As someone with ADHD I find it’s a common experience for many that we stay up all night. I’ve fought that in the past but now I kinda feel like I should just accept it. Go to bed late, get up late. However that’s not very conducive to a normal business routine.
How do you all handle your mornings and nights? Is it worth it even to try to change?
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Absolutely believe in chronotypes. Retired now, thank god. But my best REM sleep has always happened somewhere between 5 am and 9 am. Even when I had to follow everyone else’s schedule, I absolutely had to be able to sleep in Saturday morning. If I didn’t, at some point I’d have to go off in a corner later in the week and just sort of waking-dream to catch up on REM.
I have recently learned that this is called Delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS) and is very common in many people ‘on the spectrum’. I think it’s nonsense to call it a syndrome but that’s modern society for you.
Anyway, I usually don’t sleep before 4am, often even later. It’s rough 😬
How do you deal with it?
I kinda… don’t lol. But I work just 4 days a week and on 3 of those I start relatively late (10:30), so that helps a bit.
I fought against my nature for years and tried the “push through the pain” method for most of my career. I burnt out of yet another job at the beginning of this year and decided I never wanted to work 9-5 again. I retrained to be a teacher and now I give afternoon and evening classes. I do sub work on the occasional morning but I won’t do two days in a row.
I’m finding a lot of my executive functioning is better now that I’ve had enough sleep! I’m no longer living in survival mode constantly.
The improvement in my quality of life is incredible. I feel like one of those people who starts their day at 5am now. I have time in the morning to eat, exercise and get ready for the day before I head in to work. But instead of getting up at 5 I’m getting up around 10 instead. It’s glorious.
