- [Matt] Hi, my name is Matt, and I'm an early bird.
And that's Sara, and she's a night owl.
And for the next week, we're gonna swap schedules.
(upbeat music)
After spending most of our lives
without changing our routines,
we wanna see if there's anything we can learn
from each other's approach.
(arms whooshing) Are we more productive
waking up before sunrise? (birds chirping)
- I'm exhausted.
- Are we more creative working late into the night?
I've got a lot less distractions right now.
Is there something that we can all learn
about how to best schedule our days to increase the chances
that we'll become happy and successful?
Let's find out.
This video is sponsored by Squarespace, more on them later.
(alarm chiming)
(upbeat music) (bed sheet rustles)
- [Sara] I'm up before eight.
- [John] Congratulations, babe.
It's actually just wild seeing you here.
- [Sara] Yeah, should we go stare at the sun?
'Cause that's what Andrew Huberman says.
(coffee sloshing) (gentle music)
(door clicks)
- Good morning.
- No, no, no.
What did I say?
- (laughs) You said you didn't wanna get in the camera.
- I said no cameras in the morning.
- No, it's not even the morning.
It's like 9:30.
(comforter rustling)
(curtain whooshing)
Sara and I couldn't be more different
when it comes to our routines.
She's fast and loose.
I'm structured and methodic.
- Everything is unstructured.
Waking up late, rolling out of bed.
This past week was pretty bad.
I was probably editing until four or 5:00 AM
for a few nights in a row.
That was pretty bad. (laughs)
- Despite our differences
we've both found some success as online creators
but we've also faced challenges that have brought us
to the point of swapping routines.
Sara is searching for better work-life balance
to help minimize the extreme shifts in her schedule.
And for me, I think just going
with the flow is just a very difficult thing for me to do.
Sometimes I feel like if I get started
at work at 12:00 PM, what's the point?
Like why even work at that point?
And I think especially as I go into this phase
of having a child, I think my schedule is gonna be
even less predictive. - Yeah.
- And so this might allow me to build some resiliency,
which could be nice.
When you look at the conversation online
around optimizing your schedule
it's hard not to think that there's a right way to do it.
There are thousands of videos, books, and articles
with people sharing their morning rituals and routines.
Hey, that guy looks familiar.
Tim Cook wakes up at 4:30 AM and so does Jocko Willink.
- You wanna be more disciplined, get after.
- Bill Gates gets up at 5:00 AM along with Richard Branson.
In productivity culture,
we put the morning routine on a pedestal.
People share their exact recipe for doing it right.
Wake up at 5:00 AM, drink a glass of water
with a splash of lemon juice,
meditate for 30 minutes facing the sun,
ideally shirtless.
And crush a 60 minute hit workout,
also shirtless all before 7:00 AM.
Whether or not people do these routines
in the real world is still up for debate.
What is clear though, is that our obsession
with waking up early has a tight grip
on the productivity world.
But is this a universal truth for everyone?
Will we all be as happy and successful as Chris Hemsworth
if we could just find the willpower to plow
through our snooze button?
- Okay, so I just got done working out
and oh, kitty, no.
(cat purring)
Oh, my God. Hey.
Whew. Okay. (laughs)
Anyways, so I just got back from my workout
and I will say something that is good
about waking up early is I actually have a chunk
of time where I get things done.
On a normal day, when I wake up at 10:00 AM,
yes, please don't judge me.
I really don't get anything done.
I kinda roll outta bed, figure out breakfast,
have some coffee, scroll on Twitter,
maybe answer a few emails, but I don't have a chunk of time
to do creative work when today,
I actually got a good chunk of video editing done
during the day, the sun was up.
And I have one more chunk of creative work
and hopefully not go to bed at 3:00 AM tonight.
(screen whooshes)
(crickets chirping)
(screen whooshes) (audio scratching)
I'm going to bed before midnight for the first time.
