Thelife- Many YouTubers are known for their night owl schedules.
- It could be because there is a correlation between creativity and the night owl chronotype, but it could also be self-inflicted.
- Insider spoke to YouTubers about their sleeping habits and why they like working when the world is asleep.
- The author struggled to stay up past 2 a.m. but felt a surge of creativity in the late evening.
- Many said they enjoy the stillness and quiet of the late nights because it fuels their creativity.
- However, the schedule should be used with caution as there are some physiological risks according to
sleep expert Dr Nerina Ramlakhan.
I've stayed up all night maybe twice in my life — my 27th birthday, and when I got really into binge-watching "Shameless" as a teenager. But I tried it again to follow what I've coined the "YouTuber sleep schedule" and see whether a late-night way of life really inspires the imagination.
Studies have shown how
YouTubers don't really have to worry about this, and often when watching their videos, I'll hear the creator say they are recording at 4 a.m., or they might cut to their future selves editing really late at night or early in the morning. Tana Mongeau, for example, is notorious for her late nights and later starts, and has been known to sleep through important business meetings and even her best friend's surgery.
This made me start questioning why YouTubers seem to have abysmal sleep schedules, and what benefit, if any, this habitual late night cycle has for their careers.
Sleep and creativity go hand in hand
YouTuber Garrett Watts told Insider he's struggled with his sleep as long as he can remember. He references his lack of routine often on his channel, including one vlogging project where he attempted to get up at 5 a.m. every day.
"I've always had this weird theory about my family, like were my ancestors weird cave protectors that had to keep watch at night?" he said. "I have no idea why I'm so nocturnal. But something that you're going to find time, and time, and time, and time again with
Commentary YouTuber Kavos told Insider he also has the "worst sleeping pattern imaginable."
"I wake up at 9:30 p.m. and stay up until like 1 p.m. the next day," he said. "Then go back to sleep until 8/9 ... Or, like yesterday, I just didn't sleep."
He said he's definitely a night owl, but his schedule started getting a bit out of control when he stayed up until 9 a.m. one night to finish a load of work and it just hasn't recovered since.
One aspect that doesn't help is the fact Kavos lives in the UK and the majority of his audience is American. Being a commentary YouTuber, he has to be "on the ball" to cover the latest trending topics. Being his own boss helps him dictate whether he just doesn't sleep one night because he wants to keep up to date with everything that's going on.
"I'm naturally up later because my audience is and that's when a lot of drama goes down," he said. "I can't complain really because I used to stay up before I did this for a career anyway."
I struggled to stay up much later than 2 a.m. after a full workday
I'm also a night owl. I struggle with early starts and I'm much more productive after midday. Even so, it was clear I don't have the stamina that I used to when attempting this schedule for myself one recent Friday evening.
I knew I had nothing to do on Saturday thanks to the coronavirus, so it felt like a good day to stay up as late as possible without too much damage being done by sleeping in the next morning. But I struggled to stay up much later than 2 a.m. after a full workday.
I had a late interview at 8 p.m. and definitely felt a surge of energy to get things done afterwards. I even got a burst of creativity at around 10 p.m. and wrote down some copy that had been rattling round in my head, then fired off some emails to sources and contacts on the West Coast who normally wouldn't hear from me until the morning.
I probably won't make a habit of working late, especially as the lines between work and home life are already so blurred at the moment. But I can certainly see the attraction — the quiet transquility makes it much easier to find that intense concentration I'm always chasing.
Watts said he often prefers to work at night because there are fewer distractions. Sometimes he tries to sit down and edit during the day and it's just "a lost cause" because he can't get into the zone.
"There's something to be said for the creativity that thrives at nighttime when the rest of the world is down," he said. "That flow state, that hyper-focused mode as they call it, that any musician or artist or anyone who makes anything will tell you about, I think that's much easier to tap into at night when all distractions are gone."
Psychologist Perpetua Neo told Insider in a previous article that creatives can often feel that "everything becomes beautiful at night."
"It can be beautiful in a melancholic way," she said. "And creatives tend to draw this melancholy and reflectiveness as a source of inspiration."
'I do feel a different vibe at night'
Filmmaker and YouTuber David Lehre has always had a night owl schedule as well, staying up until 3 or 4 a.m. then taking naps during the day. He told Insider he feels better working at night because nobody talks to him, calls him, or emails him, and he can really absorb himself in a project.
