TL;DR
- Your chorontype is a biologically determined and influences when you feel most alert and when you are ready for sleep
- There are 4 chronotypes: the lion, wolf, bear, and dolphin. You can find yours out in the quiz at the bottom of this post!
- Modifying your schedule so that you do your most demanding tasks during your chronotype’s alert period will help you feel more efficient and less overwhelmed. We tend to be more creative during our chronotype’s sluggish period. The sluggish period is also a great time for mundane tasks like answering emails.
- There are societal obstacles to taking full advantage of our chronotypes, such as standard work and school schedules.
- However, even non-work tasks like hard discussions and intense workouts can be scheduled around our chronotype’s peak times.
You may not have heard of the term chronotype, but you have probably heard the term “the early bird gets the worm.” It’s an annoying phrase to hear if you’re anyone but an early bird. To make things more annoying, countless self-help books advocate the virtues of getting up early and being productive.
It’s easy to assume that if you are not a morning person there is something wrong with you. Perhaps you feel like you’re a less diligent worker if you don’t start your work day at 8am. Or you feel like you aren’t a committed athlete if you haven’t completed your workout with the sunrise.
As with so many things in life, the idea that mornings are the best time for efficiency is fatally flawed by the fact that we humans are not all the same. It’s not even about personal preference. We are genetically programmed to not all react the same way to mornings (or afternoons or evenings). Why is this the case you may ask?
Table of Contents
Origin of Chronotypes
It all goes back to prehistoric times before doors were invented and saber tooth tigers were on the prowl. We needed to take turns watching for beasties. So it was advantageous for some people to be more vigilant at night, others to be at their best in the early morning, and still others to be at tip-top shape in the middle of the day.
That’s the theory at least. It’s hard to be 100% sure about anything that happened back when a sharpened stick was the new must-have item of the season.
Regardless of the reason, we have a genetic predisposition to be most alert at different times of the day/night.
What Is Your Chronotype?
Your predisposition is called your “chronotype.” “Chrono” for time and type for, well… you know. Chronotypes are usually depicted as animals—lions, bears, wolfs, and dolphins. I know lark and night owl would be more straightforward. However, the creator of these names seems to be very anti-bird. Each chronotype is described below. You can take a quiz at the bottom of this post as well.
- Lions make up 15% of the population. They are the classic early bird. Without an alarm, they tend to wake up before 7am. Their energy peaks between 8am-12pm. And they prefer to go to bed around 9-10pm. Lions generally prefer socializing earlier in the day and have trouble adapting to late-night socializing.
- Bears comprise 55% of the population. Their wake/sleep cycle follows the sun. As such, bears prefer waking up around 7-8am and are most productive from 10am-2pm. Around 2pm they often experience an afternoon slump, before rebounding in energy in the evening. Their ideal bedtime is around 11pm.
- Wolves represent 15% of the population. They are the classic night owl. Typically, they wake up later in the morning (around 9am) and go to sleep between 12-1am. They are also most productive in the evenings from 5pm-12am.
- Dolphins make up 10% of the population. They are characterized by their difficulty falling and staying asleep. If you experience insomnia, see my tips for falling and staying asleep here. Their ideal sleep schedule is similar to bears. They often wake up around 7am and go to bed around 11pm, with a peak in energy from 10am-2pm. However, dolphins may benefit from a power nap because of their light and disrupted sleep.
How Should You Modify Your Schedule to Work with Your Chronotype?
The great thing about understanding your chronotype is that you may be able to unlock efficiency you didn’t know you had. It’s kind of like leveling up on a video game.
Work Modifications
For example, if possible, you should shift high-concentration, high-energy tasks to the time of day when your chronotype is most alert. This could include analytical work tasks, problem solving, high-energy workouts, or important conversations. It may be helpful to communicate when you are most efficient to your employer so they can help support you. It is, after all, in their interest for you to schedule your time effectively.
Non-peak times (mid- to late-afternoon for lions, bears, and dolphins and morning for wolves) are ideal for creative and free-flowing thinking. Counterintuitively, we are often more creative during this less alert period, perhaps because our rational brains are turned down a bit. Easy, mundane tasks like answering emails are also good to save for this time.
Life Modifications
Most of us also have activities outside of work that require more or less attention. For example, if you need to have a difficult conversation with someone, you might want to have it at a time of day when you’re most on your game (and ideally the person you’re talking to is not in the midst of their slump).
Likewise, if you are trying to achieve a fitness outcome, you could benefit from scheduling your exercise at your peak time of day. Alternatively, if you care less about fitness outcomes and more about efficiency, then a workout during a lower-energy time may help perk you up. For example, dolphins may benefit from a morning workout to help wake them up after a restless night of sleep. An afternoon workout could help perk up tired-out lions and bears and help them return to work more energized.
Other Modifications
Finally, it is helpful to keep in mind some of the unique traits and obstacles of your chronotype. Lions prefer to socialize earlier in the day. So making a concerted effort to plan activities like afternoon walks with friends could be worthwhile. Dolphins may benefit from consulting a sleep specialist. Bears may find that Winter months with little sun wreak havoc on their wakefulness. And wolves face the greatest societal constraints on their productivity, given the standard work day.
Obstacles to Efficiency
Indeed, the problem, as many people are probably already contemplating, is that society doesn’t always allow us the flexibility we need to take advantage of our chronotypes. It may sound awesome to do more of your work in the later evening, but that may not be possible if your workplace doesn’t allow that kind of flexibility or if you have kids at home.
Kids’ chronotypes are also not given much flexibility at all, given that schools start and end at very standardized times. Pre-adolescents generally have lion-like chronotypes and are early risers. In contrast, adolescents’ chronotypes shift later and resemble those of wolves–one of the many characteristics adolescents seem to share with wolves, in fact. Yet, teens almost always have to go to school and extra-curriculars super early, while young children frequently attend school slightly later in the morning.
Consequently, it’s helpful to have this information and modify the activities you can to fit your chronotype. That being said, hopefully this information also helps you go easier on yourself when you inevitably can’t do something at a peak time and feel like you’re dragging. Just blame it on biology!
Chronotype Quiz
There are a number of popular quizzes to determine your chronotype (and your chronotype may be obvious to you from the descriptions above!) Michael Breus, who created the 4 animal chronotypes, has a popular one. I’ve created a shorter version below that doesn’t require you to enter your email address and get lots of follow-up emails. Feel free to try it below.
What’s your chronotype? Let me know in the comments! And if you enjoyed this post or think it would be helpful for others, please consider liking, subscribing, or sharing.
Dolphin! Thanks for the quiz and very interesting info on sleep!