I don't even remember the last time this happened.
I think I'll be able to wake up at 7:00 AM on day two.
(water sloshing) (birds chirping)
- Hey, if you like this video,
do me a favor and click subscribe.
You won't regret it. I promise.
You shouldn't make promises that you can't keep, Matt.
(suspenseful music)
I can't help but feel right now
that I'm being incredibly unproductive
starting work around 3:00 PM.
I mean, for the past 10 years,
for me, it's been all about like waking up early,
getting my most important things done first thing.
Now I'm shifting my schedule,
trying to figure out how to make this all work.
(audio scratching)
At this point, it's 12:47 AM
and I keep rereading the same emails (laughs)
over and over again and I just can't process it.
(table thuds) So I'm struggling.
We've learned a lot over the past decade
about the science of sleep and daily routines.
And it turns out that the time that each of us
should be waking up should really be based
around our genetics.
Sleep researcher, Matthew Walker, has emphasized
that individuals have different biological preferences
for sleep timing, which are known as chronotypes.
- Are you a morning type, evening type,
or somewhere in between?
It's about a third, third split across the population.
You don't get to decide it's not your choice.
You know, this notion of these go-getter type A's
who say everyone has to be awake at five in the morning.
You go to the gym, you blast out a workout for an hour,
and you're at the desk by 6:00 AM.
You have no choice if you're an evening type,
you're an evening type.
It's hard coded.
We know that right now there's
at least 22 different genes that dictate what you are.
Morning type, evening type, or somewhere in between.
- Since the invention of electricity
and even more recently with our ability to work from home
it's harder to know what our chronotype actually is.
Have we been swayed by the endless YouTube videos
on morning routines?
Or maybe we're working late into the night
because we've been putting off that important project.
We might be fighting against our internal clock
without even realizing it.
I find myself more and more susceptible
to procrastination because there's always more time
at the end of the day.
I can always work until two, 3:00 AM
when in the past I would have these pretty hard cutoffs
where I won't work past five or I won't work past six.
Sara said that her normal routine was also
strongly influenced by procrastination.
So, do you typically wait until like you're feeling inspired
to begin working?
- (gasps) I wait until the crippling anxiety
is just at the door and it's like I have to get it done
by tomorrow morning or else, (Matt laughs)
you know
- The best way to figure out your own chronotype
is to pay attention to your natural sleep wake cycle.
This is probably best done when you're not under pressure
of a deadline and when you're not being forced to wake up
with an alarm clock.
While being a night owl might not be trendy
to talk about online.
You don't have to look far to find examples
of people who've had success with it.
Winston Churchill was notorious for working late
into the night.
Marissa Meyer, the former CEO of Yahoo,
is known for being a night owl,
and Barack Obama reportedly maintained
a late night work schedule, keeping his mornings free
for family and his fitness routine.
The night owl life has clearly worked for world leaders
and tech executives.
But what about YouTubers?
I mean, that's the real question.
So at this point, I would've been about three hours
into my work, but since I'm a night owl now
I guess I'll just like chill.
Not really sure what to do, I got some advice from Sara.
- Because it takes me kinda so long
(laughs) to wake up.
I'm kind of a sloth.
I'll literally watch a full episode of Love Is Blind
at like 10:00 AM. (Matt laughs)
Like I'll get my yogurt parfait and my coffee,
and that's just like time for me and Judy, my cat.
And I ease into the day. There is no hit the ground running.
(upbeat music)
- This is the most ridiculous show I've ever seen. (laughs)
Now in the morning, instead of working,
I'm gonna be reading more, going to the gym,
making my smoothies meal, prepping everything that I can do
to make sure that I don't burn myself out
and I'm not just making my entire day about work.
On the other side of the world,
Sara was also getting into a groove.
(upbeat music)
(coffee pod thuds)
- Yes.
Yes. (John laughs)
Yes.
So, I'm on day three of this challenge.
