I’m a confirmed night owl and I will wake up early only if I need to. But I am curious. Whether it be myth or fact, most likely you’ve heard that early birds are more productive and more successful. Is this true? Is it possible to reset my long established patterns of sleep and wakefulness to be an early bird?

Being an early bird might be the envy of some night owls, who want to be more productive and live longer and healthier lives.

My goal of becoming an early bird was motivated both by wanting to be more productive, and also for my career: I have a job that requires an early commute to the office (one and a half hours to be exact).

It’s the summer so I thought that with the sun rising earlier, it would follow that trying to wake up earlier would be easy. With the added bonus of getting enough sunlight to kick start the production of vitamin D, the summer would be the best time to stay fit and healthy.

I’ve been training my body to go to sleep early and wake up early. As someone who is used to waking up at 8:00 AM, I was determined to do a hard reset of my sleep/wake schedule and to be up and moving by 6:20 AM, and out the door by 6:50 AM. I have to improve my morning routine, which mostly involves skipping breakfast until I get to the office, and the hour and half long commute. I know it’s detrimental to skip breakfast, but I can only focus on one lifestyle change at a time. So what happened during the rest of the day?

Well, it’s no surprise that I was tired. Dead tired. By 11:00 AM, I was tired and sleepy, craving a soft pillow to fall asleep on, and extremely irritated, which was compounded by a craving for caffeine. Alas the caffeine didn’t help.

But within a few days, I was adjusting to waking up early, and the morning tiredness and sleepiness started to ease. I was more alert and ready to work, and less reliant on caffeine.

From this experiment, there were several questions that I wanted to answer. Are early birds more productive than night owls?

It’s been backed by scientific research that early birds are more productive, the reason being that there are less distractions very early in the day, so there are more opportunities to get things done and check off the items on your to-do list. However,studies also show that night owls are associated with greater creativity.

Do I have to choose between being more productive or being more creative? I’d choose both, but as you probably concluded, it’s not possible to be both an early bird and a night owl. The point is, there are trade-offs to being an early bird or night owl, which is why I think it’s faulty to conclude that being one is better than the other.

There are multiple factors that can determine whether you are productive, some of which have nothing to do with whether you are an early bird or night owl. Society and culture can both be at play here instead of something that is determined by your biology. Cultural norms and upbringing are factors that play a role in your productivity and work habits.

Furthermore, productivity can be seasonal. People report that they are more productive in September. This is probably the effect of memory and social customs: school starts in September. Remember the excitement (or dread?) leading up to the first day of school? And after a restful summer, people are recharged, their energy levels are higher, and they’re ready to start working again.

It would be interesting to study whether productivity is also affected by geographical location, for example, in regions where it is constantly daylight or constantly nighttime.

Are people naturally early birds or night owls, and do I have a choice between being one or the other?

There’s strong evidence that there is a genetic component to being an early or late riser. Your circadian rhythm, or biological clock, regulates sleep, blood pressure, body temperature, and metabolism. Also, your melatonin levels are a contributing factor. The release of melatonin causes you to fall asleep. Early birds have higher levels of melatonin earlier in the evening whereas night owls stay up later because their melatonin doesn’t kick in until later in the evening.

Studies have shown that disturbances in your circadian rhythm can lead to health problems such as heart disease and diabetes.

It might motivate you to be an early bird upon hearing this, but if you’re hard wired to be one or the other, it seems like a long shot to beat your genetics at its own game. If you’re a night owl like me, don’t think of it as being faced with the impossible task of beating your own genetics. Think of it as implementing small changes that will work in your favour and not against it.

It might be true that early birds are more successful, but getting enough sleep is better than trying to wake up early in the morning if you are naturally inclined to stay up late. Be the one that best suits your personality and lifestyle.

Some will say it’s better to be an early bird, others will say a night owl. There’s another camp that will tell you that it’s not right or wrong to be one or the other.

Making lifestyle changes, and making good choices instead of bad ones, will go a long way to improving your health.

There are the obvious measures that you can take to achieve this: cut back on alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. Exercise regularly. Get enough sleep.

There’s always room for self-improvement. As a night owl, my motivation to be an early riser is to ideally have a more organized morning routine with exercise, breakfast, self-reflection, either meditation or journaling, and to rely less on caffeine to wake me up.

Was it hard to change and did I succeed in being an early bird?

The answer was yes and no. I was able to get up on time on days when I had to be at work early, though I was just as tempted to sleep in on days when I didn’t.

Did I see any benefits?

Not yet, I conclude that it doesn’t matter how early you get up, if you don’t have the motivation you won’t be able to see the benefits. Even though I became an early riser, if the motivation to make good use of my time is missing, then there would be no benefits.

This experiment taught me that it is possible to reset my sleep/wake schedule to be an early bird, even if I was a night owl my entire life. But since my commute takes up most of my morning routine, I will have to try to squeeze in an extra hour where I can focus on getting things done. I found that my productivity stayed the same, though this could be the effect of other factors such as motivation.

So if you’re a night owl, give this a try and you might find that this changes your lifestyle for the better along with getting you motivated to work on other areas of self-improvement.

