The Morning Myth

by Frank J. Rumbauskas, Jr.

  The researchers concluded that once awake, sleep pressure builds up more quickly in early birds, and this hurts their cognition as the day goes on.

  Night owls, on the other hand, did not experience any negative effects of sleep pressure; indeed, they actually improved in performance as the hours accumulated, and don’t forget, they performed just as well as early birds at the 1.5 hour mark.

  Based on that, it doesn’t take a genius (or maybe it does?) to see why night owls are more productive: We simply don’t burn out like early risers do, and instead we can go the distance.

  Sleep researcher David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has said these results have “real-world consequences.” He says that current methods of risk analyses for those in high-risk occupations such as airline pilots, that simply use time of day and number of hours worked to predict peak risk of accidents, must also take into consideration the fact that early risers lose concentration significantly more quickly than night owls.

  So much for the brainwashing—and the myth of “early to bed and early to rise… .”

  Morning Madness

  While society loves to slap labels such as “lazy” and “unproductive” on night owls, the truth is that we’re far more productive than morning people, who have been proven to be unable to keep up with us as the day goes on. Night owls are also better choices for dangerous or high-risk occupations, since we do not lose concentration rapidly like early risers do.

  CHAPTER 10

  Night Owls Are More Creative: Creativity Flourishes After the Early Birds Have Crashed

  Birds. Crashing. Sorry, but that was just too easy! However, it’s true: As you’ve already learned, morning people experience fewer productive hours each day, because they eventually crash while night owls keep going and going like the Energizer Bunny.

  Early risers crash—both literally and figuratively. And the limited amount of useful hours they enjoy each day, versus the much greater amount enjoyed by night owls, also stifles their creativity.

  In other words, if you want any sort of creative project done right, give it to a night owl. Or, wait … what you’ll actually find is that highly creative people are night owls.

  Seriously, who ever heard of a rock star getting up at five o’clock in the morning to work on that new song? Or the artist who set her alarm clock for four o’clock to “get ahead of the world” and work on that painting while everyone else is still sleeping?

  Don’t get me wrong: You will find those types of people working at those hours; however, it’s because they never went to bed in the first place, not because they got up at some crazy early hour to get the job done.

  As I’ve mentioned previously, I can wake up anywhere from 7:00 a.m. (rare) to 8:30 a.m. (my usual time) to as late as 11:00 a.m. (again rare). However, regardless of the fact that I happen to get up at 7:00 a.m. on some rare days—and when I was overdoing my thyroid medication, I was jumping out of bed at 5:45 a.m. bursting with energy—for some reason my brain doesn’t come “online” until the afternoon. That’s why I start writing at either 1 or 2 p.m. and don’t even make the attempt any earlier. Granted, this is a fact- and science-based book, but even then, it takes some level of creativity to put decades of research and hundreds of individual pieces of research and science into one coherent work. Not to mention all that damn medical jargon I had to learn to even understand what the research is saying (thankfully my inner science geek has a fetish for reading medical books so it wasn’t that bad).

  I’ve also mentioned previously that my wife is one of those rare people who have come to understand and accept that I’m a night owl, I was born that way, and will always be that way. I’m also certain this was difficult for her to come to accept having been raised by a military dad who didn’t stand for sleeping in. Then again, having said that, we know that chronotypes are largely genetic, so it wasn’t her upbringing that makes her get up early as much as her parents’ genes. (Although rising early as a matter of genetics rather than of choice makes it even more difficult for early risers to understand us; they simply assume that getting up early is the norm for all people. This is why I give my wife so much credit for coming to accept that part of me.)

  Looking back—way back—I can remember my seventh-grade English teacher talking to me one day and saying, with a slight wink, that people like us who have trouble getting out of bed early are smarter than the rest.

  Well, we’ve already established that, backed by science, so let’s move on to the reasons why night owls are more creative. So much so, in fact, that morning people not only admit the same but also have even mocked and ridiculed creative, night owl types as “freaks” or “weirdos.” Believe me, I’ve heard it myself. People who know that I’m both a night owl and an author nearly always assume that I spend my life writing books late at night. Little do they know that I spend a month or two a year writing and spend the rest of the time serving my consulting clients.

  Every now and then I come across one of those “Windows or die” type of people who can’t stand the fact that all of my computers are Macs and have been since 2003. Inevitably they say something to the effect of, “Macs are only for creative work like graphic design, and for business you need Windows.” Aside from the fact that they all missed the memo that it’s not 1996 anymore, they sometimes throw in, “And since you like to stay up late and get up late you must be one of those creative types.”

  Of course, in this context, “creative type” is used as a pejorative. They’re trying to imply that I must be some type of weirdo who showers once a month and stays up all night, huddled over my laptop writing books. It seems that tons of people hold this misconception, despite the fact that they know I’m a business book author—or in this case, we’ll just say nonfiction—and that the overwhelming majority of my time is spent running my businesses and not writing books.

