Are you an early bird or a night owl?

I'm usually awake before 5am (no alarm). Once the sun goes down I find it difficult to stay awake. In winter I often find myself slipping into a 7pm-3am sleep schedule.

I'm a night owl. My parents are early birds. Causes issues.

Whenever there are less people about. My wife is up till the wee hours, so I'm currently up at 6am to get some pseudo alone time.

I don't like change much, so suspect I would continue early morning rising on my own.

1 as up by 6,bed by 10.30. Cos feel when forced to work again,gotta get used to it. Don't see point in clubbing,so why be up in the dark. If i wake early i do,but go back to sleep. To me night time is sleep time!

Thanks for this, really useful article. It describes a lot of what I experience, although "11 minutes longer to fall asleep" I would see as really good! For me it takes me 2-3 hours to fall asleep usually. On bad nights it can be over 4 hours.

What the article says about REM sleep is interesting, because I very rarely dream - or if I do I don't remember it. As a kid I never had dreams. People in my family or friends would talk about dreams they had and I wouldn't know what they were talking about. I've never had a nightmare in my entire life. It's the sort of thing parents would never see as a problem because I always slept through the night, the only problem was waking me up in the mornings because I seem to need more sleep than other people.

So what the article says about sleep being less restorative seems to ring true for me. I wear a fitness tracker which tracks my sleep and it says I get about 8-9% REM, when it should be 23%. I do notice that when I get more REM I feel better and more able to socialise. I only remember having a dream a few times a year, but when I do, they are always just me talking to people in totally mundane situations, so that must be what my brain thinks needs practice.

Maybe I should try melatonin.

Night owl.

I'd say I'm neither - I am not a morning person, but I also do like my sleep. I'd say I'm a daytime person, lol

I think I can relate to this a lot - avoiding complications in the early morning and waiting for my brain to settle at night.

Wish I didn't need as much time in bed to feel rested else I'd definitely burn the candle at both ends like I used to. (Yep, also found biology & society didn't exactly want me to do this!)

Definitely both! And it can be very very tiring...

Stay up late while all the complexities of the day have been finally rationalized

Get up early before any of the day's complications have arisen (and before anyone else is around to complicate things)

Totally nocturnal has been tried many times but society (and biology) says no....

I used to be a night owl also, but that was mainly due to online gaming with people from all time zones.  Could easily be up till 5am most days.  These days I'm more an 8am-midnight give or take an hour since changing my computer to dark mode.  I literally changed over night, couldn't believe it, as it usually took a few days to a week to reset my internal clock.  

Uncertain these days, no extreme of anything though.

inside the article u linked to is another one worth reading about melatonin supplements

www.spectrumnews.org/.../

Just found this although it does seem to refer to children but a little unclear to me.

Not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that I'm #1. I never have enough midnight oil to burn.  

Night owl! I have an offset sleep pattern and generally sleep 4am to midday. I really struggle to concentrate on anything before the world goes quiet in the late evening so I tend to have my me time from when I wake up until after dinner and then work through the night. It's a little unusual but it works well for me.

Unknown said:

The best bit, when I was younger, was being up so late, it would be coming light again. I absolutely LOVED it.

i used to that when a teenager ,,,,, yes it a strange feeling  .... do i go to bed now ?

Very much a night owl when I am off work. I hate getting up early for work. On the times when I have worken up early not for work so it hasn't been a chore, I have always enjoyed being up early as it's not a part of the day i usually see! The best bit, when I was younger, was being up so late, it would be coming light again. I absolutely LOVED it. I have been wondering recently about larks vs night owls...consdiering that being a night owl suits me because if I were to be out and about at a more natural time, (ie not being out during peak hours), it'd be quieter and would suit my temperament more.

I have often wondered about the evolutionary aspect of larks / night owls from the "olden days"...how it relates to when we would go looking for food / a mate (are night owls more promiscuous?). Shared together in a community or wider family, larks and night owls can collectively take different roles at differnet times of the day (instead of being isolated in nuclear families like we mostly are now where we have to cram ways of living in which are not naturally suited to us).

I am a night owl but I do occasionally have the odd time where I have a regular schedule and see daylight

I'm on the more extreme end of night owl.

I used to be a night owl, but these days (now I'm older) I'd say I'm neither. I seem to need a long time in bed, whether fully asleep for the whole time or not.

Really interesting to see some variety in the answers so far! I also thought many would be night owls.