Early birds and second mice

I had to chuckle. I was in a workshop yesterday listening to a story about a woman who uses her morning "quiet time" to read complicated real estate documents, sipping her tea, long before anyone else was moving about the office.

I am so *not* a morning person. If I read complicated documents -- if I read ANYTHING before 10 a.m. other than a page or two in my current trashy novel while I'm drying my hair, you can be very afraid.

It has nothing to do with enough sleep. I can get my full eight hours of beauty sleep, and I still have to talk myself out of bed in the morning. If it isn't a can't-miss appointment that gets me up, it's guilt. Like so many, I grew up on that Ben Franklin adage, "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise" and that other one, "The early bird catches the worm." (my favorite corollary to that is, of course, "...but the second mouse gets the cheese.")

All my life I've been aware of a usually unspoken but definitely superior attitude that early risers are somehow more virtuous, more productive, more deserving that those of us who find our productivity peaks in the mid-afternoon, when theirs is bottoming out and revivable only briefly by a trip to the candy machine. I crank stuff out then: I am creative, I'm organized, I'm at the top of my game. My work is good -- certainly as good as anything those early birds so cheerily turn out before 10 a.m., and often better.

But employers expect butts in seats by 8 a.m., or, if they're more progressive, by 9 tops. And there always are the gossipy watchers who take note of when you come through the door in the morning, but who are long gone before you ever leave the building at night. What they actually accomplish during their 8 hours doesn't seem to make much difference: it's how early they're in the office.

Most of us who don't bound out of bed bright-eyed and bushy-tailed are accepting of those who do, as long as they don't try to hold meaningful conversations or speak too loudly. We especially appreciate the ones who bring us coffee.

But the reverse is seldom true. The early birds strut and puff their feathers and make supercilious comments about how much they've accomplished by 10, and how they just cahn't function after 4 (or 5 or whenever, usually about the time we second mice are just catching our breath).

So I'll read my complicated documents around 2, thankyouverymuch, sipping my post-lunch cup of coffee, and write detailed memos and reports for you early birds to read at 6 a.m. when I'm just rolling over for another couple hours' sleep. Or maybe I'll wait until 5 p.m., after you've gone home and it's my quiet time.

And I won't make snide comments about your inability to speak coherently after 4, or how your eyelids droop in an afternoon meeting.