No shame in sleeping late ... to remedy that social jetlag

As is the case for most working people I know, too many of my waking hours are spent thinking about sleep, as in the lack of it.

The fixation has been intense this month, mainly because I took three 18-plus-hour flights in the space of 12 jet-lagged days, an experience I do not intend to repeat soon. Coincidentally, and unfortunately, this happened in the middle of a minor outbreak of news about successful people who deliberately subject themselves to extreme sleep routines.

First came Arthur Brooks, the Harvard professor and author who once ran the influential American Enterprise Institute think tank. He now teaches a hugely popular course on the science of happiness at Harvard Business School – except when churning out books, including a recent one with Oprah Winfrey.

“I rise daily at 4.30am,” he wrote in the Atlantic this month, as he outlined the daily regimen he has perfected to stay on an even keel.

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“4.30! AM!” I thought, as I read on to learn that Brooks starts working out at 4.45am before heading to daily Catholic Mass with his wife at 6.30am. This is followed by coffee and a suitably high-protein breakfast, allowing him to arrive at his desk by around 7.30am – which is roughly when my alarm starts bleeping.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, it emerges that an equally daunting bout of pre-dawn activity takes place in the home of another aching overachiever, Bozoma Saint John. The marketing supremo has had top jobs at Apple Music, Uber and Netflix; inspired a Harvard Business School case study; and last year joined the cast of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reality TV show.

“I’ve consistently woken up at 5.30am throughout my career to pray, meditate or read,” she told Business Insider. At 7am she heads for the gym, running for up to a mile to warm up before hitting the weights, after which she is ready for work.

I don’t suppose either Saint John or Brooks intends to make those of us who cannot imagine such a life feel inadequate. But their stories fuel the tedious idea that career success requires superhuman levels of early rising discipline, while sleep is for lazy losers. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve heard Apple boss Tim Cook talk of getting up between 4am and 5am, or Disney’s Bob Iger speak of rising at around 4am.

This puts them in an astonishingly select club. Only 3 per cent of Americans aged 13 or older say they get up between 4am and 4.30am on weekdays, the Edison Research firm found this year. Since the most popular time slots for setting an alarm are 6am-6.30am and 7am-7.30am, simple maths suggests there are plenty of successful people who rarely see the sun rise.

Moreover, the truth about sleep is that most of us would do a lot more of it if we could. When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020, people around the world started waking up later and staying in bed longer. The pattern may have stuck. Edison told me its data showed 66 per cent of American adults had woken up by 7am in 2015, but as of the start of 2025, that figure had sunk to 58 per cent.

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This is a welcome development, but I doubt it will dispel the irksome belief that only sloths sleep later. I know of almost no one who would let on that they regularly sleep in until 9am on a weekday. Yet when it comes to setting up, say, an online call with a work contact, I cannot recall a single time in the past year when anyone has suggested a time before 9am.

Conversely, I’ve been struck by how often people suggest starting at 10am or later. This leads me to suspect many of us sleep a lot later than we care to admit. I hope the shame soon fades.

Scientists continue to confirm the dangers of sleep deprivation. The World Health Organisation says night shift work is “probably carcinogenic”.

It is nearly 20 years since a German academic coined the term “social jet lag” to describe the way work and school force us to rise earlier than our bodies would like.

So let the Tim Cooks and Bob Igers of the world stick to their punishing schedules. The rest of us should stay in bed for as long as we possibly can.