The Morning Myth Read online

  As always, I checked my phone for anything important and saw two missed calls and voicemails, one from my mom and one from my dad. (They’re divorced and live separately.)

  I naturally panicked, thinking a grandparent or other relative had passed away. I checked the voicemails fearing the worst. What I heard from my dad was a message letting me know that my sister was okay, since her dorm at New York University was very close to the World Trade Center, and in fact she was evacuated and couldn’t return for quite a while after.

  My mom, on the other hand, was looking to me for guidance, asking, “What’s happening?” and “Are we going to be okay?”

  I watched the footage on the television news, almost in tears. You see, as a kid growing up in New Jersey just outside NYC, one of my favorite things to do was to go up to the observation deck at the World Trade Center and stare in awe at the views. And the radio antennas, too, since I’m a ham radio geek, but that’s another story.

  Seeing one of my favorite childhood memories collapse into rubble was heartbreaking.

  Driving to work that day all I can remember was how angry I felt, and how violated we all seemed to be with an act of war occurring in our own homeland.

  But I digress. The point of this story is that after exceeding my monthly number by the 10th of September 2001, for the rest of the month my sales totaled exactly $0.

  And October. And November. Then came the holiday season and the usual, time-worn excuse of, “We’ll be ready sometime after the first of the year.”

  Needless to say, I was going broke fast. Granted, I’d made a lot of money but being a single twentysomething, I was driving a luxury car and living the life and going out five nights a week partying. Now don’t get me wrong; I highly recommend that everyone enjoy that lifestyle at some point in their lives! Just be prepared for the financial fallout after the fact.

  My employer went broke thanks to the sudden halt in sales revenue. Commissions were cut back to nothing, so I left that sales position and instead of just getting another job, I became an independent agent for every telecom provider in Phoenix. That way, I totally eliminated competition, and instead presented the best solutions from every provider. That way I won every sale and no one else was even invited to compete.

  The year 2002 was slow and rough. It was a challenge to make a good living with the deep recession 9/11 had caused. Finally, I decided that enough was enough and I needed to find a way out. I wanted to stop trading my time for money and start experiencing financial freedom.

  To motivate myself, I went to a Mercedes-Benz dealer and sat in a new S500 sedan. I became fixated on it. I burned the image of that car’s interior into my mind and every time I drove my lesser luxury car, I saw myself in that S-Class Mercedes.

  Then the idea came: It hit me that I’d made my money and achieved such high levels of sales success simply because I had stopped cold calling—a massive time drain for anyone in sales—and instead put into place what I called “self-marketing.” And yes, I’m the guy who first coined that term.

  By self-marketing, I had leads coming in on autopilot. It’s why I was bringing in 50% of the entire company’s sales revenue, until that company collapsed post-9/11. When it occurred to me that so many of my fellow sales professionals were constantly asking me to teach them my lead-generation systems, I realized I had a marketable amount of knowledge.

  With that in mind, I went to Trader Joe’s on a Friday afternoon and literally loaded the trunk of my big Lincoln Town Car with all kinds of frozen, microwave stuff that was delicious yet I’m certain it was horrible for me! Nevertheless, it was enough to get me through the weekend to come.

  I sat down on that Friday evening and began writing. I went straight through Friday night, all day Saturday, and once the e-book was completed I recorded two CDs, which took me overnight Saturday into Sunday. By then the product was completed and I finally got some sleep!

  The next day, I put up a website, paid my five dollars to open a Google AdWords account, and had my first $67 sale only 30 minutes later. The rest, as they say, is history. Only nine months later I was writing a check for that Mercedes-Benz S500, which was the first of four consecutive S-Classes in a row, all brand-new. I’d also found financial freedom, did not have a job since then in 2003, and of course it came full-circle and made me a New York Times best-seller.

  Now compare this with an early riser, the types who get up at five and can’t stop telling everyone how great they are as a result. You know, the kinds who just want to get in your face when they see your morning grogginess and be that annoying, hyper morning person everyone wants to just throw down and be done with.

  Personal experience has proven to me that early risers literally cannot work past three o’clock in the afternoon. If you can manage to catch one still working—not just sitting in the office, mind you, but actually being productive—it’ll be through endless yawns and baggy eyes.

  That’s the problem with early risers: They simply cannot go the distance and night owls obliterate them in the long run.

  (And seriously—do these people even care about their appearance? Can they not see how U.S. presidents age about 20 years in only eight, thanks to all the early mornings and sleep deprivation? It’s no wonder anti-aging skin care is such a massively huge industry!)

  Remember that god-awful book I followed, that threw my adrenal and endocrine health into a tailspin and cost me a small fortune in lost production as a result? Everyone I know who is on that program calls it quits by three every afternoon.

  3:00 p.m. That’s when kids get out of school, not when adults give up the ghost for the day. I even disengaged from a business coach I was working with, specifically because he was following that dumbass book, and when it was time for me to get on the phone with him, I had to listen to “yawn, yawn, yawn” just as I was hitting my peak cognitive function for the day.

