March 1, 2018

"I actually think we have a lot of discrimination in our society against late chronotypes."

Said Camilla Kring, quoted in "Late sleepers are tired of being discriminated against. And science has their back. Some people have a biological clock naturally set to a later time" (Vox). Kring founded the B-society, "an international advocacy group calling for increased acceptance of the evening-oriented."
“Just by changing your schedule by an hour or two, it can result in having more sleep, higher productivity,” she says. In this view, workplaces ought to be more accommodating of chronotypes.

The research generally backs this idea up. “Although we should avoid a simplistic shortcut of associating ET [evening types] to some negative aspects, the data point to the idea that an [evening type] pattern is a risk factor for some disorders, whereas [morning type] is a protection factor,” a 2012 review of hundreds of papers in the academic literature concludes.
Different orientations are not just about sexual preferences, and the differently oriented have infinite demands for accommodation.

41 comments:

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Chronotype? Alleluia, I’ve finally found my victimization group.

Rob said...

I'm chronically lazy, and you wouldn't believe the discrimination I've encountered. (At least we now have someone in the White House to speak for us.)

exhelodrvr1 said...

Not just late sleepers, early risers also! Why can't we start work at 3 AM, and be done by 11:30/12?

Wilbur said...

I'm a morning person, and I'm discriminated against by the hours of nightclubs and night life in general. They should be made to open several hours earlier to accommodate me and other morning people. Because, of course, it's all about me.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

And speaking of outrages, my phone has reverted to the old-school Blogger format. WTF?

Bunk said...

Age is the big factor IMO. Young folks sleep late because they can enjoy good sleep. Honestly, do you know anyone over 50 who can sleep until mid-morning?

tim in vermont said...

When the evenin' sun goes down
You will find me hangin' 'round
The night life ain't no good life
But it's my life

Many people just like me
Dreamin' of old used-to-be's
And the night life ain't no good life
But it’s my life
- Willie Nelson

bagoh20 said...

What they mean is: I don't really want to be equal. I just want everyone to pretend I am, and treat me accordingly.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

I actually think we have a lot of discrimination in our society against late chronotypes.

You actually think that because you actually are an idiot.

Not accommodating someone's preferences is not the same as discriminating against someone for having those preferences.

bagoh20 said...

Success and sleep time are negatively correlated. Dreaming is great, but they don't come true by themselves.

Fernandinande said...

"Different orientations are not just about sexual preferences,"

Wow, who knew?

Paul said...

Kring is chocho for choco puffs!!! Just stuck on stupid.

Shouting Thomas said...

Do shift work.

Problem solved.

Next!

Wince said...

Different orientations are not just about sexual preferences, and the differently oriented have infinite demands for accommodation.

Indeed, we have to smash the patriarchy and the chrono-normative repression imposed by the 1950s version of the nuclear family.

"Nope, peelin' 'taters."

SGT Ted said...

Time for a world war to weed out these whiners.

rhhardin said...

Have a different daylight saving time setting every month so everybody has a couple good months each year.

tim in vermont said...

SGT Ted said...
Time for a world war to weed out these whiners


Yeah, but isn’t the use of bagpipes outlawed by the Geneva Conventions? Show some mercy, man!

Levi Starks said...

My company accommodates me by allowing me to work 2nd shift.
It also allows me to enjoy Althouse starting at around 9am each morning.

Michael K said...

" Honestly, do you know anyone over 50 who can sleep until mid-morning?"

My wife and my basset hound. I went in and woke them up after reading this.

Gahrie said...

My natural "Biorhythm" (to use a term from the 70's) is to be awake at night and asleep during the day. During summer vacation ( I teach) I usually end up going to bed at 6:00 A.M., instead of getting up at 5:30 A.M. like I do during the school year.

Makes for a tough first week back at work.

MrCharlie2 said...

LOTS of software developers, many of the best, operate on this kind of late schedule. That's largely due to the absence of the morning people and their silly nattering (i.e. the business side of the organization).

