Are You a Morning Dove or a Night Owl?

Scientists have come to realise the importance of understanding a person’s chronotype, the time of the day when they function the best.

Knowing how much of a lark or an owl we are should help us live more healthily in the modern 24/7 world.

via BBC News – Are you a lark or an owl?

Here’s an interesting article from the BBC on morning doves versus night owls.  According to this report, it’s all in your genes!  I’ve been a night owl all my life.  It’s just the way I am.  My husband is an extreme morning person.  Between the two of us, there is someone up in our house almost 24/7.

Something this report did not focus on was the percentage of morning people versus night owls.  That would be an interesting statistic.  Why is it that the morning doves have won out?  When I say “won out,” I mean that most businesses and schools open early in the morning and are closed by 5:00 or 6:00 pm.  That’s the time that I’m roaring to go and feeling my best.

I do believe that night owls get a bad rap.  For some reason if you’re not up early in the morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, you are lazy.  And if you like to stay up late at night, we’re led to believe it’s because we have a lack of discipline and aren’t going to bed when we should.  The truth is, my most efficient time of the day is in the evening after the rest of my family has gone to bed.  I still accomplish just as much in a day as a morning person, I’m just on a different time schedule.

One of the beauties of home education is its flexibility and not having to adhere to the 8:00 to 3:00 school schedule.  I found that my older two kids functioned better earlier in the day, so we tended to do the tougher subjects first thing in the morning.  However, I now have a child that is not at all a morning dove so we end up doing a lot of her school work in the afternoon.

Do you consider yourself a morning dove or a night owl?  How has this effected your life?

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