When midnight is your prime time
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So Isn’t it strange. Some people’s best thinking turns up with the sunrise. Others find it waiting for them at midnight.
If you’re the latter, you already know the signs: the ideas start flowing when the rest of the world has gone quiet, the distractions have finally stopped, and your mind sharpens instead of slowing. You feel more alive at 11 p.m. than you ever do at 9 a.m.
The hours you feel most awake are the hours to protect.
This is not about pushing through exhaustion or catching up on work you didn’t have time for in the day. I’m talking about academics whose natural energy curve peaks in the evening, whose most original research or most eloquent writing comes when others have switched off.
For you, forcing early-morning writing blocks can be like swimming against the tide — exhausting and unnecessarily slow.
Align your schedule with your real peak hours and everything changes. This means working late at night, and pairing that with either a 12 noon start, or afternoons off, depending on what works for your energy and/or your semester schedule. (My PhD supervisor used to wake up at 12 noon and go to bed at 4am).
When my clients do this, we see:
Research and writing done in less time, because they’re working when their brain is sharpest. When everyone else is… gone.
Fewer false starts and rewrites, because clarity comes naturally.
A lighter, more sustainable rhythm, because they build in rest during the day and it feels blissful and secret to work at night.
If your creativity wakes up after dark, stop trying to train it out of you. Make space for it — and protect the downtime that keeps you fresh.
The point isn’t to match someone else’s idea of productivity. It’s to hit your stride, every day, on your own terms.