  Worse yet, the quality of their work suffers if they try to “push through,” and there’s no one quite like a morning person to try to shove the “just push through” nonsense down your throat. Or at least they do this in the mornings; in the afternoon when we’re kicking their asses, they tend to shut up because they know they’ve been defeated.

  Interestingly, when I was experiencing adrenal exhaustion and literally had no gas in the tank, it was morning people—and only morning people—who kept trying to shove the “just push through” crap down my throat, as if they were mocking me. (Which they were. But now it’s our turn.)

  Also on that note, as I write this book I can tell you I don’t even bother starting until about 1–2 p.m. in the afternoon. If I try earlier, or get up early to write, it’s a nonstarter. I’ll sit here staring at the computer screen like a drooling idiot, like the morning larks are doing by mid-afternoon each day. That’s when I go and get my Fox News fix, because I know any work product too early in the day will be garbage.

  The Proof Is in the Pudding (or, in This Case, the Research)

  In an article in foundr, Amy Rigby wrote this short paragraph that I couldn’t agree with more:

  One day I was standing in the grocery store checkout line when the bagger covered her mouth to stifle a yawn. The shopper in front of me quipped, “If you’re going to fly with the night owls, you can’t soar with the eagles in the morning.”

  How true that is! The early birds literally cannot fly with us!

  In a study published in the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), research fellow Catharine Gale and clinical scientist Christopher Martyn conducted research to, literally, test Benjamin Franklin’s maxim “early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

  The study included 1,229 men and women; in other words, it used a large sample size, which in turn leads to improved accuracy. The main outcome measures were income, access to a car, standard of accommodation, performance on a test of cognitive function, state of health, and mortality during 23 years of follow-up.

  And here are the results: 356
people (29%) were defined as larks (to bed before 11 p.m. and up before 8 a.m.) and 318 (26%) were defined as owls (to bed at or after 11 p.m. and up at or after 8 a.m.). There was no indication that larks were richer than those with other sleeping patterns. On the contrary, owls had the largest mean income and were more likely to have access to a car. There was also no evidence that larks were superior to those with other sleeping patterns with regard to their cognitive performance or their state of health. Both larks and owls had a slightly reduced risk of death compared with the rest of the study sample, but this was accounted for by the fact that they spent less time in bed at night. In the study sample as a whole, longer periods of time in bed were associated with increased mortality. After adjustment for age, sex, the presence of illness, and other risk factors, people who spent 12 or more hours in bed had a relative risk of death of 1.7 (1.2 to 2.5) compared with those who were in bed for 9 hours. The lowest risk occurred in people who spent 8 hours in bed (adjusted relative risk 0.8; 0.7 to 1.0).

  Conclusion: These findings do not support Franklin’s claim. A “late to bed and late to rise” lifestyle does not seem to lead to socioeconomic, cognitive, or health disadvantage, but a longer time spent in bed may be associated with increased mortality.

  Key Messages

    Proverbial advice about lifestyle has the authority of tradition and the merit of brevity, but it is rarely based on systematically collected evidence.

  In a nationally representative cohort of elderly people there was no indication that those who lived by the maxim “early to bed and early to rise” were advantaged as regards state of health, material circumstances, or wisdom.

  Sleeping for more than eight hours a night was associated with increased mortality, but it mattered little whether sleep was taken in the early or late part of the night.

  There is no justification for early risers to affect moral superiority. [Emphasis mine.]

  So there you have it, in just one of many studies you’re going to learn about. And I could not agree more with the researchers’ conclusion: “There is no justification for early risers to affect moral superiority.”

  So then why do they do it?

  There’s all kinds of speculation about why a man might drive a huge lifted pickup truck, or a Lamborghini, or whatever else. Usually there’s a reference to needing to compensate for something that, umm, isn’t quite large enough.

  Personally I disagree with that, considering there’s no proof to show that a man who intentionally drives a rundown car must therefore be extremely well-hung. People only say these things out of envy, or more specific to us, out of insecurity.

  As to morning people, or at least the ones who have an attitude problem about it and need to announce to the world just how morally superior they are, I must speculate that there’s something missing from their lives.

  Perhaps it’s because they earn less than night owls? Maybe they’re aware of this fact and feel the need to compensate in other ways.

  Or maybe they’ve noticed that we’re just getting warmed up right about the time when they begin to fade fast, aware that their productive hours are coming to a rapid close?

  Here’s one thing I do know: I have no shame about being a night owl and a late riser. I’ve taken shit for it my entire life, primarily from people who are forced to be up early and have no choice in the matter.

  In other words, the most likely working hypothesis is that they’re envious and insecure about the fact that I don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn, while they have an overbearing boss who demands that they do.

  Remember when I spent Friday through Sunday creating the product that would bring me financial freedom, and did so almost immediately? Good luck getting a morning person to pull that off. If you had one in your employ and ordered that person to go straight through from Friday through Sunday creating a new product—and this is no exaggeration when you consider what Silicon Valley working hours are like—all you’re going to get are excuses about how they need to be in bed by ten so they can get up early and work!

