Data Project [Part 2]: Chronotypes
For years I believed that I was an ‘early bird’.
I would constantly tell my family, friends and clients that waking up earlier was the key to a more productive and successful life.
In 2015 I read a book that influenced my perspective on this topic. It was Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired by Till Roenneberg.
As a heartless summary, you’re either a night owl or an early bird and you can’t change your sleep-type. According to the author, this is biologically hard-wired.
I didn’t like this concept and mostly ignored the information until I decided to investigate this in more detail using my skills as a Data Analyst.
I took the data from my previous project and used a Python library called Pandas to clean, filter and aggregate the data. I visualized this dataset using Matplotlib.
The question was: Is there a relationship between the quality of my sleep and when I go to bed or wake up each morning?
Here were the results.
You can see each data point plotted vertically along the time frame specified on the horizontal axis. The luminance of each data point increases if the quality of sleep was higher at that bed/rise time. The size of each data point increases in proportion to the total time spent asleep.
So what is the relevance of this, you may ask?
As a technical professional, I’m used to relying on a period of about two hours each morning where I am my most productive/skilful. This period is caffeine-fuelled and relatively stressful. I would put a lot of pressure on myself because, until recently, I felt tired no matter how well I slept the previous night.
This pattern was something I observed as early as primary school.
In my last post, I wrote about how I had been waking up as much as 8 times a night due to my Gout. However, now that this was under control, I began to notice patterns in my cognitive health.
This reminded me about the concepts in this amazing book.
One of the key lessons was how much better I felt when I woke up at 7 or 9. This was distinct for me. Both of these times are the golden hours when I have zero brain fog upon waking and virtually no social jet lag over the work day.
Unlike what happens in real jet lag, people who suffer from social jet lag never leave their home base and can therefore never adjust to a new light-dark environment … While real jet lag is acute and transient, social jet lag is chronic. The amount of social jet lag that an individual is exposed to can be quantified as the difference between midsleep on free days and midsleep on work days … Over 40 percent of the Central European population suffers from social jet lag of two hours or more, and the internal time of over 15 percent is three hours or more out of synch with external time. There is no reason to assume that this would be different in other industrialized nations. — Till Roenneberg, Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired
So based on this information, I knew I was on to something. What I didn’t realise was that it’s not necessarily how much sleep you get each night, but how much of a sleep deficit you may accumulate if you are waking up at times that do not align with your optimal sleep/wake rythym.
For me personally, this meant that if I was asleep at 12PM and awake at 7, I felt fine. If I slept in just a little over 7 or 9, that day was almost guaranteed to be a loss in terms of distractedness and fatigue.
Once I understood this, my productivity began to shift. I found myself working much more efficiently and for extended periods. I retained more of the information that I learned.
This additional focus time helped me to work without distraction. I can’t give you an exact figure at this point. However, I would say I’m now spending at least 200% more time in a state of flow while I work.
If you took a look at my previous post, you will know that my sleep has already come a long way since I was diagnosed with Gout. So where does this leave us?
Well, surprisingly the author wondered the same thing!
This myth that early risers are good people and that late risers are lazy has its reasons and merits in rural societies but becomes questionable in a modern 24/7 society. The old moral is so prevalent, however, that it still dominates our beliefs, even in modern times. The postman doesn’t think for a second that the young man might have worked until the early morning hours because he is a night-shift worker or for other reasons. He labels healthy young people who sleep into the day as lazy — as long sleepers. This attitude is reflected in the frequent use of the word-pair early birds and long sleepers [in the media]. Yet this pair is nothing but apples and oranges, because the opposite of early is late and the opposite of long is short. — Till Roenneberg, Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired
This brings me to some interesting conclusions regarding our physiological needs and how we can operate more efficiently as professionals.
Who gets to decide how you eat, sleep, sit, breathe and live YOUR life? Some random convention? A toxic corporate culture?
Learning, implementing and acquiring new skills is not something that gets easier as we age. Our brains, bodies and environments must provide us with the necessary tools, stimulation and collaboration that are optimal for continued learning and skill development.
In the absence of these physiological needs, we find ourselves and our workplaces facing a unique set of challenges.
I believe the answer lies in two main areas.
- Prioritizing physiological needs
- Mindset shift
I am often asked whether we cannot get used to given working hours merely through discipline and by confining our sleep habits to certain times. The assumption inherent in this question is that the human body clock can synchronize to social cues. I tend to find that any such questioner, who usually also displays a somewhat disdainful tone towards the weakness of late chronotypes, is an early type — someone who has never experienced the problems associated with the [desynchronized] sleep-wake behavior of late chronotypes. ― Till Roenneberg, Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired
Unfortunately, it’s at this point of the discussion where we commonly see convention, caffeine and stress being the mediators of performance in the workplace.
The push to return to the office is necessitated by the last-ditch effort of many organizations to increase accountability and productivity via the looming threat of performance management.
We all know what lies behind the thin veneer of congenial superficiality.
In many work environments what ‘type’ of sleeper you are, is just one of the many needs that have been cast out of the corporate window.
What if there was a better way? One that did not destroy the mental, emotional and physical reserves of our workforce?
In a recent workshop, I cited research that linked our need for sensory stimulation to the postural imbalances and physical pain that are crippling our world economy.
That is $245 billion USD lost every year in missed work days.
Imagine if we unpacked topics that have a broader positive impact on cognitive and physical health?
What if workplaces accommodated wellness initiatives rather than stubbornly resisting change? What if the cost of ignoring these problems raises deep concerns regarding corporate ethics of care?
Most of us will experience crippling illness at least once in our lives. What if this could be avoided entirely with not just a culture change, but a shift in mindset?
Let 2023 be the year where you start asking deeper questions about your health and physiological needs.
What chronotype are you? Let me know in the comments…
