At the end of last month I read that students get worse grades if they have to take exams early in the morning. Not from alcohol. Not because they are lazy. No, just because of rock-solid physiology. Young people need more sleep and, on average, can only sleep later. If you let them take exams early, they will be less sharp and their chances of passing decrease.
And yet we do it.
When I read it, I was suddenly in the middle of a personal frustration again: having to get up early. And even worse: the morning people who have made that the norm. I’ve been terrorized by morning people all my life.
Because yes, I am a night person. For productivity, you really don’t have to arrive before 9 a.m. with me. But in the Netherlands that is suspicious. Because morning people have been up for hours. And they really want to let the rest of society know that.
Construction workers on the scaffolding at 6 am with a radio at the festival stand. People on their terrace at 7 o’clock with the high-pressure sprayer. Leaf blowers. The lifestyle or otherwise zen-like coaches who say on LinkedIn that they get up at 5 am every morning because those first early hours are your most productive.
The highlight is the morning people pissing off the evening people. “Are you still smelling in your bed?” ‘Come out of your nest’. ‘Bunch of lazy idiots’. Like you’re a better person if you get up early. As if I’m worth less because I start later. I’m not complaining that morning people are already nodding around at 3 p.m., am I? That they are already extinguished if I can continue for hours?
And the whole society is like that, isn’t it? In the Netherlands then. Because in Spain and Italy everyone doesn’t get up until 10 o’clock. But no. Here in the Netherlands, everything, absolutely everything, is designed for morning people. Something to do with Calvinism, I’m afraid.
Dew steps
Early to school, early to college, early to work, early to the hospital, early to the doctor, to the bakery, breakfast sessions. Dew steps. Lazy. Morning people determine our rhythm and are the scourge of humanity. We live in a conspiracy.
We built a society for people who wake up at 6am. And expect the rest to adapt. We understand everything – except for people who can still think clearly after ten at night.
Supermarkets are the only ones that get it. They are open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Why can’t bakers do that? Pharmacies, schools, universities, hospitals. Why are the walk-in consultation hours at the doctor starting at 8 a.m.? Why is all the fresh bread gone at 8:30?
Yes, but morning people are more productive, you hear. My ass. Morning people are not more productive at all. They just get there sooner. They have finished talking at 3 p.m., but call it ‘an efficient working day’. They call their afternoon slump ‘meeting’.
The only bright spot: as you get older, you seem to naturally become a morning person. Then you need less sleep. But until then, I think it would be useful to divide the pain a little more fairly.
I’m thinking of a model in which construction workers and morning people quietly take to the streets from 5:30 am to 9:00 am – and are only allowed to start drilling and whistling around 9:30 am. Scrum Masters are given a time slot from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM. And teenagers, students and evening people simply start at 12 noon.
And that schools, universities and employers will FINALLY take this into account. That it will be prohibited to hold a stand-up before 9:30 am. A ban on teaching before 12 noon!
But you could also consider a Morning People Vignette – only with a vignette are you allowed to enter public spaces before 8:30 am. A rush hour charge for getting up early – that anyone who opens their laptop or posts on LinkedIn before 7:30 am pays a hefty amount.
Credits for sleeping in
People who start after 9:30 am get a tax benefit. Students receive credits for sleeping in. And that it will be forbidden to proudly announce that you got up at 5 a.m.
Enforcement can be done via the Morning Police: boas who check whether someone is not ‘working unnecessarily early’. Tasing those ‘boot campers’ who are already outside at 6:30 am with their boombox. Finally, with a Morning People Compensation Fund – which compensates every evening person for years of structural sleep deprivation.
The result? Better performance, happier people, less traffic jams, and less annoyance because evening people and morning people encounter each other less.
What is also possible: keep all morning people at work until 7:30 PM for a few months. And then see how much they like that.
I already mentioned that I hate morning people, right?