  Also inevitably, these are generally the same people who say, “I wish I could become an author, but I just can’t write a book.”

  Getting published is one thing, but in my opinion, anyone who can write a blog post can write a book. Take Mark Cuban, for instance. His book, despite being one of the better I’ve ever read, is actually just a collection of his blog posts over the years. He frankly admits that he doesn’t have the patience to sit down and write a book so that’s what he did.

  However, the morning types don’t seem to think they can, despite the fact that the business book market is loaded with early riser authors.

  Is it because—gasp—they aren’t creative? (Secret: No creativity is required to write nonfiction as it’s all based in fact.)

  Science Doesn’t Know Why, but Confirms We’re More Creative

  Italian researchers from the Department of Psychology at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan say that while science isn’t fully understanding of why night owls are more creative, they suggest it could be due to adapting to living outside the norm.

  “Being in a situation which diverges from conventional habit, nocturnal types often experience this situation, may encourage the development of a nonconventional spirit and of the ability to find alternative and original solutions,” said Professor Marina Giampietro, lead author of the study.

  (Side note: The study authors, in describing the study, which consisted of 120 people who are either morning people or night people, also said that both types are very rare and that most people fall somewhere in between. Apparently they haven’t been forced to live and work in the United States and experience our machismo nonsense about who gets up earliest if they believe that!)

  Once each subject was categorized as morning or night types, they underwent three different and distinct tests to measure creative thinking. The first test asked the subjects to draw a picture based upon an image shown to them by the researchers. The second test consisted of adding lines to create complete objects on a piece of paper containing only individual curved and straight lines. Finally, they were asked to do the
same but instead were given 30 pairs of vertical lines to work with.

  The result? Night types excelled on every single individual test, and aced all three. Of all the morning types, on the other hand, not a single one scored more than 50 on any single solitary one of the tests!

  The study also found that creativity did not decline with age, and in fact it persists as people continue to age.

  At Washington State University, professor Hans Van Dongen, at their Sleep and Performance Research Center, further explored the differences between morning and night types.

  He believes the fact that night types are more creative has a lot to do with the fact that night owls are far more extroverted than either evening or “intermediate” types, or in plain English, the people who don’t technically fall into either category.

  He goes on to say there may be a link between the personality trait of being an extrovert and heightened creativity. My own life as a night owl confirms this. Even if the intellectual, cognitive centers of my brain are fully capable of logical thinking and the execution of tasks in the morning alongside the best of the night owls, my creative side doesn’t light up until later on. And the later it gets, the more it lights up. That’s a big reason why I have trouble falling asleep any earlier than midnight, and even when I go to bed then, it’s because I’m either very tired, or am forcing myself to do so.

  In a 2009 paper from the London School of Economics, it was proposed that daylight-based schedules are a societal convention, and it takes a high IQ to think of new ways of structuring one’s days. According to the report, we’re the beneficiaries of evolution, and come from a long line of ancestors who used the daylight hours to get work and other stuff done, and that it takes an intelligent and creative individual to buck that trend and try a daily routine that goes against our evolutionarily programming. In other words, night owls are innovators.

  The Sales Training Flunkout Who Became a Top Sales Rep

  I can remember it vividly even though it’s been over 20 years: The day I got the call to inform me that I’d been offered the position I had been waiting for, for over two years—my dream sales job.

  While I was excited to spend those three weeks learning all I needed to learn to excel at that job—and dupe my employer into sending me home for one weekend on the excuse that I had to check on my dog, when in reality it was for an AC/DC concert—I was disappointed to find that there wasn’t very much sales training at all, but rather product training.

  One thing I will say, however, is that this was the three weeks of training that led me to the best sales manager I ever had, the one who helped me to become a top sales pro, and without that experience I wouldn’t be a published author and wouldn’t be writing this book today.

  While I loved that sales manager for his disbelief in the magic of cold calling, what I loved about the sales trainer during those three weeks was that he said the same thing. He explained that while cold calling would’ve worked 20 years earlier (meaning the 1970s, based on when that training occurred), nowadays people will just shut you down and you have to find new, and better, and more creative ways to prospect.

  After that training ended, my new boss explained why cold calling is a waste of time, paired me up with the top sales rep in the office, and the rest is history. First I released my online e-course in 2003 and quit my last job ever only six weeks later, and then Never Cold Call Again: Achieve Sales Greatness Without Cold Calling (Wiley, 2006) spent a week at #1 on Amazon and immediately hit the New York Times best-seller list.

  But the question is, with so many other reps in that same office, not to mention all the reps who came and went thanks to the sales profession’s notoriously high turnover, why was it me who succeeded and “cracked the code” on how to get leads and sales without cold calling?

  Looking back, I was the only night owl in the office that I’m aware of. That top sales rep was a morning person, although it was for mostly practical reasons: He arrived at 7:00 a.m. so he could be home by 4:00 p.m. and get plenty of time in with his kids. (That “success” author who said anything more than 45 minutes a day with your kids is a waste of productive work time should read this!)

