I recently came across this quiz.The results were:

Score: 30
MELATONIN ONSET OCCURS AT ABOUT 11:30 PM
YOUR "NATURAL" BEDTIME IS AT ABOUT 1:15 AM

which confirmed what I already knew: I’m very much a night owl.  Many of the questions are phrased like "if you could choose any time you wanted to do X, when would you?" which got me thinking: I work for an awesome company that offers a lot of flexibility in our work schedules, why don’t I schedule my time to work with my natural circadian rhythms?

In college I’d usually save my programming homework for late at night because that’s when I felt the most alert and it was easy for me to get into the flow of what I was working on.  I quit doing homework during the early afternoon because that was the hardest time for me to focus.  I like to have a long enough time to get into something, but not so long that it’s hard to maintain a mental effort.  Upon reflection, four hour chunks seemed about right.  I do need to spend some time in the office to coordinate with the other people I work with.  This week I’ve been working in the office from 10:00 AM until 2:00 PM and from 8:00 PM until midnight.

It is interesting how it has affected the rest of my life. I’ve been eating breakfast right before I go to work and I haven’t been hungry at noon; I’ve been skipping lunch altogether.  I do feel hungry after I get home and I’ve been having a small meal.  I eat dinner with my family at 6:30 PM.  I do get hungry late at night and I’ve been eating another small meal around 10:30 PM.  My kids go to bed around 8:30 PM and my wife likes to go to bed around 9:30 PM (she’s very much a morning person) so I have the house to myself to work without distraction.  I really enjoy having my afternoons free.  I’ve been running errands, playing with the kids, taking afternoon naps, etc.; many which were difficult to get done before.  I have really enjoyed the schedule change so far.  I’ll provide an update in a week.