Morning vs Night People: a follow-up

From the Inkygirl cartoon archives:

“I’m a day person who’d rather be a night person, but my body won’t let me.”

Thanks to all those who responded to my “morning vs night person” survey yesterday. It seemed to be a fairly even split between the two. Here are some of the responses:

Debbi Michiko Florence (who, incidentally, has just launched her new Web site!) sounds a lot like me, or at least how I used to be before I married a night person:

“I’m most productive and creative (and awake) in the mornings. I lose steam around 4 or 5 PM. In college (a long, long, LONG time ago), I wasn’t one of those students pulling all-nighters. I was the one (and still am) waking up at 5 or 6 AM with a spring in her step and a smile on her face.”

Emsy sounds a lot like my husband:

“I’m definitely a night person, yet I can get up early in the morning and write. I do solitary tasks better in the morning, as I don’t have to use the power of speech so much. Anything that involves me doing complex physical tasks, having a conversation or comprehending what people are saying to me are best left until after 10am.”

Then again, people seemed to differ in what they considered “morning.” Viewoftheworld considers the morning pretty much over by 9 a.m. (!):

“…Tho’ recently I’ve found out my concept of morning is earlier than most – by 9am I consider the morning shot and we’re getting into the day but many still see that as morning; I’ve been going for four hours and they’ve just gotten started.”

Morgan wishes she were a morning person AND a night person.

Andrea Dale used to be a “late night gal” but that’s all changed:

“I never imagined I’d get up and work at 5 am most mornings, before I eat breakfast. Of course, I MUST have my coffee, or my brain would surely fall out of my head. Not good for my clients, I think . . heh.”

I envy Katharine Swan, who doesn’t seem to need as much sleep as most people:

“The only mornings I see are the ones where I’m still awake from the night before. Seriously – my bedtime ranges from 1am to 5am, and lately it’s been more on the 5am side of things. In the afternoon is when I do more of the administrative kinds of things – job search, emails, reading and writing blogs, etc. Between 11pm and whenever I go to bed is when I get my serious work done (although sometimes I’ll do a little blogging then, too).”

Irina can also be productive with less sleep:

“I’ve always been a morning person, and I’m fortunate to need only about 6 hours sleep so I can still stay up until midnight with my other half. On non-working days I get up about the same time as on working days (6:30) and write until other people appear (the first about 8: my morning-person daughter who reads in bed until she gets hungry).”

Amy says she is “completely and totally a night person”:

“I’ve had delayed sleep phase syndrome since adolescence, and I’ve been a “vampire” during school, during summer, while working, while unemployed, while in Ohio, while in the Northwest, while in England… I appear to be stuck with it, and that’s kind of fine with me.

And it’s not just a question of when I sleep. (I could be a “morning person” and my mornings would just be at noon.) I’m most alert and focused at night. When I really need to get things done and pore through words and words and words, mine or someone else’s (I edit), I just stay up ’till five or six.”

Zach says his night habits began in school:

“I am NOT a morning person, in any sense of the idea. I personally think it relates back to when I started school; they had a split session, and I was in the afternoon session. Since then, I’ve never been able to reliably get moving early. I seem to recall being able to get going at any hour before that (but Kathy poo-poo’s the whole idea that 1st grade could have such an effect on a person’s entire life). As for writing, I have no single best time, other than it appears to be when I should be doing something else (kind of like now, when I’m at work and should be paying attention to my job, but there isn’t as much to do today, so I have spare time to fiddle with this).”

I loved Christa’s response:

“I’m a day person who’d rather be a night person, but my body won’t let me.”

Bill Roper finds that insomnia helps:

“I’m very much a night person and far more likely to write (music, at least) late at night than I am first thing in the morning. Of course, the occasional bit of insomnia can help with that. ”

Erin does her best writing in bed:

“I’m a night person. For me–an actress–this is a good thing, since theater often requires late-night rehearsals and performances. And I usually do my best writing in bed, at night, as well. That can be a bad thing when I get a good idea and stay up half the night writing!”

Markiv1111 says he is either a night person OR afternoon person:

“My downtime is around dinner time or thereabouts. Back when I was writing fiction, evenings were by far my most productive time, though occasionally I’d take time off work and write in the afternoons. My songwriting has consistently been more likely to turn out well if I write in the late evenings or even after 10 or 11 at night, though there have been a couple of long ones where I wrote pretty much around the clock. It seems sometimes as though the part of my brain I use for writing songs is the same one I use for dreaming, and should be used during a time when I would expect to be dreaming. I hope this helps at least a little.”

For Sib, it depends on the season:

“Hmm … it depends. In the winter I am much more of a night person, but in the summer I seem to be a morning person somehow. It’s also about rhythm for me – so when I was writing my thesis, if I did a string of late nights (friends, gaming, …) then I could totally write at night and that rhythm kept me in its clutches for a long time … but alternatively if I do a couple of early mornings I can then work in the mornings and it’ll stick, and I will need to sleep early and stay in the rhythm. Generally I seem to be a night person in the winter and a morning person in the summer.”

Elisabeth calls herself a “freakishly morning person” (even on weekends!), thought sometimes she stays up super-late to write.

Arya is a night person, but says she does most of her writing during class at school (!):

“I’m a night person. I love staying up late into the night, and generally get some great writing or planning done then. However, my best writing, the majority of my writing, has been done during class. I know, I’m a terrible student for it, but I think it has to do with the constant sound around me. My sophomore year in high school I wrote an entire novel pretty much in my history class. I think I managed to get an A in there, too.”

To see the rest of the responses, please go here.