Night owl to early bird to night owl to...
A year ago, my boyfriend and I decided to have a normal sleep schedule. We successfully moved our average sleep time from an embarrassing 3-10am to a reasonable 12-8am.1
Night owl era #1
Before that fateful day in April 2025, waking up anytime before 9am was exhausting. Student life was even worse. Both my boyfriend and I would regularly pull all-nighters to get our assignments done by the deadline, usually 8am. He had a patented technique for studying for exams: he would cram all his studying into the 2 days leading up to the exam, sleep at most 4 hours total in that span of 2 days, take a 5-hour energy 30 minutes before the exam, wake up by the exam's end with drool on the page, and still somehow pass the course.2
At peak sleep deprivation, I slept two hours a night for two weeks during my exchange term in Singapore, hyped up on cases of free Red Bull. The result was pinkeye in both eyes and slow mental processing that luckily made me look more stoned than sick (and therefore infinitely more chill than normal).3
When you get a real job, there's only so far you can go with these unconventional sleep patterns. Unfortunately our chaotic habits were so deeply entrenched that we ended up self-diagnosing with chronic conditions that we didn't have, just to explain the sleep deprivation.
Finally in April of last year, my boyfriend was referred to a sleep study by his family doctor to figure out why he's tired all the time. The test is only useful if you can fall asleep by 9-10pm, so we got up extra early that day. He went to the hospital, got hooked up to a million electrodes, fell asleep by 9:30pm, and was out cold until the doctors had to wake him up at 5am. Guess what? He had the best sleep of his life. This is when we realized that we have the power to sleep better, so we set our bedtime to midnight for the first time in a long time.
Early bird era #1
We stuck to our new schedule through jet lag, several late-night outings, and even an international move. It helped to have a cute morning routine of walking to the nearest cafe to get our breakfast and coffee. (Our personal favourite is the 20-minute walk to a lovely Tim Horton's in the Toronto suburbs.) The early wakeups made us significantly happier and more energized. Here are some things that surprised me about waking up earlier4:
- Mornings are beautiful when you're well-rested. They're often less cloudy than the rest of the day. Also people are generally friendlier!
- Your friends and family finally acknowledge you as competent human beings who are capable of doing great things. (Only half joking.)
- You don't have to stay up until 3am just because Paul Graham did it. (The maker's schedule still works in the mornings!)
- It's rude to show up an hour late to early afternoon commitments, and justify it by claiming "you're a night owl".
Night owl era #2
This lasted seven months, but starting in mid-November 2025 we shifted back to our 3-10am sleep cycle. The biggest factor in our shift back to a later sleep cycle was our increased work load. Both of us had been pushing hard to complete projects by end-of-year, and I generally need to kick off jobs by the end of the day to get meaningful results within business hours so I'll typically stay up until ~2am to make sure I've kicked everything off.
Early bird era #2
A month ago, we started a cut (diet) that bumped us right back to being earlier birds. Part of the cut involves eating dinner earlier, before 8pm if possible, to reduce our eating window. As it turns out, when your body is low on calories, it comes up with other sneaky energy-saving tactics such as sleepiness! Some nights we'd be out cold by 11:30pm. Other nights we intentionally fall asleep early just to taste breakfast sooner.5 Tonight was a bit busier and I still have to kick off a few jobs and do my taxes6, but I think we'll be back on track tomorrow.
What's next?
One might like to imagine that our minds are merely attached to our bodies. In reality, we are our bodies, and sleep affects our mental model of the world in both obvious and insidious ways. I'm incredibly happy and impressed that we're no longer chronically sleep-deprived. Although I do feel mentally tougher after having faced the monsters of sleep deprivation7, it was an extra-tough challenge that I didn't need to inflict upon myself. If you have a sleep disorder, I feel for you and I hope you can get the help you need. If not, maybe this is the wake-up call you needed to get your sleep schedule in order. And if you're an early bird, hats off to you, and please consider scheduling our hangout in the afternoon next time!
Yes, I'm aware that our "early" schedule is still quite late for most reasonable people. One of my sisters calls us "sleepers". Just know that in the olden days, while you early birds were sleeping, we were the ones keeping watch for enemies in the dark! (You're very welcome!)↩
I think this fact will either convince you he's really smart (for passing courses on only 2 days of studying) or really dumb (for putting himself in that situation), and I assure you it's the former. He always preferred working on his own projects over studying for exams.↩
To the Singaporean government: I promise I didn't smoke in Singapore, it really was just pink eye! To my readers: I actually don't smoke, and I'm also not that chill either!↩
Together with going to sleep earlier. I hope it's obvious from this blog post, but if you have to choose between getting enough sleep or waking up early, always prefer to get enough sleep!↩
To be clear, we are fully within healthy calorie bounds on this cut! We have a trainer checking in on us. It's just that the less food you have, the more incredible it tastes and the more you look forward to the next meal.↩
No better time to write a blog post.↩
You might forget your train of thought, misunderstand people, lose your self-control, become irritated for no good reason, feel a deep sense of doom and despair, etc.↩