Peace and quiet, no distractions
Even if I'm at home, there's other stuff going on during the day. At night everyone's asleep, no noise or messages or anything.
I love it, but I have delayed sleep phase disorder. I'm a natural night owl. I feel the most awake at like 1 am. I love the fact that it's cooler, darker, and quieter, and I feel like the most interesting people come out at night.
But I mostly work days, because that's how to get promoted, sadly.
I don't know if I have the same disorder, but I definitely feel this. It's so much nicer at night. A lot of people fuck up their sleep schedule on the weekends. I keep the weekends the same as my work week and have no problems being sleepy.
But I'm considering applying for a new position at my organization which will mean I have to shift back to days. I'm not sure if the promotion is worth the headache of early mornings and the commute.
The key is, if you take like 2 weeks off work, and sleep/wake whenever you want, what times do you tend towards?
Nights absolutely. With 2 weeks off, I easily stay up till 5 in the morning without even realizing it's that late. I've always found it hard to sleep at 10pm like other people, and I won't start get tired until 3am.
Unfortunately the shift I'm on right now is 12 hour shifts, which means I'm up till 8-10am. Which is a little later than I like, but I still feel better than waking up at 6am. Working 6am-6pm is way rougher on me than 6pm-6am
Loved the commute, the night atmosphere, staying up late and sleeping in during the day.
Days off are hard.
I'm a night owl. My body wants to go to sleep around 6am and wake up at like 2pm, and if it doesn't get to it will rebel. I used to struggle with resetting my sleep schedule all the time. Falling asleep during the day, gradually drifting later on my days off, and usually feeling kinda shit.
Went back to working nights, driving a cab 5p-12a or 3p-12a depending on the day. I love it. I feel so much better. My body is never easy, but it's a hell of a lot easier than it was. One less thing to worry about.
It is hard to make appointments, and companies are always trying to call my firmly muted phone at 9am when I tell them not to, but it's a lot more comfortable. I see all kinds of neat crepuscular animals and there's like no traffic.
I think it very much depends on your body's natural rhythm. People like to chalk it up to 'insomnia', but that's just pathologizing normal behavior. Nothing wrong with being nocturnal.
It is the same for me, except that I'm not in a position in which I can afford to wake up that late. I don't want to let my sleep habits be shaped by society, but lectures and work say otherwise.
As far as we know you only live once. Personally, I'm not waiting around to hope for another go before I live my life the way I want to. Everything has a cost, but to me the cost is well worth not having to deal with all that bullshit.
Graveyards are awesome depending on where you are in your life.
Hated working them in my twenties, wouldn't mind so much in my thirties. I have always enjoyed the night, I grew up in a loud house and night time was the only time it was quiet and I could do what I wanted peacefully.
Only issue I had was my day not lining up with other people or businesses. 24 hour grocery stores are wonderful however.
During the winter up north itβs bleak and cold for the trades, Iβll see the sun for an hour or so when I wake up. Personally I wake up every other hour during daytime sleeps, so Iβm rarely well rested.
But the pay bump is quite good, and thereβs way less supervision micromanaging you.
It's amazing, like living under an enchantment. Everything just sounds different, the colors are more muted, the temperatures are brighter. Given my druthers, I'd be fully nocturnal.
I had 4 consecutive months of only night shifts. It was more relaxing at work but it felt like my perception of day/night was being distorted. Had short moments were it felt like day time was fake and it doesn't exist, reality is not real, and other wierd sensations that I have no clue how to explain.
Like heaven. It was heaven. Nobody expected me to get up in the morning, I never had to turn on the alarm, I was getting up when I had a good sleep, not when the sun got up or whatever. Happiest years of my life.
I worked nights for 7 years, I currently work swing shifts
Nightshifts were brutal, especially during the winter
It's hard on your mental health, it's hard to sleep, you don't see the sun enough
There's few things as terrible as stopping and realizing the last time you saw the sun was months ago due to your work schedule.
Working days again (though it as early as I'd like) let me feel human again.
And for those currently working night shifts, get your vitamin D levels checked. They're low, trust me.
I agree with a lot of the things people are saying here having worked nights for around 12 years.
I loved the calm and having a completely different schedule to everyone else etc however the forced depression can be pretty horrible. Especially during the winters in the UK when I would often go weeks without seeing any daylight at all. This can really affect your mood and general feeling of well being negatively over time.
Working days now I don't really get any of those similar feelings, instead however I have to work with people and I dislike people generally, especially having to work with them so instead I have entirely different issues. Add on top of that having to do 5 day weeks as opposed to 3 or 4 I was used to working nights and I can't choose which is better / worse.
I miss working nights bit don't miss that depressed feeling.
i only had a nightshift job for a relatively short period of time, so my insight is minimal. personally, it mostly felt like being exhausted all the time, bcause the rest of my life refused to make any allowances for the adjustment in my sleep schedule. like, friends still only wanted to hang out when i should have been sleeping? same with setting up appointments, going shopping, etc etc.
otherwise, i felt like if that wasn't the case, i would have been pretty happy with it. mostly because there were less people overall to interact with in my waking hours, which was nice.
Fun at first, starts to suck. Usually when you have been at work all night and it's 6AM, and you have an appointment at 8AM because that's the earliest they open, but all you want to do is pass out.
I work until 10pm. It's feels quiet, comfortable. The only back draw is that after a long period your social life starts to get affected.More if you have family.
Productive, as long as you don't need to run something by someone from a different shift. When you do you pretty much delay that task for a day or lose a whole night's work trying to figure out ways to get around whatever made you need that person.
I've done the graveyard shift for a couple jobs now.
Usually for medical IT.
Its usually quiet, I don't see my boss very often, and for the most part just run the entirety of IT stuff by myself.
I know how much I value my sleep, so I try not to escalate issues in the middle of the night.
In a lot of ways its made me a more creative problem solver and just a better more rounded tech.
Some things I just don't have permissions for, and have to escalate. Sucks, but I get it.
It helps that my wife works similar hours to me.
We can both go to bed in the afternoon, though I'm jealous of her getting to sleep later than me in the moments I'm first awake, but I leave work first so its a fair trade I guess.
Everything is much more calmer at night. I work/study best at night. Iβve always been a night owl.