After midnight ...
This one is for all the night owls.
Some people seem to think they do their best work well after midnight. But don’t take my word for it. Think about a few of the most famous examples:
Elon Musk described himself as “fairly nocturnal” in 2022, going to bed around 3 a.m. and getting up at 9 a.m. His recent experience with DOGE and posting on X in the middle of the night seem to back that up.
President Donald Trump says he gets about four to five hours of sleep per night. “I don’t sleep much,” he said in a February interview. “A lot of people that love what they are doing don’t sleep much, I find. And so far it’s been OK.”
Throughout history, we’ve seen one night owl after another say it’s just how they’re built: Winston Churchill, Toni Morrison, Prince; more than you could count.
But what if I were to tell you that neuroscience suggests that people who go to bed late are more likely to suffer from depression, act with less mindfulness, and even abuse alcohol at much higher rates than their early-rising, better-slept peers?
Writing in the journal PLOS One, neuroscience lecturer Simon Evans of the University of Surrey in the U.K., whose primary research interest is “the use of brain imaging techniques to investigate factors affecting cognitive change across the lifespan,” said he and colleagues studied the sleep habits of 546 university students.
Sure enough, they found a correlation between people with “evening chronotypes” – basically, night owls – and lower sleep quality, higher levels of depression, higher alcohol use, and lower mindfulness.
The study sample was limited to college-age students. But researchers say that’s a demographic that needs the study – and the results seem likely to be representative of other ages and walks of life.
“With many young adults experiencing poor mental health,” Evans and his colleagues wrote, “these study findings are particularly important. Many young adults tend to stay up late and the results point to how interventions could be implemented to reduce their risk of depression.”
Let’s admit something crucial: Both sides of the coin could be true:
It could be 100 percent true that night owls are more prone to the kinds of negative mental health conditions that Evans and his colleagues identify.
It could also be true that some people who legitimately have evening chronotypes really do function better in the middle of the night – whether it’s because they more easily focus at that time, or perhaps because there are fewer distractions in the world at that time of night.
The good news is that other research suggests that evening chronotype people have the ability to overcome their predilection for being night owls.
Last year, Stanford University researchers surveyed 73,880 adults to determine whether people’s chronotypes (evening or morning) corresponded with when they actually slept.
The overall result: Much like the Evans study, night owls had more mental health challenges.
But, they found that “evening types” who made themselves go to bed early wound up with the second-best mental health of any group – second only to the “morning people” who wanted to go to bed early anyway.
“The worst-case scenario is definitely the late-night people staying up late,” the leader of that study said, adding: “I thought, let’s try to disprove it, because this doesn’t make any sense. We spent six months trying to disprove it, and we couldn’t.”
Maybe the key is to be intentional and in control – allowing yourself the freedom to work late at night if that’s your preference when you can, but keeping track of what you do with the time and how it affects you.
But if you find yourself both staying up late and feeling negative effects like depression, reduced mindfulness, or even excessive alcohol use, make a concerted effort to break the habit and switch to less of a night-owl schedule, at least for a while.
7 other things worth knowing today
The U.S. economy contracted 0.3% in the first three months of 2025 President Donald Trump wages a potentially costly trade war. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, President Trump said China has been making money selling Americans stuff they don't need. "Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally," he said. (CNBC, WSJ)
Ukraine and the U.S. on Wednesday signed a deal heavily promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump that will give the United States preferential access to new Ukrainian minerals deals and fund investment in Ukraine's reconstruction. (Reuters)
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says a $254 billion state budget deal has been reached, including a "bell-to-bell" school cellphone ban. Hochul says the plan will help protect children from addictive technology and improve their mental health. The New York State United Teachers union also came out in support of the ban, saying "we are at a crisis point." (CBS News)
Amazon said Wednesday it plans to spend roughly $4 billion by the end of 2026 on expanding deliveries in rural towns as part of a push to bring faster shipping times to more parts of the U.S. Once the expansion is complete, more than 200 delivery stations will be added, tripling the size of Amazon’s rural delivery network. (CNBC)
Authorities in Upstate New York have given a group of high-schoolers, accused of staging an extreme lacrosse team hazing ritual, an ultimatum: hand yourselves in within 48 hours and receive an appearance ticket for unlawful imprisonment, a misdemeanor, or else face felony charges for kidnapping -- punishable by imprisonment of up to 25 years. (The Washington Post)
Florida is poised to ban fluoride from its drinking water under new legislation passed by state lawmakers. The bill now heads to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' desk for a signature. If signed, Florida would become the second state after Utah to ban fluoride from its public water supply. DeSantis has called water fluoridation "forced medication." (NPR)
This is kind of fun: Someone created a website that, every time you refresh it, will give you a new way to say "no." (Isalman.Dev)
Thanks for reading. Photo by Flash Dantz on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.
Thanks for the link for saying "no". I rarely have a problem doing that, but the suggestions are clever and amusing. Secondly, I have to ask: did you choose the cheesecake retro clock in the article? I wish you had chosen something else.
Once again, I believe this subject has been covered before. I'm an early riser, have been since my kids were born. I'd get up so I could have my coffee, enjoy reading the actual paper version of the newspaper before the day's activities began... my x-MIL & sister-in-law stayed up all night, both had severe mental illness. My X also preferred late nights... When I owned a business, having my office at home, waking up around 4, I'd get a lot done...
When I moved to where I am now I would be waking up for the day & the intelligent woman next door would be going to bed, around 4 am. W/in a few yrs she developed Alzheimer's & has since died.
6 hrs is a good night's sleep. No naps - they mess up my night's sleep. Usually have some wine in the late afternoon, but too much or too late messes up my sleep, as does eating too much.