"I do feel a different vibe at night," he said. "I feel like the world settles down and I can just hone in on what I'm working on."
He said one person had a theory that it's because there's less energy being projected into the world around you at that time.
"If there's people walking around, there's people talking, there's cars driving around, all those things give off energy," he said. "And at night time when nobody's walking around, no cars are driving, and there isn't this energy percolating around, it kind of allows you to focus in."
The quiet means he can dedicate his full attention to craft whatever he's making, with a different ability for processing things in his mind.
"You can go with the flow with the creativity and there's no boundaries with hours or time," he said. "It's just, this is what I want to make, and I'm going to make it whenever it strikes me."
Each sleep phase has an important role
Dr Nerina Ramlakhan has been helping people improve their sleep for 25 years. She told Insider that sometimes people give themselves this label of "night owl" when actually they've formed patterns of behavior that build and train a night owl physiology — delaying their release of the sleep hormone melatonin with blue light from electronic devices, and oversleeping in the morning, for example.
"If you stay up late, and you oversleep in the morning, that creates a kind of hangover called sleep inertia, which means that you're less inclined to eat breakfast because you don't have an appetite," Ramlakhan told Insider. "This starts to lower the metabolism because you're not eating until later, and you shift the whole
The problem with burning the midnight oil is that each sleep phase plays a role in our physiology. Sleep before 12 a.m., for instance, is really important for energy, metabolism, and re-balancing the thyroid. Sleep experts also have a theory that there is a period in the night which is where our brain does most of its regenerative work and clears out all the junk it has accumulated over the day.
"People who are suffer from metabolic disorders, adrenal exhaustion or chronic fatigue, it's really important they are getting those early phases of sleep," said Ramlakhan. "But ironically, it's often the people who are going to bed too late who have got those things, and they find it difficult to break the pattern."
'Maybe you haven't suffered enough yet'
She said people often only seek help with their sleep if they completely burn out and break down because of it. Many of the creators Insider spoke to said they didn't feel any negative impacts on their
Over the ten years she was working at a psychiatric clinic, she saw people with depression, anxiety, and addictions who had been messing around with their sleeping patterns so much they were running themselves into exhaustion.
Without sleep, you cannot exercise effectively, if at all, and you're more likely to make less healthy choices about your lifestyle and diet — living off sugary foods, caffeine, and even drugs to increase your energy during the day and pills or alcohol to help knock you out at night.
There's also a tendency to start withdrawing and isolating yourself if you're staying up beyond when everyone else has gone to bed and asleep when everyone else is awake.
"Sleep is a reflection of everything — of the way we live, and the way we've lived, and everything that goes on in our lives," Ramlakhan said. "The body and the nervous system keep the score."
Something's got to give, and sometimes that's your sleep
Ramlakhan said she thinks it's a bit of a myth that all creatives are night owls, but there is a benefit to working late at night many people could take advantage of regardless of their chronotype. When she is on a book deadline, she often wakes up about 3 a.m. and gets some writing done because it's such a tranquil time of night.
"We all naturally wake up between 2 and 4 in the morning," she said. "If you look at the structure of our sleep, human beings are designed to be biphasic ... So there is some flexibility built into the design of our sleep. We've all got different routines and rhythms and it really is about finding your innate rhythm."
She has written five non-negotiables for getting better sleep in her role as a sleep expert for Silentnight. They are eating breakfast first thing in the morning, limiting caffeine intake, drinking plenty of water, getting into bed earlier, and keeping electronic devices out of the bedroom.
Sleep should improve after 7 to 10 days of doing these things, she said, and after that, you can start experimenting a bit.
Watts said he's working on splitting the difference, because he still wants to be nocturnal to some degree while also being a "functional human being" and interacting with the world when it's awake. He's started a plan during lockdown of making sure he wakes up before 11 a.m. every day.
"I need to work on that kind of still being a night owl but still being part of my world too," he said. "And I think I can do that because come on, waking up at 11? Those standards are like pretty low enough to where I think I can reach them."
For other creators like Kavos, a late schedule will probably just always be part of the way he works. In order for some creators to continue to be as successful as they are, something's gotta give, and often, that's a bedtime.
"I have sacrificed many bedtimes," he said. "It's just part of the job."
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