“When the evening rolls around, you often find a very dramatic “oh how the tables have turned” scenario.”
What’s on the menu?
For some time now, I’ve been tossing and turning with the idea of being a lark or an owl. There have been times I’ve been the early bird that catches the worm, and those worms have been delicious. But there have also been times where I’ve left that to the more energetic, and I’ve opted for catching the worms that slug through at the end of the day.
The funny thing, though, is I’ve enjoyed both. Both worms have tasted good, not because they are in essence the same (because they’re not) but because they taste good in their own ways.
But first, if you’re a bit confused, you’re not alone. Let me break down what larks and owls are.
Lark it off
If you’ve ever woken up early for a considerable amount of time — and we’re talking before 06h00 by most accounts — you may have strode into work or class one day to be scalded as a lark. A lark is what is more commonly referred to as the early bird. The person who wakes up early and goes to sleep early.
When you’re a lark, you tend to have more energy in the morning in comparison to later in the day. That’s not to say you have no energy at the end of the day (because that just means you worked your ass off), but rather in the morning is when you usually get the bulk of your energy from.
There are a lot of buzzwords and ways to describe our fellow larks, but usually these are the kinds of people who are more suited to the classic 8–5, day-shift oriented jobs. Larks have also been reported to have more productivity over the course of the day because they have their peak in the morning. After the morning wanes, so does productivity, but when you start on a high you tend to have more room to fall.
If you’re up early enough to see the sun make an appearance without having to rub your eyes to see it, you’re a lark. And in my experience, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
When the sun is away, the owls will play
Being an owl on the other hand, might be more commonplace of a term you’ve heard. Usually this is accompanied with a “night” at the beginning, but owls are our fellow evening-grafters. The owl is awake late (comparatively) and goes to bed late — rhythms are rhythms.
Where your lark strides into work happy as Larry and ready to punch a hole through the day at 08h00 in the morning, the owl is the one who tends to take their time rolling into the day. Productivity, by comparison, is quite low in the mornings for owls. Usually because most of our traditional work days are set between 8–5, owls aren’t as agreeable and cooperative during that time. Don’t mince my words here, I only say this as a comparison, because when the evening rolls around, you often find a very dramatic “oh how the tables have turned” scenario.
When the sun goes down, that’s when the owl’s energy levels go up. Naturally, productivity is higher and awareness is increased. Some equate this to the lack of distractions that are present during the evening — and if you think about it, that kinda makes sense. Why would your work colleague email you at 22h00 at night when you’re at your peak performance? Oh that’s right, because they’re fast asleep.
There have been studies to say that larks are happier, and there have been other studies that say owls are smarter. But honestly, the data is always changing; because we are always changing.
Rhythms
The reason for these two distinctions is because human beings have evolved slightly differently, and while we are similar in many ways, we are also unique in others. One of these intra-species distinctions is with what we call chronotypes. A chronotype is the definition we give to underlying processes and behaviours related to our circadian rhythms, larks and owls are simply the two extremes along this spectrum — morning people, and evening people.
There has been research to suggest that age is defining factor in chronotypes, such as with human beings moving through different chronotypes and circadian rhythms as we grow (think of a toddler who sleeps 12 hours, the pre-teen who sleeps 7 hours, the teenager who sleeps 12 hours again, and then the adult who sleeps around 8 hours). But the data is inconsistent on defining factors. These are, of course, just how long we sleep for, but generally speaking we are at different experiential levels of our lives that practically require us to be awake at certain hours and asleep during others.
We change. Constantly. Sometimes we work better with fewer hours of sleep and sometimes we work better with far more; and sometimes we work better in the mornings and sometimes we work better in the evenings. Experiences change, our ways of working and thinking change, and so do our chronotypes. While the jury is still out on whether fixed or flexible chronotypes are more prominent, I can say from experience I’m on the flexible-team.
Storytime
Before I kicked my A into G a few years ago with my studies, I wasn’t much of either a lark or an owl. I would fluctuate quite quickly and I was somewhat inconsistent in what I was doing. I didn’t realise how much this affected my productivity until I found myself in a very larked position.
I started a structured internship in my third year where in order to beat the traffic to get to where I would be going every day for 6 weeks, I had to be up early. It meant that I also ended up being the first one at the office. This led me to appreciate the morning a little more than I used to. I got to see the sun a little earlier than most, gleaming through my window as I drove alongside the beach, and I got to experience an empty and very quiet office for an hour most days before the rest of the crew shuffled in. Often by then I had already gotten a bulk of my thinking done for the morning, in a clear and distraction-free environment.
For the months that followed my internship, I would wake up at the same time and start my day early. I would arrive at my campus almost before the admin staff could open, and I would find myself a quiet desk to work at until the loud 1st-years rolled in (probably one of my favourite alarm-clocks).
May lark-ness lasted for a long time, through my first year and half of industry life until that gloriously not-so-glorious lockdown period of months we experienced in early 2020. I’ve written about that experience already, but probably one of the biggest lessons I learnt from that time was that we change when we have the space to. Very suddenly I was no longer a lark and I dived head-first into being a glorified owl.
I did some of my best work at 23h00 and woke up more smoothly than I thought I would at 08h00 the next day, I became a machine that was far more productive after my previous bed-time than I would have previously given credit to. I was pleasantly surprised with that experience, because it showed me that I could change.
Of course, that time warranted different tactics to combat the days that were in front of us, and I would prefer not to resort to them again. But, and this is a big but, it taught me to respect the two chronotypes that we’ve come to let define us as people.
Are you a morning person, or are you an evening person? You can never really tell until you’ve had the chance to experience both, which is something I highly recommend you do. If you’re struggling with your work, then maybe it’s not your work that’s holding you back, maybe it’s when you’re doing it.
