OneGuyFromBarlick

I've noticed over recent weeks that quite a few of you are extremely early risers!

How do you all manage it?

I normally get up between 5-7 on any given day and sometimes feel absolutely horrified if I sleep in till 9am after a night on the pop.

A few of the early birds live on the far side of the world just to confuse us, but Stanley is a very, very early riser!

I've always had jobs that demanded early riding and old habits die hard. I love the lack of interruptions in the early hours and always have a supplementary sleep in the afternoon.

Periods of sleep during a 24hr cycle were the norm for centuries; the idea that we retire at night for our rest is relatively recent. People busied themselves on many things when they were up ‘during the night’ – poaching, robbing orchards, stealing firewood and more social activities such as gathering round the fire for warmth and telling stories. Recommended book: A History of Nighttime, by Robert Ekirch

I tend to get up early these days; can’t really lie-in any more

Richard Broughton

Richard, there was a very extensive study on sleep at one time and the conclusion was that the human brain was wired for two periods of sleep a day and this explained the fact that many people had a period in the early afternoon where their energy levels dropped. This was usually put down to dietary matters, a drop in blood sugar or something like that. I once gave a man a lift down the country who was a Canadian medical doctor and he told me that the hardest work we ever do is digesting a meal. He advocated having a substantial meal in the middle of the day and a sleep after it. Perhaps the 'lazy' societies who favour a siesta had the right idea.
Another thing I have found is that because I spent so much of my life working longer hours than most I developed the ability to 'cat nap'. People used to laugh at me because, given the opportunity,I have no difficulty closing my eyes and having a ten or twenty minute sleep. If you are working cruel hours it can be a life saver....