This is one of the most cleverly written linkbait titles I've seen. Night owls will click on it in the hope of hearing flattering news. But the grey matter is all in one particular region, and is correlated only with decreased empathy and agreeableness.
phys.org/news/2020-06-n…
phys.org/news/2020-06-n…
Now that I think about it, though, it's not at all surprising that being a night owl is inversely correlated with being pro-social. When I used to stay up late (before I had kids) it was explicitly in order to have big blocks of time to work without being interrupted.
One advantage of staying up late over getting up early, as a way to get blocks of time to work, is that you can control when you stop working: you stop when you feel too tired, rather than when the rest of the world wakes up and starts interrupting you.
Since, as I've written before (paulgraham.com/makersschedule…) the mere possibility of being interrupted makes one less productive, an hour at night feels more valuable to me than one in the morning.
If you're on a roll late at night, you can keep working. The price will be that you feel tired the next day, but you can choose to pay it. But if you're on a roll in the morning and your kids wake up, or people start to call you, you're stopping whether you want to or not.
