tell me more about it
What is the B-society? Is that a thing? Yes, actually :) Founded in Denmark several years ago, the aim is to encourage change based on the knowledge that there are A-people (or early risers) and B-people (the late risers) and that the difference lies within our genes that influence our circadian rhythms.
In some countries, such as Denmark, schools are already adapting and giving students the possibility of choosing a flexible schedule. It's been determined that while between 10-15% of people are A-people, 15-25% are B-people, with everyone else being somewhere in between.
chronobiology, chronotypes and the b-people
Chronobiology has been studied for a while and since the 70s there have been developments that include determining the existence of chronotypes, something that has been of particular interest over the past decade, too. These are a human attribute regarding whether someone is a morning or evening person when it comes to their biological rhythms, or circadian rhythms. Yes! That's right, that means that not everyone that struggles to get up early is necessarily just a lazy person :)
It has been found that there are genetic characteristics that determine if your circadian rhythms make you more of a lark or an owl—in short, we're walking-talking clocks, but we also respond to external cues.
Basically, this means humans are engineered to be sensitive to stimuli like light (and there's a massive difference between artificial and natural kinds) and sociological-society pressures, but our internal clocks determine what is most comfortable to us—what we generally do when we don't have other engagements.
obstacles to living according to our genetic clocks
The biggest issue here is clearly that, for the most part, society isn't ready for it. Better yet, it has never given this much consideration so it isn't accounted for. Many of our obligations throughout life demand that we follow the established rules and guidelines when it comes to schedules: school starts at the same time for everyone pretty much everywhere in the world, rush hour is pretty much the same everywhere too, and that's because many companies still maintain a fixed schedules policy with little to no flexibility. But there are other things, like how hard it can become to find a place to have lunch or dinner if you do so earlier or later than the accepted norm.
If you're curious about what's your chronotype (you probably already have a good suspicion, right?) and whether at first glance you're suffering because of it, there's this ongoing study from the Institute of Medical Psychology at Luwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, Germany, that has been gathering more data on the subject. The questionnaire is quick to fill and you get a brief analysis of your chronotype. Mine came with no surprises. I'm part of a very small percentage of people that are in the "extreme late chronotype", but luckily, the very flexible schedule policy we have makes it so that I don't suffer significant sleep debt, but I do sleep through a huge chunk of my weekends, as the research shows extreme types do when we're not bound by engagements and commitments.
what we're doing about it
It's no secret we care about happiness, I mean, I have the best job title ever, amirite? (What do you mean I'm biased?) :) We're permanently working on improvements—some minor tweaks, some major breaking changes—but allowing people extremely flexible schedules has always come with the package from day one. The B-Society's whole idea is to try and shift everything back enough time so that people with different chronotypes can live healthy and happy lives, even during weekdays.
There are things that can be done to try to tweak our biological clocks: for people that feel they go to bed too early and would like to enjoy more of their evenings, they should avoid bright lights (outdoors) in the morning, and instead seek that daylight in the afternoon (don't forget that around this time of year the sun sets at 4pm in London!). On the other hand, for people that would like to be able to go to bed earlier, they can try exposing themselves to a longer period of daylight (outdoors) in the morning, avoiding doing so in the evening.
At MetaBroadcast we don't have a starting, finishing or lunch time predetermined that everyone needs to follow. We ask that the entire team is around for Happy Hour, at noon, because it's very important that everyone is aware of what's going on and able to help out when needed. Other than that everyone can manage their own rhythms. While some prefer to come in at the crack of dawn, others arrive much later in the morning. Accordingly, some people leave much earlier than others who remain in the office long after the sun is set.
What about you? Are you an A or B-person? And if you're a B-person, I hope this helped you realise that finding it hard to wake up in the morning doesn't mean there's something wrong with you, you're probably just of a late type chronotype :) What kind of strategies do you fall back to to compensate for being a late riser, or someone around you?