What makes a morning person? Circadian rhythms, chronotypes, and the science behind your peak working hours. Getting up earlier—and using that time productively—is about more than just setting your alarm clock. Science, biology, and genetics all play a part in determining whether or not you're a morning person.
Research has been gaining insight on that question. It turns out our internal clocks are influenced by genes and are incredibly difficult to change. If you're just not a morning person, it's likely you'll never be, at least until the effects of aging kick in.
Your internal clock is set, primarily, by light/dark cues from your environment. It's why our natural tendency is to sleep at night and be awake during the day. A morning person is someone whose own particular sleep/wake tendency follows this natural cycle.
Learning to become a morning person and change your circadian rhythm might feel like an impossible feat, but with the right tools in place, it's possible to become someone who wakes up early with no alarm at all. Build a routine that works for you and remember that waking up with the sunrise is a gift, not a chore.
Hundreds of genes might decide whether you're an early bird or night owl - CNN. Some people are genetically programmed to go to bed (and rise) early, others late. Morning birds have certain advantages over night owls, new research suggests, including a lower risk of certain mental disorders.
Should You Become a Morning Person? Being a lark isn't better than being a night owl, but if you find that the hours you're keeping are getting in the way of work, school, healthy habits, social functions or other commitments, it might be helpful to shift your daily activity to operate more in the morning.
Researchers have found that morning-type individuals—both young adult and seniors—report higher levels of positive emotions, stable personalities, and good health.
Simple: You give them the space they need. Or, put another way, you don't intrude on that time and space. They will wake up and enter the day at their own pace. It helps, too, to get to know the other person and to simply ask: When are you at your best?
The reasons for morning people being more successful seem to be linked to their general attitude and mindset. A Harvard biologist, Christoph Randler, did some research on this and concluded that early birds are generally more proactive, and this results in higher levels of productivity.
Studies have also suggested early rising and success might be linked. People who wake up early are more in sync with the traditional corporate schedule and tend to have more proactive personalities, which might lead to better grades in school or higher wages on the job.
But, being a night owl may also just be in your genes. "A recent study has actually shown that a genetic change in a gene called CRY1 is common among people who have a condition called delayed sleep phase disorder, or DSPD," explains Dr. Ayish.
If you take naps that are longer than an hour and a half, you may wake up feeling grumpy due to sleep inertia. That's when your body resists waking up, typically because you were in deep NREM sleep. The term “sleep drunkenness” is often used to describe this feeling.
“Sometimes people with ADHD are 'slow risers' (not morning people) and need to build energy toward tasks in the morning and night,” Tomlin says. He adds that sleeping in too late or not getting enough sleep can also become problematic by: causing the person with ADHD to become nocturnal.
Stress hormones.
Over time, too much cortisol may be linked to such problems as anxiety, depression, and a hard time with memory and concentration. Usually, your cortisol levels spike after you wake up. It may be that your body overreacts to the stress hormone and leaves you feeling down in the mornings.
If one of you is up at the crack of dawn and the other is still snoozing away, can a relationship still work? The good news is, early birds and night owls can get along, but it takes understanding and compromise. It took night owl Carol and early bird Gary years to manage their different sleep preferences.
When people enter the workplace and they don't make an effort to acknowledge each other socially, it starts to deteriorate relationships over time so we tend to advise people not to skip it. It's important to acknowledge your co-workers and say good morning back even if it is an interruption to your work.
Not because of their chronotype, but because of fighting their chronotype: Not getting enough sleep, not exercising enough, eating less healthily, etc. In short, you can't have it both ways. You can't act like a night owl at night and also pretend to be a morning person.
Morning people prefer to rise with the sun and feel the most energetic earlier in the day. Night owls, on the other hand, sleep later into the day, perhaps even past noon, and reach their peak after the sun goes down.
A morning person who tended to go to bed at 10 and wake up at 6, for example, would have a sleep midpoint of 2 a.m. They found that in people with the genetic variants for being an early bird, for every hour earlier the sleep midpoint, there was a 23 percent lower risk of major depression.
Morning people really are happier, study finds. A new study finds that night owls have an increased risk for mental illness and are less happy than morning larks. Morning larks wake in the early hours with smiles on their faces and a can-do attitude that befuddles most night owls.
morning types are attracted to concrete information rather than abstract thinking and like to rely on logic rather than intuition. They tend to be introverted, self-controlled, and eager to make a good impression on others.