What I learned from waking up at 5am every day for a year

It's probably not the answer you're expecting.

For as long as I can remember, I've been a night owl. Part of it was growing up in a toxic and volatile home - night time was peaceful and quiet, and the only time I felt I could relax a little bit. The other part of it was that, no matter what time I went to bed, I just couldn't get up easily in the mornings. My mother called me lazy. My teachers always assumed I'd just stayed up all night playing video games or watching TV. 

I always maintained, even as a kid, that not everyone is a morning person. I would be awoken every weekend day by my mother loudly blasting her "cleaning music" and the vacuum at about 6am. My brother and I would beg her to wait just a few more hours, to let us catch up on some sleep after a busy week. But she would always shout at us that by sleeping in, we were just being lazy layabouts. She'd tell us to go to bed earlier, but I couldn't go to bed any earlier than I already was. To get up for school at 6:30am during the week, I'd be in bed by 9:30pm the night before. I'd try to sleep, but wouldn't fall asleep until the house was quiet at about midnight. I'd usually require multiple alarms to get me out of bed, and I often slept straight through them. I'd find myself falling asleep on the floor of the shower. I'd struggle to keep my eyes open for the first few hours of the school day. 

During the school holidays, when I'd be left home alone whilst my parents were at work, I noticed that I never felt tired. I'd fall asleep naturally, with no tossing and turning, at around 1am (regardless of how tired I was - even if I wanted to sleep at 10pm, I just couldn't). If no one else was at home, I'd wake up between 9am and 11am, and it was the only time I ever felt like I'd actually gotten some rest. I kept trying to explain this to my parents, who started to call me at 8:30am every morning to make sure I wasn't "wasting the day rotting in bed" and then the idea of a good night's sleep became a distant memory yet again.

In 2020, in the height of the pandemic, I started my teacher training. This was probably the biggest workload I'd ever had - teaching four days a week, attending university one day a week, and spending the rest of my free time (what free time?) planning lessons and making resources. 

It felt like there weren't enough hours in the day. To get everything done, I had to wake up at 5am to spend a couple of hours planning lessons before my commute. I'd work in school until about 5pm, trek home, eat a little bit of dinner, and then continue working until about 10pm when I'd have a quick shower and head to bed. Towards the end of term, I'd be so tired I'd end up in bed by 8:30pm, but still unable to sleep until gone midnight. But even though I was only averaging about five hours of sleep a night, I still found myself unable to fall asleep until the early hours of the morning. It didn't seem to matter how tired I was. 

When I'd talk about how tired I was with my colleagues, they would say the same things I'd heard my whole life: 

- Go to bed earlier 

- Set multiple alarms 

- You just need to get used to it

I woke up at 5am every single day for just over a year. As a teenager, I woke up at 6:30am every weekday for over a decade. And yet I still didn't get used to it. My parents and teachers, and later my colleagues, blamed my late sleep for my anxiety, my depression, my fatigue levels... They ignored what was really going on and instead made me feel like I wasn't working hard enough, or that I was purposely avoiding sleep. I spent most of my childhood and my early adult years feeling like a failure, like I'd never be truly successful because I had "lazy" sleep habits. It was one of the biggest points of contention for my mother. She felt like I was lazy, like I'd never live up to the grand expectations she had of me because I slept at different times than her. If I wasn't awake by 8am and she was home, I'd have water thrown on me, loud music blasted in my ears, or she would physically start hitting me to get me up, all whilst calling me a lazy embarrassment and telling me I'd never get anywhere in life if I wasted it away in bed. You'd think I was sleeping fifteen hours a day, and that it would be mid-afternoon by the time I was being woken up! 

During my PGCE, I wondered why I seemed unable to fix my sleeping pattern. So many self-help strategies tell you that you should wake up at 4:30am and act like it will fix all your problems. I saw the same behaviours in my students and wondered why on earth the school day starts so early, when we know that teenagers tend to have delayed circadian rhythms. Expecting a teenager to do complex calculus or run a few miles when their brains haven't even woken up yet feels like we're fighting a battle we don't need to. 

Last year, I read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, a non-fiction book that goes into the science behind sleep. This is where I first learned about the idea of delayed circadian rhythms, and it helped me understand that I'm not broken. I actually always had this intuitive understanding of my natural sleep schedule, but I was made to feel like it was wrong. I'd really recommend this book, especially if you have or work with teenagers, as it covers the impact of puberty on sleep phases. 

I struggle with the idea that I'm wasting the day, as so many people have told me. Waking up at 9am on the weekend is hardly wasting the day. I am still awake for the same number of hours, aren't I? At my last job, another colleague shared my sentiments on sleep and then the two of us were laughed at by the rest of the team. We were both quite a bit younger than the others, so we were told that we needed to grow up and start going to bed at a reasonable time. 

Delayed circadian rhythms are a thing. Sleep disorders exist. Some people take medication that affects their ability to sleep. I was diagnosed with ADHD in my early twenties and then went on to learn that a delayed circadian rhythm (or Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome) is commonly seen in people with ADHD. It all started to click - it explained why I never felt well-rested when I woke up early, even if I slept for nine hours, but I felt well-rested when I woke up between 9am and 10am, even if I'd only had a few hours sleep. This one I learned as an undergraduate, when I'd stay out partying and not get home until 4am, but somehow still wake up feeling fresh and rested at about 10am. I'd had six hours sleep, probably inconsistent due to drinking alcohol, but felt more well-rested than when I'd gone to bed at 10pm completely sober and woken up at 7am. 

We live in a world designed for morning people. I have to suck it up and accept that I will just be permanently tired because the working world is designed around people who wake up early. That I can deal with, but I resent the idea that I am lazy or wasting my life because my body naturally wants to sleep between 1am and 9am. Waking up early every day for a year didn't shift my sleeping pattern; it just made me more tired. I often wonder if I'd have stuck with teaching for longer if I had just worked with my sleeping pattern rather than desperately trying to change it so people would stop assuming I'm some indolent and lazy idler. It added an extra level of stress that I didn't need, but the suggestion came from my tutors, telling me I'd be more productive if I woke up earlier, that it would reduce my mental health symptoms and make my job easier. That's not completely untrue, but it only really applies if you can be a productive person early in the morning. If not, it's just a recipe for failure. 

Being a night owl doesn't make me lazy. It doesn't mean I am wasting my life away in bed. I spend the same amount of time asleep and awake as I would if I could wake up at 6am instead of 9. I would never tell my morning-people friends that they are too intense, or maybe they'd be less stressed if they "just slept more". When morning people discuss feeling tired, it's like a badge of honour, but when night people do it they get scolded and told to go to bed earlier. Society acts like waking up early in the morning will fix all your problems - but only if you're inclined that way. Maybe someone needs to write a self-help book for people who find that waking up at 4am makes their life significantly worse?

I'll always be impressed by morning people. I used to work with a woman who would wake up at 4:30am, go to the gym for an hour, come home and get the kids ready, do the school run and then come to work for eight hours. I felt lazy compared to her. But then I realised that I don't have children, and I do my exercise in the evenings. So again, I'm doing the same activities (minus the children), so why is it seen as less productive just because I go to the gym after work instead of before? 

Waking up at 5am every day for over a year taught me that I am not, and will never be, a morning person. And it's okay if you are, too!