Night owl or early bird — who is more productive?
Monday, 9 March 2026
The Office Blueprint looks at workplace issues of both the serious and the mundane, including office politics, toxicity and anything else that might keep the HR department up at night.
Sue Brewster says getting up early is a bit of a family trait.
Growing up she can’t remember her parents lying in and she’s continued that pattern, waking most mornings at 6am and aiming to start the work day early, before the troops get to the office.
Admittedly, she’s got a lot to do as chief executive of the Auckland Medical Research Foundation, as well as a slew of non-profit and sports involvements. But she tries to get the more gnarly stuff done early in the morning.
“My peak time of clarity is really that first couple of hours when no-one else is around,” she tells The Post. “No distractions, I feel fresh, and I can get stuck in. I will often leave my hardest stuff for this time on purpose when I know I am best placed to tackle it.”
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Brewster says she essentially follows the circadian rhythm, waking at day break and then, by her own admission, waning towards the end of the day. She goes to bed early: “There’s nothing better than going to bed and reading a book, for me.”
Peak clarity comes at the opposite time of the day for Dean Morris. While he has to be a whirlwind of energy all day in his role as owner (with his wife) of Fabrication Specialists on the Hibiscus Coast, where he also oversees design, manufacturing and installation, he says his time where his brain is most attuned to creativity is at night.
“There was a point in my 30s and 40s where I did find more clarity in the morning but in my later 40s, as I started this business, I began to find the peace and quiet of the evening to be my best time to get stuck in.”
Morris goes into his office after dinner, puts on his quiet music, and gets to work on whatever is required, be it designing or answering emails. He fits the extra work around being a musician, working an album and organising regular Sunday sessions at his local pub.
He can’t really sleep in a lot with his schedule, but, he notes, when it is remotely possible he “sleeps in more than I should!”
What’s you biological chronotype?
Whether someone is an early bird (or “morning lark” as the British like to say) or a night owl is personal to their biological chronotype - in other words, genetically determined behavioural manifestations of their internal body clocks. Sleep behaviours can also be impacted by things like work schedules or hormones, but these don’t always obscure the time of the day an individual feels themselves to be most alert and awake.
Initially, it was thought about 60% of people tended to be early birds while about 40% were night owls, and as time has gone on, a few more animals have been added to the mix for nuance - for example, bears (50-55% of people) align with the sun, wolves are night owls (15-20%), lions are early birds (15-20%), and dolphins are light, erratic sleepers (10%).
A very recent study from last year by researchers at McGill University in Montreal, who combined brain imaging with questionnaires and medical records from more than 27,000 adults in the UK Biobank, revealed there was a lot that could be discovered about people grouped by their biological clock.
There were broadly two types of night owls - one associated with risky lifestyle behaviours and better cognitive performance (and largely found in younger people), and another strongly associated to smoking, depression and cardiovascular disease.
For early birds, (or the “morningness pattern”) there were three types - one which smoke and drank minimally and suffered worry and nervousness with few health issues; one was female-dominated, with a tendency to bad periods, and the final type, male-dominated with high hair balding patterns and high blood pressure.
Generally, “morningness” appears to be associated with (generally) being more optimistic, engaging in less risk-taking behaviour and better mental health, while “nightness” led to more depression, and worse overall health, but seemingly on average, a better IQ.
Productivity
Regardless of their chronotype, human beings can be productive or unproductive at any time of the day or night. But when people are undertaking a work day that is not aligned with their particular chronotype, it can lead to being unproductive.
This usually impacts owls who, if they have a usual 9-5 work day, can suffer what is known as “social jet lag”, making them more tired during the day and push them towards non-optimal habits like excess coffee drinking and eating to keep them awake.
This particularly affected creative people: “Subjects inclining towards the nocturnal dimension had higher scores in those components of creative thinking such as fluidity, flexibility and originality.”
The key for workplaces is to understand and ideally, allow for some accommodation with people’s body clocks to get the best out of them. Adapting the working week to facilitate better productivity among different people also underpins initiatives like the four-day week and flexible work. Associate Professor Paula O’Kane, a researcher at the University of Otago Business School, studies how work structures impact employee productivity and well-being.
Citing a study on the impact of a four-day week, in which workers reported enhanced work ability, reduced sleep problems, and decreased fatigue, she said the broad implication of it had been clear: “flexible and potentially individualised working arrangements can deliver similar benefits.”
Night owl Dean Morris and early bird Sue Brewster both manage others, and offer flexible working arrangements for this very reason.
Morris says he knows there will be some clients he can call at 7pm when he’s on a work roll and they will be able to talk through design sketches and other concepts with him, “because they’re working too. Others, I would not bother calling at that time”.
Brewster says she has always promoted flexibility. One member of her current team starts her work day at 10am, for example, and when she’s been asked to attend an early morning meeting that can’t be avoided, “she’s just not as sharp”.
“I attended a week-long Institute of Directors’ course in January last year, and there was a woman on that course that talked about becoming chair of a board of very high achieving individuals. But meetings were scheduled for 6pm at night for two hours,” she says.
“She found she was just getting nowhere; getting no buy-in from this group. So she changed the meetings to 7am in the morning, gave them all a high protein breakfast, and reported the difference was phenomenal - they were, she said, a different bunch of people!”