Laziness & Sleeping

Factual Questions
1

I am trying to get to the bottom of my laziness and I am wondering whether the Straight Dope can help.

I think I have got some sort of genetic sleeping disorder which means that I really don’t like getting up. I never have. To many of you, this will seem a trivial, if perfectly normal affliction experienced by many. However, I think that the depth of my hatred far exceeds the norm.

When I wake up at 7am to go to work, I feel quite ill. I mean physically sick. It takes an astonishing amount of willpower to get myself out of bed, even after a decent 8 - 12 hours of sleep. It is at least ten minutes of mental and physical battling (even after I have finished the shower) before I am finally awake. Every day, it’s an unpleasant and excruciating ordeal.

Recently I have had a lot of spare time on my hands and I conducted a two week experiment whereby I gave up alcohol, which I had previously thought was the root cause of all my problems. I then allowed myself to sleep for as long as I wanted, when I wanted.

Interestingly, I discovered that I very quickly settled into a pattern of falling asleep at 4am and naturally waking up at 12pm feeling fine. The point is that it doesn’t seem to be the length of time that I need to sleep but the time of day / night that I am actually sleeping. If I have to be up at 7am, it doesn’t matter what time I have gone to bed the night before, I will feel terrible, even after following a pattern for several years (I have also tried reducing my sleep patterns to 3,4,5 hour intervals).

Rather like conditions such as obesity, it is difficult for people who aren’t obese to understand that the solution to problems is not simply of the “stop eating” variety. In my case (I am not obese…a normal, healthy 27 year old), I am beginning to be convinced that there is a reason behind my laziness that isn’t simply…well, my laziness.

Perhaps there is an atavistic trait that provided some survival advantage if not all members of the tribe fell asleep at the same time? Whatever it is, I think that I have got the short straw as far as genetics and sleeping are concerned as people inevitably would regard my behaviour as lazy, even though when I am actually awake, I am quite the opposite. (btw this is not a new thing. I have felt like this since I was about 13.)

Could there be another explanation for this? Even better, a cure? Why do some people wake up feeling fine and others feeling like death? How come I can sleep from 4am - 12pm with no problem but not from 11pm - 7am?

2

I have no advice for you, only wanted you to know you’re not alone. I am like this, my mom was like this, and now I look over at my sixteen month old daughter, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at five thirty in the morning (no, she hasn’t slept yet…maybe in an hour or two) it looks like the curse continues.

I function best when I sleep from around 3 a.m. until around 10 or 11. My ancestors must have been on the night crew of the tribe too. :slight_smile:

3

ISTR reading, recently (-ish) an article claiming that the division between “night owls” and “early birds” is about 2:1 in favour of “early birds” … thus explaining why our society is geared for their convenience, not ours (says the fellow night owl … not nearly as bad as you though!)

this wasn’t it but might be a good first step to some further research on your issue.

For myself, I find my sleep clock is a little more complex than just “sleep time block then wake time block”. I can get to sleep quite easily in the early afternoon, or with a lot more difficulty at a more traditional hour like 10 or 11. If something wakes me up in the small hours there is No Way I’ll be asleep again before about 5 or 6 a.m., which seems to be my other natural go-to-sleep point. You may also find you have different “sleep opportunities” during the day - maybe if you tried sometimes to get to sleep earlier - just after work for instance - you’d find you would wake naturally in the early hours before 7:00. (of course, you might find that just as annoying as the current situation!)

4

In your daily routine, is there:

  1. Any exercise?
  2. A lot of late-night distraction, such as web socializing, computer gaming, crying babies, or alcohol consumption, or things of that nature?

Having dealt with employees who report the same thing, and digging into it a bit, I found that generally one of the above factors was in play. But there are a few people who are just permanently in a different time zone and there’s nothing you can do about it.