Phil Cooke

I too am a rip-roaring night owl, and my tank gets cranked around midnight. Like Emilio said, the HR world has tried to create a nice cube-shaped 9 to 5 culture.  My best writing has come out of the 3am – 6am time slot, just before the sun comes up.  I would suggest that this HR survey deemed their idea of productivity with routine-type accuracy, And the ones considered unproductive, were the project oriented, creative types, whose productivity is on a different level.

(seen Ferriss’s ’4-Hour Workweek’? http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/).

God bless this study!  Now I have proof for my preaching about early mornings value.  In the morning you have less distractions than at night.  Give me a cup of coffee and the quiet of the morning and I can read a ton of stuff and write to boot!  As I think about it 90% of what I have written has been in the morning!  Now for another cup of coffee!

I agree with the idea, being a morning person myself, but if the inference is that evening people tend to be slackers, I don´t think that’s true. My wife is of that type, and she accomplishes just as much, she just does it later in the day or evening. Maybe the problem is that we are forcing evening people to attempt to be their most productive in a time slot that doesn´t fit how they are wired.

I agree also that you could make the case that Jesus was a morning person, but to stretch that to we are failing God somehow if we don´t function that way is harsh. I read once that “no man is worth his salt if he doesn’t get up every morning an hour before sunrise to pray.” Thank God the quality of my relationship with God is not determined by the standards other men want to set for me.

I am very much an ‘evening person’. I am actually about as much of a ‘night owl’ as you can be. I don’t really get going mentally until somewhere around midnight and I hit a good stride until well after sun-up. If it weren’t for my wife, I would sleep all day and not wake up until 7 or 8pm to work.

Being this way, I have produced a weekly international broadcast, been a spot producer and special motion graphics designer for a huge international ministry, and am working on my own freelance business. I have known great successes and was only slowed down by a layoff. I would think that that was pretty productive for being one of those non-”proactive” ‘evening people’.

The problem is that we’re conditioned to believe that the only productivity of any worth is that which happens between 9am and 5pm. This is very unfair and forces a lot of really great people to work when their abilities are the most impaired which makes them appear to be losers, slackers, and unproductive.

I never thought of it that way … but you’re right Daniel!  Jesus WAS a morning person! Hallelujah and seven amens.  I’m a morning person too and if I had a nickel for every time someone said, “what’s wrong with you anyways?”, I be rich.  I’ve been vindicated.

My question is. What would the study have shown had they asked different questions… I believe the saying goes… Change your questions, change your answers.

I think I saw something with Penn and Teller about this…