I was looking so much for the start of the school holidays of my kids. I have vacation only on two of their six weeks, nevertheless the remaining four ones give me a huge personal benefit. I well remember the days from their Easter holidays!

Of course the holidays bring their own challenges. They have to be taken care of, and are expressing their boredom in various creative manners. My key point is that I have the chance for sufficient sleep.

Chronotypes and sleep demands

People have their own circadian rhythm which is typically divided into morning persons (aka early bird), late risers (aka night owls) and, well, those in between. The preferences and so the differences in preferable times are, in my experience, often a factor acknowledged in finding meeting times, but also often a factor of conflict or stress.

It is said that a person needs between seven and nine hours of sleep. In Germany and 2022, a person of a couple with children was sleeping on average eight hours and fifteen minutes per day, the Federal Office of Statistics announced recently. This is a good number, yet I was surprised to read it. I am not getting close to it. And I identify as night owl.

During school days the alarm clock rings at 6.20am at night. When I want to make eight hours of sleep, I have to enter it at 10.20pm. I know that a many people actually go sleep by 10pm. This is not natural to me. I try to get ready to it on a work day by 10.30pm. Unless I am totally exhausted from prior days, I do not make it. I am not tried enough, and often there are still things to do at home.

Just get used to it? The oldest child has completed six full years in school by now. I tried, and failed, and tried again, and failed again, and the iteration continues. However, by now, the only perspective is to have the kids ready enough to manage themselves in the morning.

UK study on sleep affecting cognition

The matters of chronotypes and affects on every day life are topics of studies. One of the latest was done in the United Kingdom, with the focus of how different states have effect on cognitive results (and as usual, more research is necessary, of course).

For one, they state that »studies have shown that disruption in circadian rhythms, such as those from shift work or jet lag, negatively impacted cognitive performance,«.

For the other, "normal" sleeper yielded 6 to 10% higher cognitive results than morning person types, and night owls even more, 7.5 to 13.5%. Interestingly, »Sleeplessness/insomnia, however, showed no significant association in either cohort«. Well, when I am weary and tired, the error rate is definitely higher.

»Our findings highlight the complex interplay between sleep duration, chronotypes and various health and lifestyle factors on cognitive performance.«

Early bird regime

We know already for a good while that a school start early in the "day" is having bad effects on students (for example here. It does not benefit their learning, or development, or health. I did not find i particularly helpful when i was a teenager and my school started at 7.35am. I was having my stereo on max, any remote far from reach, and The Offspring with Mota (first track on Ixnay on the Hombre) blasting out, so I actually had to leave bed.

Also we had our teachers state after the last summer vacations that the start into school was difficult, because the kids turned back to their individual sleeping times, and turning back to the early bird regime was not easy, with the students being not much awake in class.

Nevertheless, I see teachers being also awake quite long, answering emails late in the day, ideally when they should be in bed already. Some of them also having kids. I am not surprised by the high rate of teachers burning out recently. I am a bit surprised by the politicians considerations to increase the work times, to further fuel (pun not intended) the problem.

In the primary school of our young one was a schedule restructuring necessary with four concrete options where preferences were asked for. Two would have kept the same starting time, while the other two proposals would have meant an earlier beginning. Fortunately there was a clear vote against starting even earlier.

Now I do not want to sound harsh, and the issues is not solved easily. Of course there are jobs that have to be fulfilled 24/7, or some just have fixed hours and have to be present on site. It also means that I would rule out professions were an early start would be mandatory (i.e. no teaching – we had a time where career jumpers were searched for to combat the lack of teachers).

Yet I hope we come to a point were we can make the world a bit friendlier and healthier for night owls. I imagine early birds can still rise early, and be busy with whatever is on their plates. They will have calmer work hours with less disruptions, or perhaps mind whatever else is on their plate. We have before-school care on site already, their hours might need to be extended, but perhaps the after school times can be shortened in return.

Prominent Night Owls

Then there is or was a trend to highlight various weird habits of prominent people, and morning persons were included there as well. And as there are so many "list of 22 night owl" articles already I out, I do not want to chime in.

So before you go and start your search, I just want to point out one person: H. P. Lovecraft, prophet of Cthulhu, icon of the horror fiction. (Don't worry, horror fans are just as nice and kind).

And let me conclude with a line of punk band Die Ärzte from their song Tu das nicht:

Unsre Kunst die erblüht und gedeiht in der Nacht