caused by forcing night owls to work in the mornings, but also the liability they may face down the road for the resultant health problems.

  A study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (I told you I love reading medical studies), entitled “Social Jetlag, Chronotype, and Cardiometabolic Risk,” shows exactly how much we night owls put our health at risk when we’re forced to get up early for work or school.

  To quote the study, “Individuals differ in circadian phase preference, known as chronotype, but may be constrained by modern work obligations to specific sleep schedules. Individuals experience social jetlag (SJL) due to a habitual discrepancy between their endogenous circadian rhythm and actual sleep times imposed by social obligations.”

  In plain English, the sleep times imposed by society cause social jetlag in those of us with a night owl chronotype. Or to put it more simply, we’re chronically fatigued thanks to societal norms and the belief in the morning myth.

  I’ll skip the medical lingo and give you the brief version of the study’s conclusion:

  Our findings suggest that a misalignment of sleep timing is associated with metabolic risk factors that predispose to diabetes and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

  I hope you read that correctly, because it didn’t say we may be at risk for diabetes and heart disease. It says that being forced to conform to a morning schedule predisposes us to diabetes and heart disease.

  How’s that for hijinks?

  This is all the result of the myth of “early to bed and early to rise …” along with the demands of early riser employers who force their employees to work on their schedule, even though they’re putting their employees’ health at risk, or at least the health of the night owls, anyway. Those who fall somewhere in between early risers and night owls may also be exposed to some degree of risk.

  Here are some more tidbits from that study, before moving on to others:

  Short sleep and poor subjective sleep quality elevate the risk for insulin resistance, the metabolic syndrome, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and incident cardiovascular disease …

  Physiological processes such as glucose metabolism, core body temperature, and blood pressure (BP) have an intrinsic circadian rhythm that, when disrupted, may contribute to risk for cardiovascular disease. Relative to normal daytime workers, shift workers, who often experience chronic circadian misalignment, are more likely to develop the metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and coronary heart disease, with relative risk increasing as a function of years spent in shift work. In an experimental study, healthy adults asked to eat and sleep 12 hours out of phase from their regular schedules exhibited vascular and endocrine abnormalities, such as increased arterial pressure, a reversed daily cortisol rhythm, and postprandial glucose levels in the range of a prediabetic state. And in the general population, people are influenced by environmental cues such as work schedules that may enforce less extreme yet habitual misalignment between their intrinsic circadian clock and actual sleep-wake times, again with a potential impact on cardiometabolic risk. (Emphasis mine.)

  In plain English, if your natural sleep cycle is being constantly disrupted by your work demands, then you’d better have great health insurance and a big fat HSA/FSA account for medical bills down the road. If this isn’t motivation to start a business and get out of a job that makes you show up early, I don’t know what is.

  Continuing on, and even more relevant to us, “A second form of circadian disruption, termed ‘social jetlag’ (SJL), describes the chronic jetlag-like phenomenon occasione
d by modern work schedules and reflects misalignment between an individual’s endogenous circadian clock and actual sleep times. More specifically, individuals ‘travel back and forth’ between ‘time zones’ on workdays (socially imposed schedules) and free (i.e., nonwork) days. SJL has been linked to measures of adiposity, heart rate, and higher cortisol levels in healthy individuals and to higher glycated hemoglobin levels in patients with type 2 diabetes.”

  (Translations: “Adiposity” is a fancy medical term for obesity, “cortisol” is the body’s stress hormone, which the adrenal glands pump out in response to stressful situations such as waking up too early, “hemoglobin” is the part of red blood cells that deliver iron where needed in the body, and “glycated hemoglobin” is a form of hemoglobin that is used to measure average blood glucose concentration, or, in other words, to what degree, if any, of a diabetic or prediabetic state you may be in.)

  It’s important to note that this is a scientific study, not merely wandering around a campus with a clipboard asking random people questions. It used multiple regression analyses, or in other words, that complicated math that Dr. Lott uses and is way over my head! But that’s why the study has credibility and proves that it’s accurate.

  In addition, the study accounted for health behaviors such as smoking, alcohol intake and how much, diet, and so on; in other words, all room for error was removed from the study.

  Rotating Shift Work Exacerbates Health Risks

  In a study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, entitled “Total and Cause-Specific Mortality of U.S. Nurses Working Rotating Night Shifts,” the news gets even worse.