Daily routine: larks, owls and other birds

The division of people into “owls” and “larks” according to their preferences in terms of sleep and wakefulness is incomplete and should be reconsidered. This is proved by the biologist Arkady Putilov and his colleagues who study human sleep. There are other “birds” among us!

Russian scientists have studied the daily routine and sleep of a person and obtained results that can change the generally accepted notion that the world is divided into “larks” and “owls”. There are at least two more categories of “birds” that were previously neglected.

130 volunteers took part in the experiment of Arkady Putilov and his colleagues. All of them violated the regime of the day: they spent a day without sleep, performing various tasks of scientists. In addition, participants completed a detailed questionnaire on their sleep and wake preferences. And the questionnaire in this case is no less important than the results of 24-hour activity.

The fact is that Putilov has been dealing with the topic of sleep for more than 25 years. He drew attention long ago to the fact that a person’s sleep is usually studied using a single scale: “early-late.” Thus, scientists already automatically mean that if a person gets up early, then he also goes to bed early – or vice versa.

But who said that a different daily routine is impossible, for example, that people cannot get up early in the morning and go to bed late in the evening? And Arkady Putilov introduced the second scale – “morning-evening”. So the experiment and the questionnaire should have identified not two, but four types of people, differing in their preferences for sleep and awakening.

This is what happened. Twenty-nine of the study participants turned out to be comparatively clean early risers, while another 29 were equally clean night owls. But the remaining 44 – that is, almost half – fell into the category of “birds” previously unknown to science.

25 people made up a group called “high-energy”. Their daily routine assumed equal activity both in the morning and in the evening, and the study of their questionnaires led to the conclusion that these people need a little less time for sleep than everyone else: on average, 7,5 hours were enough for them – against 8, which considered a physiological norm.

The other 32 participants received the symbol “sleepy”. Both in the morning and in the evening they felt equally sluggish.

When little sleepers are placed in conditions where the duration of sleep is not limited in any way, they begin to sleep like all “normal people”

The fact that scientists have studied human sleep for many years, using just one scale, may seem surprising. “I myself was surprised for a quarter of a century and finally decided to publish the results experimentally confirming the predictions of my questionnaire,” Arkady Putilov told Psychologies. “It was developed back in 1990 and was created in accordance with psychometric procedures accepted in psychology.”

According to him, Australian scientist Rick Roberts created a similar questionnaire, for the first time using two scales to describe a person’s daily routine and sleep, but did not conduct confirmatory experiments and even the questionnaire itself has not yet been published.

By the way, it was Roberts who proposed the terms “high-energy” and “sleepy” for new types. Putilov considers them not very successful, however, there is no shortage of options now. Over the past few days, a flurry of calls from journalists has hit the scientist: a person’s dream is an inexhaustible topic.

“Scientific editors from The Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung have already called today, asking about bird names,” he says. “I laughed it off, advised them to study what their colleagues managed to come up with in a week.” And they managed to do a lot: from a mockingbird and a hummingbird to Lazy Bird (a famous jazz composition) and Crazy Singing Bird (a cartoon character – a bird that sings famous hits, godlessly out of tune).

Putilov admits that he has not yet thought about the possible practical application of his results. But he shared some more observations: the daily routine of the new “birds”, he believes, is flexible.

“Highly motivated vigorous activity allows a person to be “high-energy” – but then such a person can sleep for a month for 12 hours every day. However, I know this from my own experience – but I don’t know specific studies on this topic. And I can also say that when low sleepers are placed in conditions where the duration of sleep is not limited in any way, they begin to sleep, like all “normal people”. And their performance at the same time increases and exceeds the performance of “ordinary” people.

While science is dealing with new classifications, each of us is free to try on the conclusions of Arkady Putilov for our daily routine. And, for example, proudly declare yourself a bird, still unknown to science, if you really want to sleep both in the morning and in the evening. It seems that these same birds do not go for wintering to warm lands, but to us – don’t you think?

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