Are you an Angry Nerd? (Thanks to Atlassian for the shirt!)

Another night, another packed room of Nightowls.

This photo brought to you via Nightowl co-host Seth Blank’s new project, Insert, Better, which just took flight this week. 

Everyone has their pet projects. What will you work on tonight?

Brought to you via Seth Blank, our host at Citizen Space, an article from Psychology Today proving Nightowls are smarter than the morning lark. I smell junk science here (correlation not causation), but hey, I’ll believe anything if it makes my in-group sound more appealing.

Some people are night owls, and others are morning larks.  What makes the difference may be their levels of general intelligence.

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There is thus no indication in any of the ethnographic evidence that any sustained nocturnal activities occur in traditional societies, other than occasional conversations and singing, in these tribes.  It is therefore reasonable to infer that our ancestors must also have limited their daily activities to daylight, and sustained nocturnal activities are largely evolutionarily novel.  The Hypothesis would therefore predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely to be nocturnal than less intelligent individuals.

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An analysis of a large representative sample of young Americans confirms this prediction.  Net of a large number of social and demographic factors, more intelligent children grow up to be more nocturnal as adults than less intelligent children.  Compared to their less intelligent counterparts, more intelligent individuals go to bed later on weeknights (when they have to get up at a certain time the next day) and on weekends (when they don’t), and they wake up later on weekdays (but not on weekends, for which the positive effect of childhood intelligence on adult nocturnality is not statistically significant).  For example, those with a childhood IQ of less than 75 (“very dull”) go to bed around 23:41 on weeknights in early adulthood, whereas those with a childhood IQ of over 125 (“very bright”) go to bed around 00:29.

The signs of a successful late night coworking session:

• The pizza gets demolished with Ninja Turtle speed
• The room is full yet cozy and with seating for all
• People sigh with happiness because they’re finally able to get work done
• Chatterboxes chat, but those who want to stay focused and heads down do so without disruption
• Candy

I’d say we did pretty well last night.

Big thanks to Seth for once again hosting us.

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And big news to come. (Shh! We may have sponsors next time.)

Members of our Meetup Group could be called cheery morning people. At 12 a.m. in the morning, that is, when they really get going on their next disruptive startup/Great American Novel/research paper/charcoal sketching/collaborative project with a friend in Munich/game design/whatever one does when one can’t sleep.

Pictured above is a prime example. He’s composing music. Using magic. And that board he’s holding.

If you have some magic of your own to share, come join the other wizards at our SF Nightowls late night coworking Meetup group.

Ciao.