I woke up at 7:00 AM.
I got so much stuff done.
Having that chunk of time, you know, in between 7:00 AM
and noon before lunch, before I have to like put on makeup
and go do things.
That's proven to be pretty useful.
(yawns) Okay, let's keep doing this.
- I've been able to at least maintain the amount
of work that I would typically do in the in a day,
if not a little bit more.
Natalie's been asleep for a little while
and so I've got a lot less distractions right now
so I can kind of get into that flow state.
So, one thing that I've been working on
late into the night are updates to my website.
A website that's hosted by my sponsor
for this week's video, Squarespace.
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Thanks for considering.
Regardless of when you naturally wake up,
it's clear that we live in a society
that advantages early risers.
Most school and work schedules are created
for people who wake up early
and very few of them allow for any amount of flexibility.
And that means that morning people
tend to get a majority of the benefits.
According to researcher and biologists, Christoph Randler,
morning people tend to get better grades in school,
which gets them into better colleges,
which then leads them to better job opportunities.
And that's why sleep researchers like Matthew Walker
urge companies and institutions to be more flexible
with how employees and students work best.
- You could argue from a capitalistic standpoint
that society does not want you sleeping.
Because what society wants from a capitalistic point of view
is that you are either producing or you are consuming.
And when you're sleeping, you're neither producing
and you're neither consuming.
And so there are lots of ways that I think society
and the modern world has conspired willfully or not,
conspiratorially or not,
to decrease and try to diminish sleep.
- As the experiment progressed
it became clear that the far end
of the extreme wasn't gonna work for either Sara or myself.
Another late night for me.
Almost 1:00 AM. I am so done with this.
I can't wait to get back to my structure and my routine
and my early mornings.
Everything that I had to sacrifice and give up
for maybe a little bit more productivity,
staying in the flow state a little bit longer
just was not worth it.
(screen whooshes) - So, my hope for the outcome
of this is that I can just get a little bit better.
There's no way I'm gonna normally wake up
at six or seven every morning.
I can't rewire that, but maybe I get up
at 8:00 AM every morning.
- Sara and I have very different routines
and that's because we have very different personalities
and work styles.
I expect that we'll continue to tweak our strategy
in the years to come.
I'm only a couple months away from having my first child
and so I feel like I'm gonna need to adopt
some of Sara's go with the flow mentality.
In a lot of ways, this was just a trial run for me.
And if Sara wants to cut back on those 5:00 AM late nights
that have been eating into her sleep
then she'll probably wanna keep a tighter schedule.
- I started off actually very optimistic,
like I'm gonna change my life.
No, the thing that I do take from this experience
is that chunk of time in between when you wake up
and lunch is actually a really great time to be productive,
to get creative work done.
- But there's something special
about what works for each of us.
I've personally found that my early morning routine
has helped me switch off from work later in the day.
And Sara says that hers has created more serendipity
in her life.
- A lot of who I am today though
is I was doing that productive procrastination.
Like I was like, okay, if I don't wanna do my homework
what's this final cut thing about?
And I would learn more about music and audio and video.
And so a lot of my passions were formed
out of that space of me not wanting to do my homework
not wanting to do things.
And so I would go down these rabbit holes
that have now informed my life today.
- So, it's been two weeks since we've done this experiment
and I just got an update from Sara here.
She messaged me saying that she literally went right back
to her 2:00 AM nights the day after the experiment.
- I wish I didn't just snap back.
I'm gonna work on it.
Okay, guys? Okay, bye.
- But she decided to stick with it and said
that today was the first day where she woke up
naturally at 8:30 AM.
Not really for the video, I guess,
but just letting you know it may have resulted
in real change, which is pretty cool.
If there are two things you can take away
from this video, it's this.
One, pay attention to the signals
that your body is telling you about your preferred sleep
and work schedules.
And two, let's all give night owls a freaking break.
Thanks for watching. (screen clicks)