The Morning Myth Read online

  After a lousy first semester, I went to intersession over Christmas break, which is a glorified two-week version of summer school that everyone passes, regardless of actual performance. It was around then that I realized that many private universities are for-profit businesses, not wonderful institutions of higher education. I later learned the reason everyone passed intersession was so that the school could keep the tuition dollars rolling in.

  My second semester was a complete disaster. Friends would even come to my dorm room to try to wake me up for class. They knew that I was intelligent and could make it; however, they didn’t understand the concept that I simply don’t function well early in the morning.

  To make matters worse, this was all during the recession of 1991–1992. I had pledged a fraternity, only to find 30- something-year-old men—with electrical engineering degrees—living in the frat house due to unemployment. That was my first clue that maybe school wasn’t worth it. My suspicions were confirmed when one of those electrical engineers couldn’t wire a lamp plug and I had to do it for him! I thought I’d walk out of there after four years able to build radios and other electronics, and this joker couldn’t do something that electricians learn on day one. This is why I continued to suspect that college is a scam.

  It wasn’t long before I fell so far behind from all those missed classes that there was no hope of catching up, so I spent the rest of the year partying and having fun. (Maybe that’s when my introversion started to fade?) It all culminated in getting kicked out of the dorms for shooting off fireworks on campus and having to live “at home,” as they say. (I guess I never understood that saying, since living with your parents means living with your parents, not living at your home.)

  Then came the big decision: Go deeper into debt by spending another year in a school I hated, and, to add insult to injury, have to wake up at an insane hour in order to commute there?

  No thanks. It was time to call it quits.

  The College Dropout Enters the Workforce

  With all the pro-college brainwashing I endured from parents, teachers, principals, and guidance counselors—you name it—only my burning desire to someday become wealthy overcame the inferiority complex I gained from being a high school graduate in a college-educated world.

  Assuming I had no marketable skills other than my love of working on cars, I got a job as an auto mechanic. Some days were good; others were bad. It all depended on what kind of work came in each day. Having said that, going home every day all greasy and with transmission fluid in my hair flat-out sucked.

  The bigger issue, however, was getting to work. Just like with everything else, the day started at 8:00 a.m. (Seriously, what is it about 8:00 a.m. that they are all addicted to?) For several months I was there on time, and then I began to fade. The early days started catching up with me and before long I was sleeping in every few weeks and not getting to work.

  Finally, I decided enough was enough and I quit. I got a lecture from the owner on how I needed to go to mechanic school to learn “the computer,” which was about the stupidest thing I’d ever heard, since using “the computer” is a matter of plugging in a cable, seeing what code comes up, looking it up in a book, then replacing the faulty part. Nowadays, that’s all mechanics really do. I remember one time when the Land Rover dealership had my wife’s car for a total of four weeks in separate visits. The thing is, I instantly knew what was wrong with it, but since there were no codes, the dealer’s mechanics couldn’t figure it out. Finally I got them on the phone, explained that when a car is stalling randomly and there are no codes being generated, it’s an early fuel pump problem. (They called back two hours later to confirm that it was the fuel pump regulator. But I digress. Now I’m just bragging.)

  Next up was my first sales job. Okay, not really my first, considering my amateur radio fixer-upper business, and a part-time telemarketing job I did at night during high school for a while.

  This was a real job—the kind where you had to wear a tie, at a minimum. So tie shopping we all went. It was still telemarketing, but it was business-to-business, and I was very good at it. Great, in fact. Until I got tired of showing up by 8:00 a.m. to an office that was a solid 40-minute commute away on a good day.

  I won’t go into the details, because you already know enough to guess how it turned out.

  Success Found—At Last!

  Over the next few years I moved around a bit and held a variety of jobs, some in sales, others not.

  Finally, I landed in Las Vegas, Nevada, which was the biggest growth city at the time; that’s why I’d moved there. Common sense told me that where there is massive growth, there is massive opportunity in B2B sales, so I jumped all over it.

  And that’s when it happened.

  Soon I found myself employed not just in sales, but in outside sales. For the first time ever, I could excel at a job—even be #1 in the office—and not have to be at work at 8:00 a.m.!

  There was some culture shock involved, though. My wife, also from the New York City metro area, but whom I met in Phoenix, Arizona, had a similar experience upon moving to Phoenix.

  The thing is, these cowboys and cowgirls from the Old West would brag about being up at 5:30 a.m.! Or 5:00 a.m.! Or 4:30 a.m.! It was like a big pissing contest to see who got up the earliest.

  I can’t remember how many times I’d set up an appointment with a prospect only to hear the words, and of course they said this braggingly, “I’m up every day at 5:00 a.m. How about you come by at 6:30?”

  “How about 10:00? That’s when I’m open. My morning is already booked.” Yeah, with sleep, that is! They always bought it though and I got my deals done at times that worked for me.

