I was reading a book a few days back, one of those professional development/self-help-esque books. One piece of advice it gave was to do certain types of work (work that you are saving for the never arriving “later”) in the morning. It advised waking up early and starting your day with a productive routine…before work.

 

This got me thinking about morning people…and night owls.

Now…I have lived with some people that are NOT morning people. The kind of stereotypical “can’t talk until I’ve had my coffee and been awake for an hour” type of non-morning people. I’ve also lived with extreme morning people. The kind of people that wake up before it is bright out and have done three different things and made breakfast before the next person wakes up.

 

I am not a morning person. But, I’m not not a morning person. (Intentional double negative in there for my sixth grade English teacher.)

 

I don’t get up a minute before I have to, but I am fairly easy to wake up. I skip all of the morning routines and head out the door, but I can usually make pleasant conversation, no coffee needed.

 

Last week, I tried to start the process of becoming a morning person.

 

 

I started with the goal of waking up 50 minutes earlier than I do. I was waking up at 7:50 a.m. (my school duty starts at 8:10) and my goal was to wake up at 7:00 a.m, knowing that I wouldn’t actually get up until 7:30.

It was great. I was out of bed by 7:30. I got one small productive task done in the extra 20 minutes and I was off to school, a small pressure slightly alleviated by knowing I had more free time that night.

 

The goal was to slowly start getting up earlier and earlier, until I had a full hour or hour and a half.

 

That lasted two-ish days.

 

 

I’m not really a night owl either…I don’t have exuberant amounts of energy in the evenings…but I do my best thinking at night (my most reflective thinking) and I have been known to stay up late every once and a while (okay…almost every night) reading a good book in bed.

I’m trying to retrain my brain and that is going to take a while, but it seems to go nonstop starting at about 8:00 p.m. It doesn’t help that the sun doesn’t set until well after 10pm and twilight lasts past 11, tricking my brain into thinking it is much earlier.

 

 

Here’s to fighting my way to a new sleep schedule so that when I get back to the Midwest, waking up at 7am AKDT means 10am CDT…and that I could live with.

 

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Side Note: If I’m not a morning person, and I’m not a night person, and I’m not at all an afternoon person…am I just not a person?