  At which point, you, as the employer, would say, “Hey, hang on, that wasn’t what I asked of you. I asked—no, ordered—you to get this done in one weekend, sleep or no sleep.”

  Morning person: “But … but …”

  Sorry, early riser, but we don’t accept excuses here. To quote the comedian Andrew Dice Clay, “If you can’t party with the big boys, don’t show up.”

  One thing I know about being an Internet entrepreneur is that virtually all of us are night owls. Oh, and we’re part of the crowd that’s always posting photos of our awesome cars and vacations and all the other cool shit we have and do—precisely because we can go the distance over and over and over, while the morning larks crash just like a bird into a glass window.

  To further quote the study from the BMJ:

  We found no evidence, however, that following Franklin’s advice about going to bed and getting up early was associated with any health, socioeconomic, or cognitive advantage. If anything, owls were wealthier than larks … .

  What more do you need to know? To further quote the study before moving on:

  Folk Wisdom: Although folklore about sleep and sleeping patterns is inconsistent, most sayings, stories, and instances seem to run parallel with Franklin’s maxim. Early rising and not sleeping for too long is seen as a recipe for worldly success and even to confer moral superiority. Thomas Edison believed that too much sleep was bad for health and slowed the progress of civilisation. Appropriately enough, he invented the electric lightbulb. Margaret Thatcher, an exemplar of vigour and decisiveness, famously needed little sleep.

  And Samuel Johnson cautioned that “nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good,” though the force of this advice is rather diminished by his admission that he invariably lay in bed till noon himself. On the other hand, there are proverbial warnings about not burning the candle at both ends and Shakespearian allusions to the restorative powers of sleep. In Henry IV, sleep is described as “nature’s soft nurse” and in Macbeth as “chief nourisher in life’s feast” and as “knit[ing] up the ravell’d sleave of care.”

  Our results suggest that, though it may be wise not to spend much more than 8 hours in bed each night, the time of going to bed and getting up matters little. It seems that owls need not worry that their way of life carries adverse consequences. However, those who cite Franklin’s maxim to encourage their children to go to bed early may wish to consider whether their practice is entirely ethical. [Emphasis mine]

  “… is entirely ethical.” This study not only disproves the old Ben Franklin maxim of early to bed and early to rise, but even goes so far as to question whether or not it is ethical to encourage one’s very own children to follow that advice!

  The BBC Speaks Up

  As I’ve mentioned several times thus far, most of the world understands that people will be who they are, whether that be an early riser, a night owl, or somewhere in between. The idea that getting up at four or five in the morning is the “secret” to success is a uniquely American, macho load of bullshit.

  So it’s no surprise that we must look overseas for accurate research on this topic. Here’s an interesting tidbit from the BBC:

  Night owls tend to perform better on measures of memory, processing speed and cognitive ability, even when they have to perform those tasks in the morning. Night-time people are also more open to new experiences and seek them out more. They may be more creative (although not always). And contrary to the maxim (“healthy, wealthy and wise”), one study showed that night owls are as healthy and wise as morning types—and a little bit wealthier.

  Yep, a little bit wealthier. Not to mention the fact that we’re just as healthy and just as wise, and to really add insult to early risers’ injury, we perform better in terms of cognitive ability and raw brainpower—even in the mornings!

  Is it any real surprise, then, that so much innovation and leaps in technology occur late at night, on that S
ilicon Valley sleep schedule, when the early risers of the world are fast asleep and we’re up burning the midnight oil?

  Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, is especially obnoxious about announcing to the world how early he gets up each day. So when I see one of his tweets, with his morally superior “It’s great to be up at 3:45 a.m.” (seriously dude, get a life!), all I can think is he must be in bed by eight in order to get enough sleep to remain healthy.

  Or take former president George W. Bush. When I belonged to a group called the Dallas Business Alliance, which was so good even I was willing to attend every Wednesday at 7:30 a.m., we met in the same building and at the same time that President Bush shows up at his office.

  He’s up at five each day. Early? Yes! However, the catch is that he can’t stay up past 10. If you can remember way back to 2000, he made headlines for leaving the Inaugural balls early so he could hit the sack by 10.

  So either way you look at it, they’re not squeezing in any extra hours on us, and on top of that, an early riser chronotype leads to fatigue and the dreaded crash earlier in the day than most.

  More Science Proving Night Owls Fare Better in Life

  A study of approximately 1,000 teenagers conducted by the University of Madrid (notice how they’re rarely done in the United States?) found that those who preferred to stay up late exhibited the kind of intelligence associated with better jobs and higher salaries.

  To quote the study, “Night owls performed better than early risers at inductive reasoning and demonstrated a greater capacity to think conceptually as well as analytically.”

  While the study did show that morning larks perform better at school, this was dismissed due to the fact that school starts early in the morning and is therefore biased toward morning larks.