  Soon I was kicking ass and taking names in the sales game. Sure, I struggled for a long time while I took the idiotic advice to make cold calls all day, every day, but eventually I was hired by a sales manager with a brain who showed me the path to lightness and away from that ineffective, dark-side stuff known as cold calling.

  The real reason I became a star at selling wasn’t entirely because I learned how to get sales without the misery of cold calling, though that was huge. The primary reason was because I could largely set my own work schedule—no more mandatory 8:00 a.m. nonsense!

  Before long I was in high demand and could name my price to competitors, though I stayed at that job until I relocated again to Phoenix in 2000. I was earning five figures a month and had a fantastic sales manager who was not only remote, but when he came to our office for a week each month, he left me alone. At most I’d get a voicemail on Thursday saying, “Hey Frank, it’s John, just seeing how things are going and if you need to get together for any reason before I head back tomorrow.” Of course he left those messages in the morning; I didn’t get the message until I woke up.

  Freedom Found

  With the relative freedom my success in sales had brought me, I was finally happy.

  And it was all because I didn’t have to drag myself out of bed at an ungodly hour and then spend the rest of the day dragging ass and wondering what was wrong with me. It turns out there’s nothing wrong with me; the problem is a world where everyone just falls in line and starts each day at eight o’clock in the morning. There’s no rhyme or reason for this, other than the weak excuse of, “It’s always been done that way!” Yeah, sure … that’s the same weak excuse I was given whenever I questioned cold calling.

  When I moved to Phoenix in 2000, the city’s businesses were starved for broadband Internet service. I accepted a job offer from a wireless Internet startup, but they had no idea what they were doing (ironically, they’re based in Dallas, where I later lived). I soon left and went to a small, local, self-funded competitor. It seemed like amateur night compared to the corporate world of the previous employer; however, their product simply worked! To me, that’s the difference between a company that gets venture capital and is suddenly worried about what kind of handmade Italian desks to buy and a company that just bootstraps it and gets
the job done.

  Within about two months I was one of six sales reps, yet I was producing 50% of all of the company’s sales volume. I soon became good friends with the one honest owner, and we remained friends. (The other two ripped off investors and got dragged through lawsuit after lawsuit. They also tanked the company, for which I’m grateful, since this was not long after 9/11, no one was hiring, and I was forced to start a business. Thanks, guys!)

  Imagine that … a sudden quantum shift from a lifetime of struggle, unhappiness, and especially fatigue, to a life filled with abundance and success. All because I could sleep a couple of hours later!

  Part of why I’m writing this book is because we’re in the Internet-based Information Age and the days of forcing people to show up at an office at 8:00 a.m. are starting to wane. Sure, it’s happening very slowly, but then again, that’s why I’m writing this.

  When employers come to realize that anywhere from a third to a half of their employees are night owls, and will perform better and reduce company turnover if they’re allowed to work during their most productive hours, employers will make those changes and fewer people will experience the level of misery that I did.

  When corporate wellness programs begin to customize employee profiles based on sleep habits, they’ll be better able to customize the wellness program to each individual versus trying to force the same program on everyone. Wellness will improve and the employer’s health insurance costs will drop. So will sick days.

  When universities, for whom the all-important graduation rate is king (remember, they’re all about money today and operate like businesses), come to understand and accept this knowledge, students will be able to create schedules that work for them. I fully believe that I’d have graduated college with honors had I been able to start the day at 10:00 or 11:00 a.m. Indeed, more and more private virtual universities—the ones that don’t pretend that they’re not businesses—are popping up. These are real university degrees that you can complete virtually on your own schedule. Southern New Hampshire University is perhaps the best known thanks to their heavy advertising, along with the many schools now offering online MBAs. Heck, even schools like Harvard offer virtual MBAs today.

  Billionaire Mark Cuban, who lives nearby and whose neighborhood I drive through several times a week for inspiration, has been extremely vocal about the fact that higher education in America has turned into a scam, and predicts that traditional universities will be largely replaced by online universities as more and more people wise up and see what’s happening. I mean seriously, outside of doctors and lawyers, I really can’t think of many people who work in a field that’s even remotely related to their college major. Talk about a giant waste of money. Granted, I wish I hadn’t missed out on the social aspect of college, but for what it costs, I could put on the party to end all parties!

  From the perspective of morning larks versus night owls, if Mr. Cuban is correct, that one change will totally transform higher education as we know it. Never mind the fact that costs will be slashed; the larger benefit is that the one-third to one-half of society who happen to be naturally born night owls will be able to participate and study on their own schedules, and that will make them happy, successful, and even healthier than being forced to conform to a morning-centric world.

