The Positively Living® Podcast brings you shame-free productivity conversations for the overwhelmed multi-passionate creatives, caregivers, and multi-taskers who never clock out, juggle countless responsibilities, and quietly wonder if there's a better way.
Hosted by Lisa Zawrotny, Productivity Coach and founder of Positively Productive Systems, the show replaces rigid productivity rules with flexible approaches that respect your energy and priorities. Through solo episodes, expert interviews, and live coaching sessions, Lisa covers the topics that actually affect your ability to move forward: stress management, habits and systems, decluttering, self-awareness, boundaries, mindset, entrepreneurship, and more.
This is productivity for real life, helping you breathe easier, move forward sustainably, and make space for what matters most to you.
Have you ever assumed that someone up at 5 a.m., already through their workout and answering emails, is more disciplined than you—somehow better than you? Lisa used to believe that too. She bought into the early-riser-equals-better mentality for years, tried every 5 a.m. morning routine book and habit stack she could find, and still couldn't become that person. It wasn't a lack of effort. It was biology.
In this episode, Lisa builds on episode 215's conversation about ultradian rhythm to introduce chronotype: your individual circadian pattern, wired into you at a biological level the same way your height or eye color is. She unpacks the genetics behind it (including the Per3 gene linked to morning versus evening functioning) and challenges the idea that early risers are inherently more productive—research actually shows they're just more likely to align with a typical nine-to-five schedule, not more capable of getting things done. Lisa breaks down the three general chronotype patterns—early, intermediate, and late types—and references sleep doctor Michael Breus's more colorful framework of lions, bears, wolves, and dolphins from The Power of When. She shares how this plays out across her own family, then offers concrete steps for identifying your real pattern and working with it: tracking your natural energy for a week, protecting your peak window like any important commitment, and splitting your day into low-effort and high-effort parts based on when you're actually sharp. Lisa also gets honest about what to do when your chronotype doesn't match your obligations—the difference between overriding your rhythm (forcing yourself into someone else's pattern) and adjusting around it (building structure that works with your real pattern as much as circumstances allow). She shares her own strategy of splitting her mornings into two parts, plus a favorite client story about a true night owl who flipped her entire routine to the evening and finally stopped feeling like she was failing.
Chronotype, Lisa reminds us, isn't a flaw to fix—it's information about how you're built. You don't have to become a different kind of person to be productive. You have to understand the person you already are, and then build something that actually fits.
Key Takeaways:
Discover what chronotype is and why it's a genetic trait, not a preference or a discipline problem.
Learn why early risers aren't inherently more productive—they're just aligned with a schedule built around their clock.
Understand the three general chronotype patterns (early, intermediate, late) and Michael Breus's lion/bear/wolf/dolphin framework.
Explore how to track your real energy pattern over a week to identify your natural rhythm.
Learn the difference between overriding your chronotype and adjusting around it.
Discover how to protect your peak window and split your day into low-effort and high-effort tasks.
Hear how one client flipped her entire routine to the evening after discovering she was a true night owl.
Understand why the goal isn't becoming a morning person—it's knowing your own clock well enough to stop apologizing for it.
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Intro: The Guilt of Not Being a Morning Person
What Is Chronotype? (The Biology Behind It)
Why Early Risers Aren't Actually More Productive
The Three Chronotypes: Early, Intermediate, Late
Lions, Bears, Wolves, and Dolphins (Michael Breus's Framework)
A Family Case Study in Mismatched Chronotypes
How to Identify and Track Your Real Pattern
Protecting Your Peak Window
Splitting Low-Effort and High-Effort Tasks
Overriding vs. Adjusting: What to Do When You Can't Follow Your Chronotype
Lisa's Own Strategy: Splitting the Morning in Two
Client Story: Flipping a Night Owl's Entire Routine
The Real Takeaway: Understand Yourself, Then Build What Fits
Where to Find the Chronotype Quiz
Lisa Zawrotny:
You don't have to become a different kind of person to be productive. You have to understand the person you already are, and then build something that actually fits. If your schedule allows some flexibility, use it. If it doesn't, you can still work with your rhythm instead of constantly fighting it. You are listening to the Positively Living podcast. I'm your host Lisa Zorotne, founder of Positively Productive Systems, and a productivity coach certified in positive psychology and stress management. Join me as we explore ways to live a more proactive, positive life with episodes on productivity, self-awareness, mindset, entrepreneur life, habits and systems, simplicity, fun, and more. I understand overwhelm personally as a multi-passionate entrepreneur, wife and mom to kids and cats, and as a caregiver. I'm here to help you choose what's right for you, so you can do less, live more, and breathe easier. Sound good? Let's get to it. Welcome to the Positively Living podcast. I'm your host Lisa, and if you've ever felt guilty about not being a morning person, take heart. There is zero basis for this guilt. It's based on a story we've all been told, and it's time to take that story apart. In episode 215, we talked about ultradian rhythm. It's those 90 to 120 minute waves of energy and focus that move through your body all day long. If you missed that one, it's definitely worth a listen because today we're adding to this idea of built-in clocks and talking about chronotype. Once you understand it, you'll see more clearly where you've been fighting your own efforts and learn how choosing when you do things can matter as much as what you do. Have you ever assumed that someone who's up at five a.m. Already through their workout, answering emails is more disciplined than you. Somehow better than you. Our society loves to emphasize this idea. The early bird gets the worm, right? So if you aren't up early, you're missing