Why Do You Only Get Motivated After Midnight? | Night Owls

Carpe Noctem

"dopamine dopamine dopamine dopamine dopamine dopa dopa dopa ddddddddddddddddd-dopamine" - Dr. K

I definitely workout in the middle of the night when I feel motivated and also at 4am when I wake up and feel motivated sometimes

What happens when I stay up cuz I can't sleep and then try to go to bed at 6-8 pm the next day and still can't sleep and stay up two days. Then when I go to bed that next night I'm almost too exhausted to

So, I am the oddball for getting up at 3am and actually follow up on my motivation?

Removing the cost out of the eqn -> mindfulness (/ ignoring?)

I am so fortunate to work 2PM to 10PM as a night owl with severe adhd. I usually stay up until 3 and get up at 10z anyone who kinda balks at that I point out do they get up 4 hrs before starting work. It’s always NO. And then Silence 😂 in that 4 hrs I often get in extra tasks like laundry. At night after work I spend my time on things that interest me. One of those is gaming.

Lifelong night owl here. Decades. My current working theory is that when I begin to get tired it affects first the voices in my head, THEY go to sleep. Then I am FREE to create! Have learned to identify pretty much the actual MOMENT it occurs. >>ding!<< Now it's a race to get something done, while I can. Thanks for your good work! Aloha

Wow, this video was a ring for my finger, from 2 years ago!

the issue is that my 6pm switch happens at 10pm and my parents get mad if I'm up past midnight 😭😭

The main reason I get motivated at night is that it's quiet. No one around, nothing is disturbing me.
I could EASILY clean my apartment, do laundry etc every night, but unfortunately I have neighbors.
I WISH that was something to blame on, that I don't do it, but that disturbs them, my neighbors. When I know that the two wall to wall and ceiling to floor neighbors are somewhere else, the same night, I HAVE cleaned AND done my laundry.
The problem with cleaning during the night isn't the vacuum cleaner, the motor sound doesn't go outside the apartment, the problem is that every damn little touch against furniture, and God forbid, a wall is like a thunderstorm with really loud lightning. You can hear everytime your neighbor opens and closes a cabinet. If you pull out a drawer in an old bureau (with no rails or other smothering stuff) it's that thunderstorm again.
You can do the dishwash, old classic by hands 😅, if you are really careful and don't bang a saucepan or something like that in the sink, that may wake up everyone in the building. (A little exaggerated, but at least my neighbor above 😅)
I don't knit or anything like that, I'm "mentally allergic" to such. BUT I have loads of work to do, such building a new cabinet in the kitchen, a new clothes cabinet for my bedroom, put up new wallpapers, painting a lot of stuff... And much more. Nothing that I can do during the night, it either include noisy machine tools or touching the walls and both.

I'm sitting here, nearly chewing foam like an overgiddy (don't know if that's even a word?) horse before the race. And can't do nothing. Everything I want, and NEED, to do I can't do during the night (much more things than redecorating and building stuff in my home) includes some sort of noise 😟.

I have always had problems to even go to bed in decent time, and even more to sleep when other people do.

"Night owl", yes but also the weird thing that my inner clock has 28 hours.
Not joking. I have followed my own cycle for two weeks twice, a couple of years between.
The first day and night is basically a 20 hours day, followed by a 10 hours night. Then the clock is happy, and I have a day of 19-20 hours, and a 8 - 9 hours night.
Every time (which is about all the time) I try to reset my clock, I end up with not sleeping, just dozing off a couple of minutes now and then, when I'm in bed, hoping to sleep. Literally a couple of minutes, I can't stop myself from checking the time. (Don't make me remove my wake-up-clock with sunrise imitation. I'm helpless without it, I won't get out of bed until nature calls very loud and clear, so to speak. Other kinds of wake up clocks either give me a stress shock, or I throw it in the floor. THROW. Thousand pieces. That is, if I manage to fall asleep, just waiting for the the alarm to go off.😒.

This has led to a situation where I sleep two days (daytime), is out of bed 36 - 40 hours, in bed for 6-8 hours (Sleeping? Not so much.) Force myself out of bed, even though every cell in my body say "WTH?? It's time to sleep!!".
Then I sometimes actually can sleep around 22 - 23 (10-11 pm), and can get up at 7 - 8.
Then it starts over again. Can't sleep at night. I can spend 48 hours up, not even laying down, easily. The third day my brain starts to shut down.