  Morning Madness

  We live in a morning-centric society, where both the school day and the workday begin at around eight o’clock in the morning. This alienates and impairs the performance of the one-third to one-half of society who are night owls, and employers who force everyone to work on the same schedule are unknowingly losing money and productivity, while schools that do so are limiting their graduation rates along with their students’ intellectual potential.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Brainwashing: Society Stigmatizes Night Owls—and People Buy It

  “Why isn’t he up yet? No one should be in bed this late!”

  “Never let the sun catch you in bed.”

  “Successful people are up before the sun every day.”

  “Night owls are lazy sloths!”

  How many of these statements have you heard? I know that first one has been said about me many times. Anytime I visit family back in New Jersey or New York, whether it’s my wife’s or my own, it seems to be a running joke among everyone present that I sleep late.

  I always dread walking down the stairs in the morning and hearing the snarky, “Well, gee whiz, rise and shine!” Or, “It’s about time you got up.” Or, “How can you have successful businesses when you’re always sleeping?”

  The Myth of Night Owl “Laziness”

  As I write this, I can tell you that I went to bed slightly after 2:00 a.m. last night, and slept only five hours. Is that oversleeping? I don’t think so—that’s undersleeping! In fact, the only reason I only got five hours of sleep is because my wife and kids are away visiting her family in New York State, and our dog and cat wake me up every day to get fed. Normally my wife is up before six so I do get a good night’s sleep most nights.

  I typically get in seven to eight hours, which is the normal amount of time that human beings need to remain healthy and give the body enough time to rest, recover from the previous day, and get ready for the next. How is that “lazy” or “oversleeping”?

  Here’s the catch: Let’s say I go to bed at 1:00 a.m., which is pretty typical for me. Then I get up at 9:00 a.m., also my usual time. That’s a normal eight-hour sleep period.

  However, to outside observers, they never see the work and thinking and planning and reading that happen late at night. You see, I never stop educating myself. Ever since I learned that most CEOs and even some U.S. presidents read a book a week, and always wanting to emulate those who are more successful than I, I’ve begun that habit as well. Even if I’m waiting somewhere, say at a car wash, I’ll take out my phone, open the Kindle app, and continue reading a book. Or I’ll review my goals and write them down again—a very effective habit that burns them into your mind more deeply than by merely reading them aloud.

  Likewise, I never stop working. I’m not up past midnight watching movies. I’m up past midnight getting important shit done while the rest of the world sleeps.

  My immediate family—my wife and kids—know that I work like crazy. When I’m not spending time exclusively with them, I nearly always have a laptop out doing work, day and night. My kids wonder why I sleep late, but then again they’re too young to understand yet. (I do love it when I happen to wake up early and catch them before school; some days I’ll get up to see them, then go back to bed for a couple more hours.) My wife totally gets it and has no problem with my habits. It was even an asset when we had babies—I’d stay up until 2:30 a.m. or so, then my wife would get up at 5:30 a.m. since she’s a morning person. That worked perfectly—both babies slept during the time in between and we both got a full night’s rest in, every night!

  I honestly don’t understand how couples who are on the same sleep schedule survive having babies. But then again, I vividly remember working with new dads who would come into work with bags under their eyes that were so dark, they looked like raccoons. How they managed to be productive under those circumstances is beyond me. There’s no possible way their work output and quality didn’t suffer.

  Society’s Negative Attitudes Toward Night Owls

  Those quotes at the beginning of this chapter, the kind that I’ve had to listen to all my life and learn to take in stride and ignore, represent very typical attitudes that the majority of Western people hold against night owls.

  A quick Google search of quotes about the virtues of being a morning person turned up endless results. That alone goes to show that society has been brainwashed to believe that we should continue to follow work schedules that were created hundreds of years ago for the purpose of farming, and continue to use them in our modern Internet- and data-driven economy.

  Here’s some of the nonsense I found looking for those quotes:

  Work hard, stay po
sitive, and get up early. It’s the best part of the day.

  —George Allen, Sr.

  My response: No, it’s not. It’s a miserable time of day for a night owl to be up.

  The early bird gets the worm. The early worm … gets eaten.

  —Norman Ralph Augustine

  My response: Wrong! Science shows that while the early bird might catch the worm, he cannot go the distance; only night owls can. You’ll learn why in a subsequent chapter. Morning people crash just when night owls are getting warmed up.

  Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.

  —J. Paul Getty

  My response: That’s easy to say when you’ve already struck oil, especially when you can do that any time of day. Oil doesn’t show up early in the morning and then disappear into the night. Drilling at two o’clock in the morning will get the same result as drilling at six o’clock, just like all work product will be the same regardless of what time of day it’s done.

  Lose an hour in the morning, and you will be all day hunting for it.

  —Richard Whately

  My response: What is that? Funny math? There are twenty-four hours in every day. That never changes. We all get the same twenty-four hours. Instead of wasting that hour in the morning when I’m groggy and useless, I save it for my most productive and creative time: night. I have no problem with you being an early riser, but don’t try to force it on me.