Can you change your sleep schedule?

As an exhausted pigeon, I can confirm I am neither early bird nor night owl.

“There’s no wrong time to fall asleep.” Tell that to a society that has everyone reaching a building the same minute, and punishes dissenters for their variation.

Any one else watching this instead of going to sleep

I'm a night owl, have always been one so far as I can remember. As always the animation is amazing. The explanations are done so well! Thanks ted ed for educating us.

Also a funny and important note is that different people require much different amounts of sleep, not just when they sleep. For example, my husband only requires about 6 hours of sleep in any given night. He usually goes to bed around 10:30-11 and is awake and going by 5am. He's done this for as long as I've known him. If he gets more sleep than that he is MORE tired and exhausted during the day. Myself, I require about 9-10 hours. I generally go to bed around 11-midnight and wake up somewhere between 8:30-10. We're both physically active and in good health, we just have different sleep requirements. If either of us tries to adapt to the others sleep schedule, one of us ends up dragging in the day. We've tried and it doesn't work. thankfully we have jobs that allow us the freedom to be able to get our preferred sleep schedules, but not everyone can.

I was a night owl and recently turned into an early bird. I'm 27 and I slept terribly late most of my life, around 2am unless I really forced myself. Part of that was revenge bedtime procrastination, part of it my burst of energy and willpower past midnight. For ten years I would promised myself I would quit this cycle with no success. Then, last month, I visited abroad in Asia. I left myself no days upon my return to the US to readjust my sleeping schedule for work. For over a week it was pure chaos as I tried to force myself to stay awake past my circadian rhythm and to sleep when I wasn't sleepy. It failed as I boomeranged between accidental 8 hour naps and missing my alarm and waking at 2pm and missing work. It was truly quite awful and traumatic. One day, amidst all this, I woke up at 4:30am after crashing at 6pm the previous night. That's when I decided I could lock this in. The following days I still had to fight hard to stay awake past 6pm, lest I wake up again at midnight, but soon I was making it to 9pm and waking up 8 hours later naturally. For the past two weeks, those morning hours have been bliss. I'm no longer "afraid" to sleep, because I know once I close my eyes I'll wake up to a few empty hours of tiptoeing and coffee instead of meetings and work. The most striking thing about all this to me is that I actually get uncontrollably sleepy at bedtime and feel my body "winding down" like I've always heard people do. I actually WANT and look forward to sleep which I realized I actually rarely ever truly felt before. In conclusion, I think it is possible to turn from a night owl into an early bird. But I think it requires either an ungodly amount of willpower or a week of self-inflicted sleep trauma.

I work from between 1 pm and 10 pm and go to bed between 2 am and 3 am. I've tried most of my life to change this schedule, I can't. When I was trying to change my sleep schedule, I read a lot of peer-reviewed papers on why there are people like me, who have very different sleep schedules from everyone else. One consistent reasoning I found: it was an advantage, millions of years ago, to have humans who were awake when others were asleep. That is, it was dangerous if everyone slept at the same time.

As someone who live in hot country, I personally prefer the night especially at summer time, it’s more quiet, less hot and dazzling, so during the day I exhausted from the hot, and at the night I became more energetic and productive, this is my reason to be night owls

Nice to know sunlight is essential when you live somewhere that gets 3 hours of it in the Winter and 24 of it in the Summer

Night owl 100% since high school at least. I've successfully managed to have a "normal" sleep schedule for work many times but I never feel as productive, and naturally I'll stay up late and sleep in. Finally working evening hours and I've never had a conflict between sleep and work since, highly recommend for my fellow night owls

Im a night owl too...all these years , in school , college, work everywhere i found it extremely difficult to reach on time n have the energy in the morning...my productivity starts around 1 pm..my most productive hours are between 10pm - 2am ...I can read learn and gets things done real quick during these hours ...my family was quite supportive..but now after marriage my husband just dont get it that night owls exist.. anyways unfortunately the society is made for early larks..i think most of the ppl who comment here saying they had been night owls now changed and waking up early, they are actually pigeons and not true night owls...i have tried almost everything to change my schedule...it may work for a day or two ...but very difficult to get on track permanently...also i personally feel that night owls have better humor sense..they take things more lightly and enjoys things like silence, solitude, starry sky, phases of moon, rain , the night breeze etc😅 we have accepted that its difficult to fit into this society and its rules😊

why is the art style red bull?

I'm a little of both early bird and night owl. In the past, I've had a job where I needed to be at work at 5am. Another job, I worked overnights from 10pm to 7am. Right now I tend to stay up to 1 to 2am. It depends a lot on when you go to bed to get enough rest to be awake and alert.

This is very useful. Sleep deprivation is a crisis All schools especially high school should start at 9 am at earliest

Me watching this at 2:59am

The voicing in this was incredibly engaging and informative. Thank you for explaining this topic in such a fun friendly way!

I knew a guy with a circadian rhythm significantly shorter than 24 hours, leading to him regularly transitioning between active days and nights over the span of a few weeks. This was even with light therapy.

Having kids changed my sleep schedule 🥲

I think my circadian rhythm is on a different planet's 27 hour day schedule. I tend to want to be up for a 18+ hours and sleep for 9+ hours. If unchecked, I would never go to sleep or wake up at the same time two days in a row.

I've been a night owl all my life. Tried everything. When the sun comes up, I can't stay awake. When the sun goes down, I wake up! I've been trying to change this for over 70 years. I am a Night Owl!