Are You An Early Bird or a Night Owl?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Alternatively: Which would you RATHER be?

When you rise and shine (or fall off your bed — assuming you sleep on a bed, and not a couch, a car seat, a futon, the floor, or a pile of hay), is it early in the morning or sometime right before noon? ...Or even later than that? When do you go to bed? Before the night's KoopaTV article is actually published, or many hours afterward?

The basic question for the Splatoon Splatfest starting this Saturday (25th at 12 AM Eastern time) is: Are you an Early Bird, or are you a Night Owl?

EARLY BIRD vs. NIGHT OWL!

 
I am firmly on Team Early Bird. Not because I really am much of an Early Bird, but because I want to be one.

First, to get this point out of the way: I'm not more productive at night. I don't think I'm more productive in the mornings, either. Even though I haven't statistically kept track of this sort of thing, I still like to think that the time of day doesn't factor into my productivity.

I work faster when there's a deadline approaching. For KoopaTV, the deadline is midnight (Eastern time). For someone in school trying to budget their time, it may be 8 AM before the first class begins. I'll procrastinate whether it's a morning deadline, an afternoon deadline, an evening one, or a midnight one.

It's a very sad state of affairs, but the point is that the time of day doesn't matter because I'll change my whole schedule to match it. The side-effect is that my sleeping patterns are messed up and I accumulate a sleep deficit. That isn't just a problem with me: Sleep deficits are widespread across the entire world.

Night Owls seem to be the type of folk who stay up really late in their bed playing Pocket Card Jockey on their 3DS instead of sleeping. ...That happens to describe me, and I don't WANT that. It's not worth it.

Playing Pocket Card Jockey from 10 PM to 1 AM.
My lack of sleep that Tuesday night is not why we were grumpy for the Pokémon GO Q&A Wednesday. That was genuinely terrible.

Just last night, I was up past 2 AM really late at night talking with Rawk about KoopaTV's next videogame for 2016. We have a nice collection of games we've made exclusively for KoopaTV already, and we want to have our fourth videogame be as good or even better, so we've actually been planning this in advance. Then we got some distractions, and I ended up reading some of the Wikipedia pages on the Nation of Islam. They believe some really weird stuff.

Saturday night was spent reading Wikipedia pages such as Arthur Bremer's, the guy who tried to assassinate four-time presidential candidate and Alabama governor, George Wallace. That's a super-interesting Wikipedia article and one of my favourite ones ever. The prose is amazing and some of it isn't encyclopedic. Great stuff.

After Saturday night's reading, I was playing Pocket Card Jockey at 1 to 2 AM Sunday in bed.

Even though it's great, all of that stuff is completely USELESS and unproductive activity! I'm staying up late instead of sleeping for absolutely trivial knowledge gain. Anyone who has ever told you that it's never a waste of time to learn something is totally wrong. You might learn something everyday, but that's just an excuse you have made to be unproductive and not go to bed. (And once in bed, actually sleep instead of play Pocket Card Jockey.)

Now, sure, you can procrastinate in the morning, too. But if you are deadline-driven like me, you probably will do less of it. Why? Because you usually have somewhere to go in the morning, be it work or school. So if you wake up early to do something, you're more likely to focus on that since that deadline is always apparent and limited.

Working late at night? The night hours are treated like some kind of reserve bank. “Oh, what difference does it make if I get 5 hours or 4 hours of sleep? I'll make it up later on the weekend.” But according to the National Sleep Foundation, this “catch-up sleep” does not actually exist.

The National Sleep Foundation also treats being a “lark” (their term for Early Bird) and night owl the same, as long as you have a consistent schedule and also are in tune with your circadian rhythm. That thing (also known as your internal clock) changes during adolescence, causing teenagers to naturally feel more alert at night than day. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for everyone else), society isn't ran by teenagers, so life marches on regardless of their alertness. For this reason, though, Night Owl is going to win Popularity for the Splatfest. That might not be a good thing if you want to win, though.

Here's a related story of Jean-Paul in Seinfeld. His story is that he missed the Olympics marathon due to clock-related issues, and even Kramer's internal mental clock failed him. Jean-Paul was so screwed up from bad sleeping that he took Kramer's hot tea instead of water! That gave him poor results.

...So... Yeah. That wouldn't happen if he was an Early Bird.

Quite frankly, I blame the media — and this time, KoopaTV is included in my condemnation — for having a lot of the interesting “primetime” stuff when people should be sleeping. You got presidential debates lasting for three hours and past 11 PM. You have the disastrous The Game Awards in 2014 going right to midnight. You got KoopaTV articles going up after 11 PM, but at least those aren't LIVE. You can read them on-demand, for free!

The culture is trying to shape us all into being night owls. “If you don't stay up this late, you'll miss this exciting thing that'll only be shown at this time!” (In this respect, people living in Pacific Time have it better than Eastern Time.)

I call for this to be rejected, for the sake of our livelihoods.

Aren't the sounds of these nice birds much more soothing than the chaotic nightlife?

...Okay, nevermind. Those bird sounds are terrifying, like you're being shot by Wendy Oldbag's ray gun in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All. But, let that not distract from the point! Go to bed early and wake up early, and you will feel so much better about your life.


ShinyGirafarig contributed that Team Early Bird video. Let her know in the comments if you liked it, or prefer her plushie contributions that she usually offers KoopaTV for Splatfest time. Also, let Ludwig know what you think about his Early Bird stance!


It's hard enough knowing what kind of avian you are, but the government mucking around with the time doesn't help. End Daylight Savings Time! 
Daylight Savings Time is an arbitrary, disgusting thing that complicates your life as it relates to timing.
KoopaTV is generally supportive of avians, and our favourite character designs are birds. So either side winning is good, in that respect.
The previous Splatfest article before this one covered Europe's regarding travel. Travel itineraries may screw up your sleep schedule as well!
Click here for the FINAL Splatoon Splatfest article!
Ludwig talks about why he likes Pocket Card Jockey so much in this article.