There are definitely “morning people” and “night owls” – but that’s usually a symptom of habits and sleep patterns that have been developed, not a legitimate syndrome.
But it turns out there is some basis behind why certain people just can’t be perky for early morning meetings when they work a 9-to-5 job. Delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS) reportedly affects one in 750 adults, which causes them to be somewhat nocturnal – that’s over 400,000 Americans.
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A little background:
The 9-to-5 workday started as a movement in the 1830s. Laws were passed over the next few decades, with Congress passing the eight-hour workday for federal employees in 1876. The 40-hour workweek became part of the New Deal, which is when it became more or less standardized.
The Atlantic examined what this syndrome really entails:
DSPS sufferers have internal clocks that run at least two hours slower than normal, giving them “social jet lag” which is pretty much what it sounds like: They’re out of sync with the rest of society. They struggle to keep their eyes open during morning business meetings because their bodies are convinced it’s the middle of the night. DSPS can wreak havoc on their health and careers, causing depression, anxiety, brain damage, heart disease, drug addiction, and a myriad of other afflictions due to sleep deprivation.
DSPS isn’t the same thing as insomnia. It’s not a matter of being sleep deprived because you simply can’t fall asleep when you want to, when your body tells you to (commonly an issue with anxiety or other factors).
DSPS sufferers sleep perfectly fine, it’s just during a delayed period of the 24-hour cycle, which makes getting up for your average job difficult and can lead to debilitating deprivation, according to Cary Cooper, a psychologist and professor at Lancaster University Management School. This means employees are either not productive the way they could be, or even worse, it leads to people being fired for under-performing.
“The evidence is clear,” Cooper says. “We’re losing quite a lot of talent.”
Not only are DSPS sufferers not performing at their best, it creates issues for companies who employ them. A 2010 Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine study found that sleep deprivation costs companies an average of $2000 a year per worker.
“It’s easier to treat someone with straight-up insomnia,” said Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist at The American Academy of Sleep Medicine. “Nothing works particularly well except getting a night job.”
Beyond just night jobs, flexible work hours would be ideal for this small percentage of the population, as The Atlantic points out:
Traditionally, managers tend to think more people in the office equals more output, but new research shows that people who work flexible hours are more productive and more likely to stay with their company because they are happier and healthier. Thanks to these findings, the U.K. passed a law in June giving every worker the right to apply for a flexible work arrangement.
Some people are fortunate enough to schedule their own work hours – which might mean starting a project closer to midnight as opposed to 9 a.m.
“I think no matter what you did to me, I’d never be happy in the morning,” said author Michael Lewis, who wrote the bestselling books Flash Boys and Liar’s Poker. “And I’d never be sad late at night.”
Lewis wrote his first book while the rest of us were sleeping. “I can’t get the best stuff out of me any other way,” Lewis said. “I used to write until five in the morning. I think my books would be better if I could still do that.”
Maybe in the future there will be more options in the U.S. for flexible work hours to accommodate people like this – people who aren’t lazy but are simply lacking sleep. Unfortunately, we still live in a mostly 9-to-5 society for now.
[Photo from Flickr user Chris Annable]