  If I was the only night owl in the office, and I was the only person who, despite everyone receiving the same guidance from our sales manager, managed to find entirely new ways to get leads and sales without cold calling, perhaps it’s because I was the only night owl?

  And because night owls are more creative?

  In any case, that’s the reason why I don’t even bother attempting to work on a book such as this until at least an hour past noon. Otherwise I wind up reading my work in the afternoon—when my brain is “on”—and inevitably delete any and all work I’d written in the morning.

  Similarly, when my wife goes to bed at 10 or 11 at night, I can readily grab my laptop, open it up, and the words start flying without the routine of sitting down at my office desk and getting my mind in the writing zone.

  But I digress. Let’s talk about that top sales rep—the one who missed sales training.

  He was an extrovert for sure. Despite the fact that the hotel where our training was being held was somewhat remote, about two hours north of San Francisco, he still called a cab most nights and found some party somewhere.

  Every day he’d show up at starting time, 8:00 a.m.—I don’t know how—and would be in his characteristic dark sunglasses, which served two purposes. First, it was to hide his bloodshot, hangover eyes from the rest of the class. Second, it was so he could sleep through class!

  That’s right, we weren’t being graded or anything like that, and while the sales trainer was excellent, he was still just someone who just wanted to go home at five o’clock, so he didn’t care.

  We’d get silly assignments where we would be handed a spec sheet that was completed by a hypothetical customer, stating what features they required, how many voicemail boxes, how many phones and lines, and so on. Then we had to program all of this despite the fact that we were up there to learn how to sell the stuff, not how to program it—after all that’s why the company employed technicians! And to make matters worse, if any of us got caught programming so much as a single speed dial onto a customer’s phone, the technicians would file a union grievance, even though we were trying to save our customer the needless $200 visit fee plus the one-hour, $150 minimum on top of it. And to think they’re filing union grievances all because the sales reps—you know, those of us who generate the money to pay their salaries—wanted to avoid having customers fuming at us over paying $350 to get a speed dial programmed and never buying from us again.

  (If you’re not in sales and wondering what the big deal is, it’s because it’s a basic tenet of sales knowledge that it’s far easier to sell more stuff to an existing customer than it is to find a new one—but not if the company is screwing them with service fees.)

  Having said all that, if some jerk negotiated the price down to nothing, I’d tell him to call the 800 number then quickly hang up. My full-price customers, on the other hand, got the red carpet service from me. This is precisely why I’m not one of those people who try to haggle price on everything.

  Another example of corporate stupidity aside, this was something our party-animal friend simply couldn’t do. Nor did he bother. Everyone knew he missed all of yesterday’s class and had no clue how to do any of this, so he didn’t. He continued to cruise through the three weeks, staying out all hours while we were confined to karaoke nights in the bar lounge. (Seriously, it was that bad.)

  We all left assuming he’d crash and burn when it came time to perform.

  But he didn’t.

  In fact, he excelled. He kicked everyone’s butt, at least until I got my own creative juices going and finally caught up with him and then passed him.

  Before explaining why he excelled, it can probably be summed up in five words: He is a night owl.

  He excelled in large part because he was a big extrovert. Which makes sense when you
consider that it really does fit the party-animal persona. You can have someone who is up at the crack of dawn, studies ferociously during training, does all the right things, and still falls flat—because the person is introverted, and as I’ve told people probably hundreds of times, social skill is what matters in the real world. That’s how I succeeded despite being a college dropout and yet managed to hold jobs requiring college degrees.

  The other reason those crack-of-dawn people don’t excel despite doing everything right—or in this case, showing up at all!—is because of a relative lack of creativity.

  Despite being teamed up with the office’s top sales rep to learn the ropes, I still had to undergo a few years’ worth of trial-and-error effort to figure out how to really find really hot leads without cold calling—at all. Which, if you think about it, makes sense, considering the fact that leads generated by cold calls have the absolute lowest percentage of converting to actual sales. (If you’re wondering, referrals have the highest closing rate of all leads at anywhere from 70 to 90%. That’s why if you’re new in sales, or in a new industry, you should be hitting two to three networking events every single weekday.)

  And believe me, creative doesn’t even begin to describe the lengths to which I went in order to find new and novel ways to get leads without cold calling. Not to mention that I was also living the party-animal lifestyle. I mean, when I started that job I was 23 years old, single, and living in Las Vegas. Who under those circumstances wouldn’t go out every night? Or at least five nights a week, anyway. More reason why I designed a sales system that didn’t require me to get up early! Instead of having to do the prospecting work myself, I created systems to do it for me.

  I can’t remember how many nights I’d get home at six, hammer a ton of coffee, get ready and dressed, and be at work by nine or so. That’s why I was so hellbent on finding a way around it. And I did.