Brain Scans Reveal Why “Night Owls” Have It Rough in a 9-to-5 Society

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/brain-scans-reveal-why-night-owls-have-it-rough-in-a-9-to-5-society?utm_source=pocket-newtab


Inverse
Sarah Sloat

The 9-to-5 workday originated with American labor unions in the 1800s, and today, the eight-hour workday is the norm. But however normalized the schedule, it is directly opposed to something more powerful: biology.

In a study published in February 2019, scientists report that people whose internal body clocks tell them to go to bed late, but are then forced to wake up early, have a lower resting brain connectivity in the regions of the brain linked to consciousness.

•••••

Why some people are primed to wake up early and others are driven to go to bed late stems from their genes.

•••••

“I believe that accounting for individual differences in sleep patterns and body clocks could open up a relatively untapped source, could contribute to being at our best, both mentally and physically.”

This research also hints that “night owls” are less compatible to the 9-to-5 work day than people who naturally wake up earlier. It’s theorized that lower levels of brain connectivity cause “night owls” to have poorer attention, slower reactions, and increased sleepiness throughout the hours of a typical work day. Facer-Childs believes this study and others suggest that the rigid 9-to-5 schedule might need to change.

“I believe that the abundance of research coming out now that links misalignment and sleep disruption to negative health and performance supports the need to create more flexibility in our society,” Facer-Childs says.

“I realize that there is a need for some sort of constrained routine, but being able to take these individual differences into account and allow people a few hours of flexibility could have a considerable impact.”