Sleeping pills? I can't use "real" sleeping pills, tried a bunch of different, I literally (I mean LITERALLY) sleep for 18 - 20 hours, then it takes at least five hours to make the body move and eyes to stay open. I don't find it especially interesting to be waked up after eight hours, being like paralyzed for the rest of the day, and take another pill at "bedtime", which is when I'm just about to wake up.
IF there is a chance that I can sleep, I can take a Zopiklon/Zopiclone/Imovane (the same, just different names), to speed up the process to fall asleep, BEFORE my brain kicks in again.
BUT, if I DON'T fall asleep, I'm like a zombie the day after, and, as usual, wake up when it's time to go to bed 😭😭😭😭😭

This isn't insomnia, it's just a totally fucked up inner clock. With or without my cellphone beside the bed. I've tried without, even worse. It's a much greater chance I will fall asleep, if I can wear out my brain on something really boring (not this channel 😅). Distraction for the brain, so I can relax. Mark 'FOR' the brain. ADHD-people can relate, the brain and I disagree about many things. Sleep is just one.

You get all the right topics!

Thank you so much for this video! Spot on!!!

Could it be we associate mornings with things and situations we really dont like, like work and school? I learned that i can be more productive overall when i get up early, but years ago i was a after-midnight guy.

omg.

so why the hell are parents giving their kids ipad when they eat breakfast or let them have their phone while eating food in the morning or whatever. I'm about to implement this I have a younger brother and i'm about to change everything about his routines no matter what he feels about it.

Why do i feel good about taking my vyvanse 1-2 hours after i wake up, when im fully awake in head? I have taken the meds immeditley when i wake up and i feel horrible but when i take it after laying down for 1-2 hours it works.

Light and noises triggers my temper and its impossible to focus to anything. I find peace in the night only. As a artist, days are grave for me. I cant create anything. I feel like im dead. But in the nights, ı feel alive.

We on that all-nighter-to-reset-sleep-schedule rn. Woooooo yay.

I've been working remotely as a software developer for over 3 years and I've found that both the amount of work I'm able to do without forcing myself and the time at which I find it preferable to do the work, can vary vastly on different days. There are days where I work first thing in the morning, even skipping breakfast. On others, I kinda goof around, playing video games, watching TV and doing chores, until sitting down to work only a couple of hours before bed. There are days when I don't do any work at all, and there are days when I work all day. While this variance and lack of consistency is kinda annoying, it's well above the sufficient level. Also, in the past I've found that by simply having more work to do (like a weekend job) makes me more productive overall.

Yeah, it's literal me, not after midnight, the effects start at around 8pm, strongest at 11pm, the silence of the night is awesome. But im afraid it's some kind of disorder? Or is it the brain releasing subtances to make me sleep, but i feel motivated?

ATP fuels the brain and Adenosine is the waste product. As adenosine builds the brain becomes more fatigued thus granting less energy towards dopamenergic reaction.

Become my mentor i want to follow how you connect these ideas

Note to self:

🟢The more separation (between work & play you can do, the better) ⏯️ don't work at home

You can actually cultivate the high motivation state (e.g. shower thoughts/a walk in nature/lying in bed) THROUGHOUT the day.

Therefore...

🟢Take multiple walks, multiple showers, and things like that

(Adenosine has a blunting effect om dopamine.
Dopamine levels, (= the urge to play video games) is high early in the day, and decreases as the day progresses
On the other hand, adenosine starts out low, and gradually increases as the dat lly progresses)

PSYCH (Future Discounting, Opportunity Cost of Motivation):

(Our brain chooses an immediate gain over an uncertain future gain)

Motivation is a feeling, and it increases at night
Does behavior increase at night? (No)
When you feel super motivated at night, do you engage in the behavior? (Not really)
When we go to bed at night, there is no cost to motivation
At night, our motivation can increase unchecked, and spiral out of control
There's no opportunity cost coz you're not giving anything up
Motivation can rise to epic proportions coz there's no balance (which is action) is to the motivation
In the morning (or day), it's motivation vs. dopaminergic action (e.g. playing video games). But at night, it isn't

