Morning People Perform Better At Work, Are Healthier, According To Study

According to researchers working on the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 Study, getting a head start on the day — and being naturally inclined to do so — is linked to better outcomes both in health and in work performance, CNN reported.

And whether you're a night owl or a morning lark — your chronotype — can have a surprising effect on your life.

Night owls don't just have a harder time getting going in the morning, for example — they have an 8.4% slower reaction time in the mornings compared to larks, and their grip strength is 7.4% weaker than their early-rising counterparts, according to University of Birmingham sleep researcher Elise Facer-Childs.

In the Finnish study, which followed 5,881 individuals born in 1966, about 10% of the male participants and 12% of the female participants were night owls. The majority were morning larks — 46% of the men and 44% of women — with the remainder falling in the middle.

In that time, the participants were asked about their routines and habits, working life, health, and sleeping patterns.

Among the night owls in the study, a quarter rated their own work performance as poor, a much higher proportion than among the morning larks or even the intermediate participants.

In Finland, the work day starts at 8 am for office workers, which already puts night owls at a disadvantage, but experts say that the trend applies internationally as well.

"If evening types have to work in the early morning, they won't rate their work ability as high as morning types. The reverse would be true as well. If normal business hours were 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., the early morning types would feel worse than evening types," Northwestern University professor Kristen Knutson told CNN.

Even after accounting for other variables, night owls showed an increased tendency to get less sleep, be unmarried and be unemployed.

Previous studies have also shown some unfortunate health implications for night owls, including increased likelihood of developing diabetes, cardiovascular problems, and muscle loss, for example, even when getting the same number of hours of sleep as non-owls.

Just because night owls don't perform as well in mornings doesn't mean they're necessarily bad workers and if deployed well, they can be an asset to a company, Bishop's University professor Suzanne Hood told CNN.

"For example, the employee who seems like a slow starter in the morning might be the person who's most able to work effectively into the evening to meet an important deadline," she said. "If there is some opportunity for flexibility in scheduling, allowing employees some control over what time of day they complete their work may help to optimize performance and productivity."

Yes, the forces of routine can influence whether you're a lark or an owl — having to work an early morning shift at the coffee shop, for example — but that's not the whole story. Genetics are also believed to play a role so if your parents were early risers, you're more likely to be one, too, and exposure to daylight can influence your chronotype as well.

But what is clear is that night owls and morning larks have very different brains, and it appears to hold a surprising amount of sway in our lives.

h/t: CNN