"I'm a night person"

Some readers will have been waiting since chapter 1 to say this. The night isn't just leftover time for them. It's when they feel most like themselves. They like the dark and the quiet, and they like being the only one awake. They'll say they've been like this since they were fifteen.

There are two different claims folded together here, and both deserve respect.

The first is biological. People's body clocks do differ, as chapter 7 said, and it's partly inherited. A true evening type isn't sleepy at ten and doesn't sleep well if forced to bed then. For that person, staying up isn't procrastination. If that's you, and your work starts late enough for a full night's sleep, you don't have a problem and you don't need this book. If your work starts early, you do have a problem, but it's a mismatch between your clock and your job. Light in the morning, a steady getting-up time and, where you can get it, a later start are the usual remedies. It's also something a GP or a sleep clinic can help with if it's severe.

A night person in that sense isn't tired at ten, though. If you're fighting to stay awake on the sofa, tonight at least, your clock says bedtime. It's possible to be an evening type who's also so short of sleep that the tired point has crept earlier. It's also possible to have been a night person at twenty-two and not be one at forty. Body clocks tend to move earlier with age.

The second claim is about what the night is like, and I've no argument with it. The late hours have a quality that no other part of the day has. Nobody expects anything of a person at midnight. There are people who've written books and built model railways and worked out their lives in those hours.

So I'm not asking you to give them up. I'm suggesting that you choose them. There's a difference between a late night you planned and one that happened to you. On a planned one, you've decided on Friday that you'll stay up with a film or a project, because there's no alarm on Saturday. You enjoy it with a clear conscience. On the other kind, it's Tuesday, you were tired at ten, and you're still there at one because nobody made a decision.

One or two chosen late nights a week can sit inside a life of enough sleep. The cost is small because it isn't repeated every night, and the pleasure is greater because you aren't fighting sleep or guilt. The method in the next chapter has a place for them.