Night owls, this one's for you🦉

It’s 2016.
2:45 am.

I’m in my tiny room, surrounded by half-empty 7-Eleven coffee cups.

I was buried in a project; running models on deaths in every suburb in the U.S. Hours of red error messages. Then finally… just as the code clicked, I made a big, big mistake.

I took a “quick” 2-minute break.

Opened Facebook.

And there it was.

The Rock was bragging about waking up at 4 am every day.

In that moment, I started questioning everything about how I worked. I wasn’t out partying. I wasn’t wasting time. I was doing my best work… just at the “wrong” hour.

Or at least that’s what Dwayne had me believe.

So I tried to fix it.
Flipped my whole schedule.

Early to bed. Alarm at 6.
Tried to do at sunrise what I used to do at 3 am.

And it sucked. It was the worst semester of my life. I lost my high distinction average. No more basketball. No late-night flow. Just early mornings, tired eyes, and work that felt ten times harder than it used to.

I made the mistake of thinking I was broken. But I wasn’t. I’m just a night owl.

So this one’s for all the night owls. The ones who are told they’re doing it wrong… When really, they’ve just been wired differently all along.

Our whole student life, we’ve been sold this idea: successful people wake up at 5 am. If you’re not grinding before sunrise, you’re not serious. Night owls are just lazy people making excuses.

Complete bullshit.

Let me tell you, half your future colleagues will be replying to your emails at 10 p.m. Your best ideas will come late at night when you’re all by yourself. The biggest deals, like Luka Doncic getting traded to the LA Lakers, happen late at night as well.

Then why do schools & universities worship mornings?

Simple: efficiency. Pack the timetable, fill the lecture halls, and get staff out by 5. Convenient for them.

But what’s convenient for them ≠ optimal for you.

While universities schedule their most important classes at 8 am (because apparently that's when "serious learning" happens), research tells a different story.

A study of 23,000+ students found attendance drops 10% for 8 am classes compared to later ones. Your brain doesn’t care about their schedule.

The system that's supposed to help you learn works against your natural biology.

You want another kicker? Night owls outperform early-morning people on different measures of cognitive ability and academic achievement. For example, in top MBA programs, night owls consistently score higher on GMAT tests than the Dwayne Johnsons of the world.

Btw, this isn’t me trying to convert my early morning friends. The point is you do what actually works for you.

Night Owl Productivity Playbook

1.Schedule around your brain, not the clock

We need to stop pretending that 6 am is magic hour for us. It’s not. Your brain isn’t ready yet. Night owls hit their peak thinking and problem-solving window around 9 pm - 2 am. That’s when your ideas flow, creativity spikes, and mistakes drop.

What to do:

• Save your hardest work; essays, coding, projects, for your peak hours.

• Mornings? Use them for boring, low-stakes stuff: emails, readings, low-risk, low-reward tasks.

2.Reverse engineer your social life

Our goal isn’t to be an average night owl; it’s to be a great night owl.

Sure, you could just do your studies at night, but that’s only half the game. The other half is building a social life and network that actually matches your rhythm.

What to do:

• Pick activities that matter to you and schedule them at night. Coding sprints, side projects, creative jams, late-night workouts, or even group games. Doing something meaningful together creates instant alignment.

• Look for patterns: notice who’s responding to messages, posting in forums, or active online past 9 pm. Those are the people who naturally fit your rhythm.

• Play across time zones. Connect with communities where it’s daytime for them and night for you. You’d be surprised how many amazing communities are active around the world while you’re wide awake.

3.Own your nighttime routine

Morning people have it easy: roll out of bed, hit 9 am, and the routine runs itself. Their brain knows it’s work time. Night owls? We need our own cues. Our brain needs to know we’re switching into focus mode now.

What to do:

• Set your “office hours.” Pick a consistent block of peak nighttime for your work and stick to it. Watching Netflix? Friends? Tough luck. You’re getting up, moving, and getting to work. No excuses.

• Use movement as a cue. Walk to your desk, go to a different room, or even make a small ritual: coffee, music, whatever signals your brain: it’s game time.

• Anchor your environment. Light, desk setup, or even a pair of “focus headphones” that tell your mind, “let’s go.”

Lastly, and most importantly keep your sleep routine consistent. It doesn’t matter if you’re sleeping at 4 am every night, just don’t bounce around. Sleep at the same time every night.

4.Accept the trade-offs

Being a night owl isn’t free. You don’t get to stay up till 3 am and magically live like everyone else. There are costs, and if you don’t acknowledge them, they’ll eat you alive.

Here’s the reality:

• You’ll miss out on some early-morning classes, networking events, and casual coffee catch-ups. That’s the tax you pay for working at night.

• Your schedule will clash with friends, coworkers, or even family. Sometimes, you’ll feel out of sync with the world.

• By the time you’re awake, the rest of the world is already two steps ahead. You’re chasing opportunities, negotiating deadlines, and regaining momentum that don’t wait for night owls.

Like I said at the start, night owls are different. And guess what? That comes with a cost. But it’s still a cost worth paying, because that’s who you are, and when you’re at your best, there’s nothing like it.