Today, I did my first day of my Night Owl Routine. I could feel the variation in my body from different caffeine dosages, sleep cycles, and meal times. Night Owling is new to me so forgive me if I’m over-excited.
I’m logging my energy throughout the day as well as doing interstitial journaling . This will be essential for when I do my weekly reviews to tweak the routine.
As a morning person, I would normally ignore the world and focus on my main creative task in the morning.
This was completely flipped today, and I must say I quite like it. I spend the day ticking off menial tasks and errands emails and calls knowing I have a huge uninterrupted chunk of time later in the day.
When talking to other night owls, I noticed a trend was that the space for night work had to be comfortable and welcoming.
I took a shower to mark the beginning of this Nigth Session. Tomorrow I’ll try to add a workout right before the shower.
The creative work went well, and overall I felt a greater level of focus.
I did a poll on Twitter and 63% replied that they were night owls.
Scientifically though 10-15% of the population are natural night owls.
This means that 40% of us fight our nature because we’re either forced to or have chosen to.
I don’t know what my NATURE is, I think I’m flexible.
The best part of my day was the afternoon nap. It felt natural! I’m already looking forward to tomorrow!
I also appreciate knowing that I have a consistent block of time daily to do my most important creative work.
I believe having that daily regularity has a huge impact on high-quality creative output.
PS: my Night Owl Drink was Pocari Sweat.
This idea of flipping schedules on purpose is fascinating, Adam. Thanks for sharing how you are doing it. How do you find your mornings? When do you wake up? I was a natural Night Owl as a kid, which only got more so in college. Then my first job was on the night copy/design desk at a newspaper, which meant I worked 4 p.m. to midnight. And though there are definitely downsides to that schedule, as a single 20-something, it was also great. My brain was totally in its groove 11 p.m. to midnight, right on deadline. I went to bed at 2 or 3 a.m., and I never had to have an alarm. I always got my 8-9 hours of sleep. I could go to the beach during the day. But then, after I got married and had a baby and switched to a 9-5 job, it was very hard for many years. I finally got a sun lamp and trained myself to the new morning rhythm. My creative brain can work early now, though it never feels as good as it used to at night — wee hour creation was almost euphoric. The ideas would come and come at night, and the writing window felt so delicious. You have made me think about the possibility, a decade or two from now, of flipping back to Night Owl one day. Very enticing. I am enjoying hearing about this journey. Good luck! I'm glad it's going so well so far.
Interstitial journaling is intriguing. Sometimes when I’m free writing my morning pages (yup, not a night owl), I sort of do this, but in a run-on paragraph, never with time notations. Hmmmm.