In a world that is designed to tap into hyper social interconnectedness, will the solitary individual always be at a disadvantage?

What’s the opposite of a social butterfly? I tried to find an equivalent, pithy analogy that relates sociability to a similar class of arthropods, but the closest I can get to is “unsocial worm”, which might be correct but doesn’t ring true as an apt metaphor.

Like some people, I dislike crowds. Standing in a crowded bus with a press of bodies invading my personal space or waiting in line at the grocery store is unnecessarily aggravating to me. With nothing to focus my attention on but the tabloids at the magazine stand next to the cash register, my mind wanders to all the other things I could be doing with my time besides exchanging sympathetic glances with the mom who has a screaming baby sitting in the shopping cart while waiting in line along with all the other humans who are doing what is essential to survival: the overdue jaunt to the grocery store that I’ve been putting off all week.

Again, like an appreciable percentage of people, I tend to be introverted and don’t mind solitude in place of companionship. But you don’t have to be a loner to realize that it can be difficult or downright impossible to live among other humans. When it feels impossible to execute the simplest of human interactions, it can be depressing thinking of the repeated failure of getting what you want out of life without having to involve another human being in the process. I wish it was a little less crowded.

Even so, the dire statistic that the human population is reaching 8 billion (according to the United Nations) signals that we are running out of resources, space, and the capacity on Earth to support the survival of every one of them. Overcrowding, higher rates of unemployment, and the housing crisis are the sore issues faced by urbanites. It’s also a well-documented observation that violence and crime occur most often in densely populated areas.

How do we live among other humans without descending into anarchy, chaos, and wanting to kill each other?

Humans live in communities, whether they like it or not, and whether they choose to or are forced to do so involuntarily. They rely on each other for the basic necessities: food, shelter, clothing, and all the other crucial, non-tangible benefits such as companionship and protection. Living in a community is never conflict-free: humans are often driven to violence, crime, and impulsivity even though it is not in their long-term interests to be violent criminals.

Why is there conflict? What motivates people to commit a crime? Humans have base human emotions that motivate them to act out in the worst ways imaginable, such as jealousy, greed, and envy. Inequality proliferates because of an imbalanced access to wealth and opportunities. It’s just not fair that other people get to have and do all the things that you wish that you could. There is competition for resources even though there is abundance, because we don’t like to settle for good enough when we can get the best.

To understand why, we have to look at what I believe to be the phenomenon of diminishing return, which occurs when a multiplication of individuals presents increasing availability but reduces meaningful interaction to nil. An increased number of humans means an increased number of available interactions but inversely correlates the number of deeper connections made with one another. In this way, humans suffer from abundance.

Even when there is plenty, abundance can lead to scarcity. Here’s what I mean. When there’s only five fish in a pond, four identical crayfish and one goldfish, it’s easy to spot the goldfish. However, if there is an abundant number of fish in the ocean, it’s hard to single out that exact goldfish. We suffer from abundance: too much information, too many people, too many options.

The value of something increases the more in demand it is, and the more rare it is. More people equals more demand. The same goes for rarity: the more people there are, the more scarce something is. It’s harder to find the proverbial one in a sea of millions, i.e. a needle in a haystack is the usual analogy. There will always be winners and losers where there is competition, especially when the resources are limited. That’s why people will do anything they can to get ahead, because they are forced to be selfish in order to compete and be successful.

It might be an oversimplification as to why conflict exists, but the point is, the loner will go through great lengths to avoid encounters that are mired in conflict, which means avoiding other humans.

Is there no hope for the misfit, the ones who just don’t belong?

If there’s anything that I’ve learned, it’s that you have to accept the fact that you can’t go it alone. There are many instances from past experience where I’ve learned that being the misfit for an extended period of time will cause you to learn things the hard way, so it’s easier if you just surrender and save yourself the unnecessary grief of pretending that everything is okay as a misfit when it really isn’t.

I challenge you to think of a movement in social change that was not brought about by teamwork and collaboration, but by one person working in solitude. People have to work together to create change. I understand that needing people when they are unreliable is a drag. But people need other people, whether it be their peers, family members, casual acquaintances, colleagues or collaborators. This is a statement that you may feel strongly against. You can argue that you’re ultimately independent and self-sufficient and don’t like counting on other people to do their part perfectly. But everyone needs something from someone.

What can you do to resolve conflict in relationships with a significant other, families, co-workers, or colleagues at work? Collaborating, working together as a team, using and contributing your own specialities (i.e. abilities that others don’t have) is essential to keep the moving parts of a whole running like a well-oiled machinery. Set aside your ego. Be more considerate of feelings. Think of conflict as a way of creatively resolving your differences.

If you’re not inclined to be sociable, the future is not entirely hopeless. My advice is, choose wisely. Know who are your current friends and potential enemies. Choose people who will back you up and support you, not bring you down and minimize you. To live among other humans, you have to realize that you’re part of a broader ecosystem that keeps spinning only if everyone helps one another.

Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and perspectives and it’s perfectly fine to feel like the world is too crowded for someone like yourself. To live among other humans, there needs to be a compromise, and this means giving up a little bit of space so that there is always room for one more.