You might remember my tirade against morning people a few months ago?
Okay, so it wasn’t really a tirade against anyone—the post was more of a defense of night owls. We’ve been taking a beating the last few years while the trend to praise the morning person as the model of success has gone into overdrive.
As a night owl, I got tired of hearing that I was a slacker, even though I bust my butt getting stuff done after 8 p.m. So I wrote that post.
Then, a few weeks ago, I saw this infographic—which beautifully illustrates everything I tried to articulate in that post.
My point isn’t that night owls are inherently more successful, even though many morning people will tell you their way is the only way. My point was that you shouldn’t feel the need to change into a morning person.
We’re all wired differently. We all think more clearly and are more productive at different hours of the day. Why should I force myself to wake up at 5 a.m if I waste an hour of time just trying to clear my mind—when, if I try and do the same amount of work at 8 p.m., I can sit down and get started right away?
This infographic (created by Maria Papova at Brain Pickings) shows that, in the world of famous writers, success isn’t guided by who wakes up first. All of these authors generally woke up at different times (as late as noon!) with varying degrees of productivity.
The infographic shows the correlation between these authors’ wake-up times and their productivity over their careers. Night owl authors produced more books over their career, but morning people authors won more awards.
To me, this just reinforces that there’s no formula, no better way to be productive, no matter what you hear from the early risers. Sure, they’re successful, but we’re successful too.
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