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by inciampati 1218 days ago
That second tank is caused by light at night.

In my opinion, most people who say they are night owls are just light sensitive.

If we didn't have so much light in our environment at night we would be bored to sleep. On top of this, there is also a physiological effect from light. It suppresses melatonin and makes you feel newly awake to be in anything above the intensity of candlelight.

Of course there are social elements to staying up late and partying. But unless you are a party animal (and it's great if you are, the world needs more happy socialization) it's hard to believe that this causes you to stay up late every night.

1 comments

> That second tank is caused by light at night.

I don't know. If anything, maybe not total light, but some kind of inside/outside delta?

I am light sensitive. I tolerate only two states: very dark and very bright. The average underlit indoors people keep during the day, when there's not that much sunlight coming in, but enough for them to keep the lights off - those shut me down very quickly.

I normally thought of it in terms of not enough light, but I just realized it's not exactly it. There are cases when, during the day, the total of sunlight + artificial light in the room is squarely in the underlit, sleep-inducing zone, but only few hours later, once it's dark outside, the same amount of artificial light is enough for my mind to consider the room bright enough.

Still, the "second tank" effect doesn't feel light-related. It's fast-acting - one moment I'm tired out of my mind, the next one I realize someone just plugged me up to a fresh battery - and the change occurs without any obvious prompt like changing locations or light levels.

As for social element, I'm not a party animal. But I am someone who suffers from something like 報復性熬夜 - "revenge bedtime procrastination". The late-night ours, after everyone around me is asleep and couldn't possibly bother me anymore, are the only time I feel I can finally unwind, relax, and recover. I've had this for a long time, but I'm fairly certain it's a downstream effect - that is, my difficulty getting up and extra energy kicking it after dark were something I've had for much, much longer.

I liked this phrase "revenge bedtime procrastination". In my case there is often this parameter that I do not want the day to end, I feel I did not accomplish enough during the day or that I did not have enough "me" time and I spend the nights in front of my PC or watching a movie/series.