Recent studieshave found that night owls get more done, and while part of me wants to question that, the other part is still in bed. Nailing some admin. Because hey, not being a morning person doesn’t automatically mean lazy – it just means we’ve been doing loads of great stuff in the evening rather than skipping off to bed at 10pm like a swot. A Greenwich Mean Time swot. Why don’t you just go to the Meridien Line and have a picnic at 6am to celebrate your ability to rise with dawn or something.
Just kidding, I don’t hate early risers, I’m just fascinated by them because I’m constantly made to feel like a sloth just because I prefer to do most of my freelance work between 1am and 4am. I actually figured out how to kickstart my mornings recently, and it’s made the necessary early hours for work a lot easie. But when left to my own devices I’m still in no way going to get up early and go to bed early. Not going to happen. And I refuse to be shamed because of this – I’m still doing the work, I’m just doing it when you’re fast asleep and dreaming about robins and morning yoga and whatever early risers dream about.
Here’s why being a non-morning person rules.
**When you get up early, everyone’s a big prick **
Apart from the fact that everyone is either smugly singing like Mary fucking Poppins or sadly stumbling around like something that’s been reanimated, the University of Madrid foundthat night owls might actually have a higher IQ than those who wake up early. And yes, I’m going to believe this blindly because it makes me happy. Unlike early risers; if you’ve ever spent time with one, you’ll notice they’re really chirpy until about 3pm before totally losing their shit. Most will be seen attached to the coffee machine, crying, until 6pm.
**Morning people aren’t cool **
What’s cool about getting up at sunrise and doing some work? Nothing. What’s cool about needing an extra strong latte in the morning because you had a late one? Everything, because it creates an air of mystery, which in turn, equals ‘cool’. Nobody needs to know you were checking emails and putting them into drafts in the evening, or Googling tropical diseases to freak yourself out. For all they know you were drinking wine and snogging people. And that’s exactly the sort of mystique you want to create, OK?
**It’s easier for you to change your routine, than an early riser to change theirs **
Hahahahahahahahahaha, according to research, night owls can adapt to a 9-5 way easier than early risers can cope with staying up past their bedtime. So we basically run the world, but preferably the world won’t properly get going till around 11am.
Everything that can be done in the morning, can be done in the evening
You can even eat breakfast in the evening. You can exercise in the evening, catch up on admin (it makes you look really on the ball if you’re emailing up to 9pm and then it starts to be a bit sad. So utilise the drafts folder, post-watershed, and send them all the next morning), go bird-watching, anything. Plus, everyone’s asleep so you don’t get disturbed half as much as when you work in the morning and your phone buzzes every five minutes.
When I was freelance, and I needed to concentrate on a piece, I’d always do it late at night so I wasn’t tempted to go hang with a friend, talk to a friend, or go to a field to make friendship bracelets with a friend.
You’re way more relaxed if you’re an evening person
It’s the sort of relaxed state that only comes when you know you can have a glass of wine at any point. Even if you don’t, just the mere thought that you could is enough to relax even the most uptight person. Don’t tell me an early morning cup of tea is the same. Just don’t. Stop it.
**You consume less calories in the day **
I’m not a calorie counter, and you shouldn’t be either, but if I’m trying to fit in a dress I bought in 2009 when I smoked and wasn’t on birth control, then I just have an extra light breakast. It’s really easy to do when you fucking hate mornings, because all you want in the world is a coffee and by the time you’re physically able to operate a toaster, it’s midday and totally time for lunch.
This does depend on the mood, though, because sometimes when I wake up early and I’m really sad about it, I have three breakfasts to make me feel better. Swings and roundabouts.
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Follow Stevie on Twitter: @5tevieM
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.