Thread by @raulpacheco

How does my “waking up at 4 am to work” in practice as it pertains to my relationships with students and research assistants and colleagues? Thread:

I have mentioned this before: I *used to* be a night owl. Most of my ex-boyfriends were night owls too, and I finished my dissertation writing from 9pm through 7am non-stop for months (I also survived on Safeway and Superstore 8- and 12-packs of burritos).

HOWEVER...

Getting a teaching job required me to have a decent 9am-5pm schedule, which was incredibly hard for me, a night owl. Also, did I mention most of my romantic relationships were with men who were night owls? Ok.

BUT... I started dating someone who woke up at 5 in the morning.

I loved the dude dearly. So much so, that I thought I was going to marry him. But me, night owl, him, early riser, things never would have worked out.

So I switched my chronotype around.

raulpacheco.org/2016/08/why-di…

Now, my schedule does not fit everyone. I work with night owls.

Also, please do note: I GO TO BED EARLY.

I use a bi-phasic 6+1.5 sleep schedule raulpacheco.org/2016/11/on-get…

I nap throughout the day. I nap a lot more on weekends, and try to take at least one full day off work (sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't, how the cookie crumbles).

How does waking up at 4 am and ending around 2:30pm ish work? (remember, I do eat breakfast, exercise and take some time off for mindfulness, and eat lunch).

My colleagues at CIDE, for some bizarre reason, LOVE early morning meetings, so it's taken years of haggling w/them.

A 9 am meeting completely fucks up my writing and research schedule. So, I have battled over the years (read: bargained) for later starts, and we've reached a nice compromise: 11 or 11:30am meetings, which totally work for me because by then my brain is 100% fried.

If, after lunch and my mid-day nap, I still have work to do, I try to make sure it's light (read: administrative stuff) or brain-engaging (read: meetings with students and colleagues). Nothing that exerts my brain beyond my normal limits, because then, I'm screwed.

Because my colleagues, students and RAs know (and have known for a long time) that I wake up at 4:00am, they respect when I close my office door and say "I'm having a nap, sorry". They also often send me stuff late at night so I can react to it early in the morning.

I try really hard NOT to check email in the morning, but because I have collaborators in Europe and the east coast of the US and Canada, I often have to at least give my inbox a quick glance before getting to work.

raulpacheco.org/2017/06/taking…

At any rate, 4 am works for me.