SHOWER THOUGHTS:
Coz 1) you're nor really distracted & you can't do much on your phone. 2) no mental distraction
3) there's a certain amt of physical routeness (BTW, taking a walk& doing yoga achieves the same effect)
This combination of 3 factors leads to profound thinking

good video, shit hand writing

I start my day feeling like shit and my mood and motivation gradually improves as the day goes on and feeling better and have more appetite at night. When its time to sleep i dont wanna sleep bc my "day" has just started and i have only just wanted to do things but its time to sleep already and i feel tired. Then the next day i wake up feeling like shit and not doing things again

How to do if your distraction is reading books online?

Is this also why I become hyper motivated to do stuff after work when I'm at work, but then when I get home it all goes away?

Sounds like this video isn't for real night owls. It's for people pretending to be night owls because their schedules have gotten messed up. (Hint: He mentioned "pounding caffeine" early on. Real night owls don't need caffeine to stay up late or to focus later in the day.)

I watched over 10h of his content and it helped me a lot.

This is yet another video where the subject doesn’t fit my expectations of what he will talk about, in a very positive way.

I was always studying late into the night but that caused me to be fat and rather bad in school.
I struggle to study in the morning, and my life still requires plenty of studying.
My mind is clear in the morning but my motivation sucks big time.

I’ve noticed that a 30min light run makes my mind work much better. Weight lifting helps with controlling negative emotions.

The best work I have done: in a library at university or in my office once I got into graduate school. Preparing problem sets when other students are there in the trenches with you hits different. The same with slamming 4 hours of research at 7 pm after 12 hours mowing lawns under the sun when it's 30C outside... I think most of it has worked partly because of tiredness and partly because there are schedules and habits that just make minimize distractions mid day.

I studied first thing in morning just not long. I'd come back to it through out the day. I do this still. I'll get up practice my guitar. In school I used cram all night. Never did well. What night time brings me creativity. Earlier in day I seem to not be as creative. It's routines i follow mindlessly. Gets things done though. Once all those are done, I get creative late night. So what I did was just add study to my routine. Huge improvement for grades as went from 2.5 GPA to 4.0 GPA and Dean's honor role.

Hey just wanted to add this note as an encouraging "bolster":
Dr. K mentions the "spiritual focus" is more spiritual because it doesn't have much science behind it BUT there actually is if you look up FOCUS v DIFFUSE mode (which are mental states our brain switches between). Understanding FOCUS v DIFFUSE has helped me understand the "shower/walking" thoughts come when we enter into unfocussed DIFFUSIVE thinking. Totally scientific (not psuedo scientific). I think he just may not have been aware of those terms etc.

Anyway, just thought i would add this note as an encouragement to anyone who might struggle with that portion.

Additionally, I think there are a lot of spiritual practices that engage with our mind in ways that we just haven't translated to understand psychologically and are often kind of just ahead of us in that way. Kind of like "do this spiritual practice, it somehow just works." and then later be like "oh that makes sense because that actually does X to our mind and chemistry" etc. Cool stuff.

Also not a spiritual guru or science guru, just love this stuff and the relationships between them.

Ha- I'm bipolar. Solved!

Yeah... I tried not giving into the midnight motivations for about half a year and the result was that i couldn't get myself motivated for anything during the day.
Then i gave in to the midnight motivation and guess what, the next day in the morning i was actually more motivated to do something than in half the year before that.

💥 The book "The Power of Now" and other works and lectures by Eckhart Tolle address exactly this state of mind that Dr. K is talking about. It helps you tune your mind to the present, eliminating all distractions, and thus, you find your true self. When that happens, you are no longer interested in dopamine-addictive activities because you wake up to a deeper reality that is not based on fleeting life pleasures, but on a long-lasting relationship with yourself and a different way of seeing life as a whole. All these problems arise from the fact that you don’t know who you really are at your deepest level. 🎉❤❤❤

Ah, yes, "They took a bunch of mice, and..."
The origin story of every scientific innovation since the dawn of time

I'm your typical guy who struggles with finding motivation for his writing and this insight into the inner workings of my cranium is immensely helpful. The dopamine train often does hit me first thing in the morning.