As far as most of society is concerned, having
a long lie-in every morning is a lazy thing to do. But - let's be honest here - a lot of us do it.
Whether it's sneaking an extra few minutes of kip time before work or school, or lazing in bed until close to midday on the weekend, we've almost certainly all been guilty of stealing a little indulgent shut-eye when we probably should be up and about.
However, if you're somebody who hits the snooze button once or twice (or thrice - we're not judging) so that you can get an extra ten minutes of nap time, you might actually be smarter, happier, and more creative than the weirdos out there who can somehow spring out of bed at 6 am on the dot.
According to a British study titled, "Why Night Owls Are More Intelligent", individuals who prefer to sleep later and lie in longer are - on average - slightly better adapted than their early-rising counterparts.
The study, which came from the University of Southhampton, worked out how laying in affects a person's creativity, happiness and intelligence by comparing the socioeconomic circumstances of 1229 men and women with their
sleep patterns. On the whole, it found that "night owls", categorized in this study as people who went to sleep later than 11 pm and woke after 8 am, had a greater income and a more comfortable lifestyle than the people whose snoozing patterns fell outside of those frames.
Of course, this does not take into account individuals who work night shifts or have to wake early in order to take of children - or any other anomaly which might force a person out of a fixed routine.
However, there is some logic behind why being a night owl is linked to better all-round success.
Essentially, people who grab a few extra Zs in the morning are likely to do so because they are listening to their body's intuition. They still feel tired, therefore they savor a couple more minutes in bed. This sort of behavior will correlate with other decisions they make throughout the day - i.e. they will make choices that make them happy, rather than ones that have been dictated by something as arbitrary as an alarm clock.
As an extension of this, doing things that make you happy is a sign of intelligence, and this, in turn, is linked to creativity.
Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that you can just boost your braininess by staying in bed until midday (although I wish it were that simple). In fact, getting
too much sleep has actually been proven to be very unhealthy, and other studies have found that individuals who spend 12 or more hours in bed are more likely to die younger.
Essentially, as long as you still get your
seven to nine hours of beauty sleep of a night, it doesn't matter if you snooze an extra 10 minutes. In fact, it might do you some good.
After all, it might be the early bird that catches the worm - but it's the late worm that gets to live another day.
