Early bird beats night owl when it comes to performing at work

The early bird doesn’t just catch the worm – when it comes to giving your all at work, the night owl loses every time for the want of a good night’s sleep.

That’s according to researchers in Finland – a place where night isn’t so much a part of the day, as six months of the year – who looked at what is known as a person’s chronotype, which measures the time you’re most awake during the day.

They concluded that people classed as night owls could be twice as likely to underperform at work and face an increased risk of early retirement due to disability.

The study of more than 5,000 men and women classified participants as morning ‘larks’, who do better first thing, ‘owls’ who do better in the evening, and an intermediate group with no particular preference for either.

And the results – published online in the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine – found that owls were much more likely to report poor performance at work than their counterparts.

While 28 per cent of men and 24 per cent of women classed as owls acknowledged that they were underperforming at work, that fell to just 15 per cent and 12 per cent for larks, and 17 per cent and 14 per cent for the intermediate group.

An inability to sleep wasn’t just down to a mind spinning with internal stresses; those who sat down for most of the day found it tougher to doze off, as did those with a predilection for unhealthy lifestyles.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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