The New Rules For Night Owl Workers

The below are excerpts from an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal:

"A year of quarantine has meant more flexibility for the people at their best late in the day, but working nontraditional hours requires some negotiation with team members. But it’s not quite a 24/7 free-for-all. Many newly liberated late workers are navigating how to balance their habits with bosses and colleagues who work on more traditional daytime schedules. They’re also trying to avoid burnout themselves.

Being a night owl isn’t just a personal preference. People really have different chronotypes, or tendencies to be more wakeful at certain stretches of the day, based on their bodies’ circadian rhythms. A 2020 study of 8,395 Chinese people found that about 17% of them exhibited “evening” chronotypes, and 11% exhibited “morning” ones. Other studies from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and the Czech Republic reveal a similar skew of more night owls than morning larks in any given population.

Many once-suffering workers say that the past year has been a relief.

Megan Ingram, a digital strategist in Washington, D.C., and lifelong night owl, says that late-night strategy sessions last summer gave her the courage to launch her own consulting firm in September.

Many other pandemic-era night owls are parents, especially those of young children, who appreciate the ability to work late in the age of remote schooling and diminished day care.

Work Smarter at Night

Work and sleep experts and seasoned night-owl workers suggest some best practices for those who wish to keep working late in 2021 with minimum drama:

Schedule emails: Use apps and features like Boomerang for Gmail or delayed messages in Outlook that help you send emails hours or days after you write them.

Communicate your preferences: Tell your boss and colleagues that you tend to work late so they aren’t alarmed to realize you’ve been tooling around with a spreadsheet at midnight.

Set boundaries: If you work when others sleep, you may need some daytime downtime. Ms. Ingram tends to schedule two “no-call” days in the week with no morning meetings so she can truly get a late start and not simply work an extra-long day all the time.

Work your way up: Setting your preferred schedule can be an earned privilege, even in the age of remote work, so be mindful of your role, performance and work history before you ask for concessions like fewer morning meetings."

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