Do you rise and shine or rise and whine?

Sharad Benoy, 24, who works as a process analyst for a leading company in Mumbai, hates Monday mornings. After a weekend of late nights and later mornings, Benoy finds it a Herculean task to wake up at seven so he can reach his workplace — which takes one-and-a-half hours to reach — on time. But a lifelong habit of forcing himself out of bed has ensured that Benoy manages to fulfill the task.

“During school, I would fall asleep on the pot in the morning. College was a different deal though. Attendance wasn’t a big issue, and I managed to bunk most of my morning lectures.” Of course, Benoy made sure his parents thought he had afternoon college. But all that changed when he went to Bangalore to do his MBA. “There was internal evaluation and attendance was compulsory, which meant I never missed early morning lectures. That sort of prepared me for my current ‘ordeal’.”    

Benoy is among a fairly large group of people who would prefer to be able to get to work a little later, or as he puts it, “at a more flexible time”. But then, the world as we know it starts early in the morning. As neurologist and sleep pattern specialist Preeti Devnani puts it, “The body clock functions in accordance with the sun’s pattern, unless conditioned otherwise. If you are not someone who deals with an intrinsic sleep disorder, waking up early in the morning is the best way to kick-start your day.”

And unless your job allows you to do so, waking up as you will is not an option. Vicky Barot, 26, is a copywriter at a leading ad agency, which means working at crazy hours; even way past midnight sometimes. But that doesn’t exempt him from having to get to work early the next day. “And for me, waking up early has been a perennial problem.”

Barot had a tougher time at the earlier agency he worked in, where getting in later than 10.30am meant losing half day’s pay. “Since many of us  worked late, we made a plan. We all left our swipe cards (which record the time you come in) in the office, and one of us had to be at work earlier the next day to swipe the others’ cards and get them attendance,” says Barot.

Compulsion to report for work at a given time notwithstanding, human beings work better at a certain time of the day depending on their ‘chronotype’. Your chronotype determines whether you are a ‘lark’, more productive during the day, or an ‘owl’, more productive in the evenings. Devnani says that modern work pressures force people to adapt themselves to work at a certain time of the day irrespective of their chronotype. But productivity is a different issue.

Aarti Damania, a 24-year-old marketing manager, reaches work at 9.30am sharp and puts in the nine hours required of her. But its only post 2.30pm that she really gets a lot of work done. “It’s just that I am more active during those hours, even though I feel bright and sprightly early in the morning.” Benoy too says that it’s only post 3-4pm — a few hours before he leaves work — that he feels the most alert.

The trick, then, is to be able to recognise the part of the day you are most productive and maximise efforts during that period. Music maestro AR Rahman is known to give his films’ producers and directors sleepless nights by calling them over for music sessions past midnight.

Numerologist Bhavikk Sangghvi, 29, meets most of his clients in the evening or at night. “I am more accurate with my predictions when I work later in the day,”  says Sangghvi, who can afford to work at hours that suit him. Others, though, have to master the art of adapting. 

(Some names have been changed on request)