I have seen this for several decades, it's nothing new. And, it is highly productive: the type A businessy-types can wave their arms for several hours, express their commercial bullshit; late-oriented techies can talk them down in the afternoon and get to work after they leave.

I imagine it is true in other areas as as well. It's a good thing when people can find a good niche that accommodates their personal tendencies.

I pity the late types who have to fit into an old-fashioned work environment. Shift-work, as has been mentioned, but that's not really what these guys want.

BTW, morning person here.

Gahrie said...

By the way, I am 53, and I do suffer from insomnia when on a "regular" sleep schedule.

California Snow said...

I don't think calling themselves ETs is good branding....just sayin'.

madAsHell said...

I worked with a guy at Boeing that would arrive at the end of the day shift, and claim that he was working early on the swing shift. When the day shift cleared out, he would pack his bag, and claim he had been working late on the day shift.

So, I can see how this might improve your sleep.

Ann Althouse said...

"Not just late sleepers, early risers also! Why can't we start work at 3 AM, and be done by 11:30/12?"

Heh. That's me!

Woke up last night, looked at the clock, saw it was only 2:30 and thought well that really is too early. But if it'd been a half hour later, I'd have got up.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

To be serious, alignment in bio rhythms or chronotypes is very important in a marriage relationship. The natural rhythm of when you want to go to bed/sleep and when to wake.

Unless you are in a work situation (as my parents were for sometime) where one person worked the day shift and the other worked the "Lobster Shift" compatibility in the rhythm of life is a big part of being compatible in other things.

When you are living two separate lives because of a sleep/wake cycle clash, the ability to maintain a close relationship is very difficult.

Megthered said...

I am a night owl. I loved working second shift and night shifts. But having a family prevents that. My husband is up by 4am every day. He cant function past 730 pm. Now that we're retired we have adapted to each others needs. I can paint or read in the quiet of the night and he gets up and takes the dogs for a run early in the morning.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Shouting Thomas said Do shift work.

Problem solved.


Ha. I had to laugh at that one a a bit. My father worked what is called the Lobster Shift in the newspaper industry, back when the papers were manually printed. He and the other workers were getting OFF work about 8am, when everyone was going to work.

Since 8am was the end of the long and grueling work shift the guys (my mother never worked the lobster shift even though in the same printing industry) would want to stop off an have a beer to unwind, just like any other working stiff.

There was a local bar that was opened early in the morning. Mostly the hard core, professional drinkers were the patrons, but whenever the Lobster Shift guys would stop in for a few beers, they would get the "side eye" from the general public. Drinking at 8am!!!! What reprobates!!!

The Cops got to know who was hard core drinking and who were the shift workers and make their judgements accordingly.

It was a weird situation for our family to have one parent working nights, the other working days. Actually, it helped us kids to be more independent and responsible for ourselves because we were often on our own for breakfast, getting our butts to school and coming home from school because of the overlap where both parents were working their shifts.

jimbino said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bruce Hayden said...

“My natural "Biorhythm" (to use a term from the 70's) is to be awake at night and asleep during the day. During summer vacation ( I teach) I usually end up going to bed at 6:00 A.M., instead of getting up at 5:30 A.M. like I do during the school year.”

Fond memories. I was working as a programmer in the late 1970s as a programmer at the Census Bureau, and apparently the most heavily used user written software there one year was my Biorythms program. It took me several months to design, because I wanted it to be elegant, and keeping track of the three cycles was messy, and then coded overnight. My ultimate solution was to have routines that calculate back and forth between mm/did/yyyy and day number since 01/01/00 (I did simplify in that it didn’t take into account the slippages prior to 1900, and it only properly handled leap years between 1601 and 2399).

Bay Area Guy said...

From the old Dr. Pepper ad campaign singalong:

"I'm a victim, you're a victim, he's a victim, she's a victim, wouldn't you like to be a victim,too?"

Bruce Hayden said...

