Realizing you slept in when you weren’t supposed to is the worst feeling ever.
And if you’re the kind of person who gets carried away with things, it can be hard to explain why you’re still in bed. There’s just no way to justify it.
How can you tell your mom you were up until 2 a.m. teaching yourself how to use the latest version of Adobe Photoshop? She probably still won’t be happy.
The same thing happens with your boss. How can you explain that you were late for the second time this week because you were researching the reproductive cycles of jellyfish? People don’t want to hear your excuses. They want you to get your shit together.
If this is you, your life has probably felt like a long, sometimes embarrassing string of late arrivals and mumbled excuses. But you keep on staying up late and sleeping in, no matter how tired you are or how many jobs you get fired from.
You just can’t seem to turn off the light and call it a night when everyone else does because nighttime is when you get bursts of inspiration. It’s the time when everyone else is quiet. There are no distractions, demands, plans, or obstacles and you can be whatever you want to be until the sun comes up.
That’s also why you’re smarter, according to research published in The Huffington Post.
Normal sleep hours are lame
The research showed that people who don’t have “normal” sleeping hours are considered smarter. And the findings are supported by research suggesting that those who create new evolutionary patterns are the most progressive.
That makes sense because the people who live differently are the most intelligent and progressive in societies.
Another study showed the same thing. Researchers at the University of Madrid studied the sleep patterns of 1,000 students and found that those who went to bed and woke up later scored higher on inductive reasoning tests, which are associated with overall intelligence.
Night owls stay up when they’re having a creative breakthrough
At least that’s what a study by the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan found when they asked 120 men and women of different ages if they were night or morning people.
Then researchers asked participants to do three tests that measured creative thinking and scored them based on originality, elaboration, fluidity, and flexibility. The night people aced the tests across the board. The morning people struggled to score over 50%.
The study’s lead author, Marina Giampietro, said she believed that the extra creativity could be attributed to “development of a non-conventional spirit and of the ability to find alternative and original solutions.”
There are only so many hours in the day. But this study indicates that while early risers may be more productive, late risers are more creative.
Early risers suck in the afternoon
And no one is talking about the way early risers essentially screw themselves out of the second half of the day.
In a study of 15 “extreme early risers” and 15 “extreme night owls,” researchers at the University of Liege in Belgium measured brain activity after they first woke up and then 10.5 hours later.
Night owls and early birds had equal levels of productivity when they first woke up. But 10 hours later, the early birds had lower brain activity in the region of the brain that controls attention than the night owls did.
They’re actually better off and less stressed
It may seem like late risers are missing out. But the early risers are missing out on all that nighttime.
Plus, another study showed that late risers have lower levels of cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone, than those who rose early. It also found that late risers had fewer muscle aches, cold symptoms, and headaches. They were also less grumpy.
Just sleep in
Waking up early is often idealized with phrases like “the early bird gets the worm,” and that kind of thing.
But if you’re a late riser, ignore the haters. You’re probably better off.
