I’m not a morning person. I was never a morning person, and I’ll never be a morning person. I had a hard time waking up to go to school by the time I was 13, waking up for high school. When I started high school, I had a long bus ride to sleep / to wake me up if people were loud, and I arrived mostly awake. As time went on, I found that the early classes started to give me less and less, and by university it was almost worth skipping them and reading the material later because I couldn’t keep my head up at an 8:30am lecture about thermodynamics. AND, this is with over 7 hours of sleep per night.
Some people just aren’t cut out for being productive at 8am. I found that I was learning well and retaining information when I would study around 11pm until 1-2am, and generally a happier person. When I worked as an engineer, I’d get to work around 8:45 or 9, and found that it was alright but my productivity certainly picked up after 10.
Now that I’ve started my company (with my two other co-founders), we get to work at 10am and leave around 6pm. Same sort of nine-to-five hours, just a little pushed back. You wouldn’t believe the increase in productivity; the second I come in I’m ready to go, working and focused. I feel refreshed when I wake up, I feel fine when I get to work, and life is just generally better. I think that people who work flexible hours or have a more lenient schedule would agree, but I’d love to know your thoughts on the matter. I’m pretty sure the average person isn’t super productive at 8am, especially not the average person in their twenties. I know that as a team, my colleagues and I work better with this more relaxed schedule, and I’m quite confident that they enjoy the extra sleep.
I should add, however, that I really love my current job. I was motivated at my previous one as well, but now that I’m working for myself I feel a much greater sense of responsibility and pride in my work, which I think probably contributes to my productivity as well. What do you think? Are you more productive later in the day? Do you think the norm is shifting to a later workday? Is that a good or a bad thing?
Richard's Blog 