“LOTS of software developers, many of the best, operate on this kind of late schedule. That's largely due to the absence of the morning people and their silly nattering (i.e. the business side of the organization).”

Hits somewhat close to home there. My favorite story there involved the woman who would ultimately be my first wife and the mother of my kid. She was finishing up grad school at the time, taking a single class, and was working almost full time. We were thrown into a software project together, and she started off working 8-4. Within a couple months I had her on a more normal programming schedule of noon to 8 (being more OCD, I would stay to midnight). The goal of the project was for our two programs to communicate over a network. I suspect that part of her converting to a more normal schedule was defensive- before that, she would often come into work to see messages from me such as “First the good news - my program worked. Now the bad news - yours didn’t, and here is why”. Things went faster and more smoothly when we were mostly on the same schedule.

I carried that work schedule (12-12) with me when I left software and went into patents. My most productive time has long been maybe 6-10 pm. And a lot of that, I think, was not having to deal with interruptions. Esp stupid interruptions, such as those from bosses, and even some clients. At a new job, it would typically take maybe six months to train a new boss, and a lot of that, I think, was that bosses tend to be the type of people who do get in early, do a lot of meaningless things, etc, before settling down, which means that they initially frowned on my schedule, only accepting it when they saw that it was effective (and made them look good).

Now, in my dotage, we have family time starting at 7 pm, eating dinner at 8 or so, and bed by 9. My partner is up by 5, and gets me up between then and 7, depending on whether or not I pissed her off the day before. Something like that. I sometimes miss my old schedule.

Dave said...

My wife doesn't really start sleeping very well at all until about 4am. No matter what time she goes to sleep, waking her up at even 8am hurts her.

Also, I think of all human characteristics as continuous and variable among members of the species. Evolution favors a diversity of biology. It's science!

A slight troll here for you but it's on my mind, words are physical things and so are emotions. There is nothing non-physical in the universe. One of the biggest problems I have had with the medical community is (is "one" the subject of this sentence) the inability of physicians to use a physical model with mental disorders.

Unknown said...

"Different orientations are not just about sexual preferences, and the differently oriented have infinite demands for accommodation."

Once again you risk being called a conservative!

Mr Wibble said...

I'm a late worker. The current job is flexible, so I like to go in at 10am, take two hours in mid afternoon to go to the gym, and finish up around 8pm. I get a lot done between 4 and 8pm, when the office is mostly empty and I can pace without bothering anyone and don't have background noise to distract me.

Christy said...

Maybe it's genetic? Back in the day I was home for Christmas, staying with a sister, when we caught the night news with an ice storm forecast for the morning. We head out at almost midnight to do the grocery shopping that had been planned for the next day. Afterwards we decide to hit Wal-Mart for ribbons and tape, where at 2:30 a.m. we run into our youngest sister.

I'm a night owl who still tries to schedule everything for the first thing in the morning before doctors, hairdressers, and planes get backed up with life happening.

Yancey Ward said...

I have always been a night owl. However, I have always been able to adjust to a normal daytime school/work schedule when I had to. Since I have retired, though, I generally go to bed about 2 or 3 in the morning, and am up at 11. Insomnia has been a rare problem for me over my life- it mostly occurs when I have to get up at a specific time that is much earlier than the day before, but is gone by the next cycle.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

Is this a good time to bitch about @#$^ daylight saving time?

n.n said...

Vampirism is trending.

Ornithophobe said...

My basic biology has wanted to go to sleep at 6 am and get up between 1 and 2 pm, for as long as I can remember. This was not feasible until adulthood and third shift employment; so I spent most of my girlhood longing for a nap. I couldn't tell you what happened in any of my first or second period classes back in high school, I have no memory of them whatsoever. Alas, my mother is a morning person, and she seems to regard people who are asleep at noon to be substandard, defective persons. I have worked 3rd for 2 decades now and she still comes over aghast at my sleep schedule and continually advises me to get a proper job, with proper hours.

sean said...

If you have a late chronotype, then law or academia are the fields for you. Definitely not finance.