out, and you need to fix that. I used to believe that. I bought into the early riser equals better mentality, and it made me feel like something was really wrong with me. No matter how many five a.m. morning power hour books I read and routines I tried, I could not become that person, and I tried for a long time. It's not because I didn't want it badly enough, and not because I didn't force myself to try it, but because my body isn't built that way. When I finally learned that there was a genetic reason behind this, it was so freeing. And again, there's a genetic reason for any type. So if you are an early riser, if you are a morning person, kudos to you for that. But in the shame-free productivity conversation category, I want to make sure that those of us who've always felt less than because we aren't are honored here. So this is where chronotype enters the chat, and the science here is truly fascinating. Your chronotype is your individual circadian pattern, which drives the time of day your body naturally wants to sleep, wake, and hit peak alertness. And it's not really a preference. This is built into you at a biological level, the same way your height or your eye color is. There are several genes linked to chronotype. One called Per three has been connected by researchers to whether someone naturally functions better in the morning or at night. This is not an anecdotal thing. This is a scientific thing. So when someone tells you just get up earlier and you'll get more done, what they're actually saying is be different biologically, be a different chronotype, and that's not only obnoxious. That's asking your biology to do something it isn't wired to do. So it kind of is impossible when you think about it. Now here's the part that makes me genuinely frustrated. There's no real evidence that early risers are inherently more productive than anyone else. What the research actually shows is that early risers are more likely to be aligned with a typical nine-to-five structure, which makes them look more productive inside a system that was built around their specific clock. That's not the same thing as being better at getting things done. It's being lucky enough to match the schedule everyone else decided was the default. Most sleep researchers describe three general patterns. You can think of them as early types, intermediate types, and late types. Sleep doctor Michael Brews, who wrote *The Power of When* breaks this down even further using an. Names: lions, bears, wolves, and dolphins. If you want a fun way to remember where you stand or when you stand, so to speak. But for our purposes today, we'll keep it related to early, intermediate, and late. Early types wake up easily, hit their sharpest thinking in the first half of the day, and start fading by mid-afternoon. Those are the early risers that I'm talking about. Intermediate types, which make up the largest share of the population, follow something close to the traditional solar schedule, with a slump after lunch and a second wind in the evening. Late types don't really wake up in the fullest sense until mid-morning, and their best thinking often doesn't show up until afternoon or evening, and if you have teens like I do, that sounds really familiar. And again, none of these is the right one; they're just different settings on the same kind of clock. My own family is the perfect case study on this. My mother-in-law is a true early type, bright-eyed and ready to go the moment she's up, as long as she's had a good night's sleep, and fading long before the rest of us have even managed to function. My kids are very much not early risers. Left to their own rhythm, they would sleep until the world ended and still hit the snooze button. My husband is probably closer to an early riser, at least when we're on vacation. So that causes a rift a lot of times, and I land somewhere in the late morning range myself, if left to my own devices. Though I have trained myself to get up early because school and work demand it. So with this in mind, if you want to start working with your chronotype instead of against it. Here are some places to start. Pay attention to your real pattern by tracking it. You can take a quiz, but also for a week, notice when you naturally feel sharp and when you're just pushing through. Notice where you're struggling and consider context. If you hate your job, getting up in the morning will be difficult no matter what. But if you have time off for vacation or the weekend, you might see when you naturally rise and when you feel more energized to accomplish things. Notice those things, and once you know your real pattern, start by protecting your peak window-the way that you'd protect any important commitment-if your best thinking shows up around 10 a.m. or 8p.m. guard that time as much as you can with fewer interruptions. Using it for harder tasks when you need to have your best decisions, do it then. Even this change alone can make a huge difference. You'll want to look for low effort and high effort parts of your day and consider how to split them. You don't need to do your hardest thinking the minute you wake up, unless that suits you. If you are an early day person, an early riser, you may want to get up and hit the ground running? If you need to start low effort, like I do, do that first so that you have a bridge to the part of the day when you are actually energized and focused enough to do your best work. And if evenings are genuinely your strongest window, consider shifting more of the work you're doing in general for the day, more planning and preparation. Put those in the evening instead. Even though the rest of the world is winding down, you set up for the next day, building tomorrow's ease into tonight instead of trying to do it in the morning when that just won't work for you. And I'll share a fantastic example of that in just a minute. So, keeping this really real, I suspect it's very likely you don't get to build your day around your natural rhythm. You have a job that starts at a specific time, and you need to start at that specific time if you want to keep it. You might have kids who need to get to school or have different chronotypes and patterns that you must tend to as a parent because they need you. There are so many responsibilities that may not fit what's best for you in terms of chronotype. You have a body clock that doesn't match the clock on the wall, and you don't always get to vote on that. So let's talk about what to do when you can't fully live inside your own chronotype, because that's most of us most of the time. I want to be really clear about the difference between overriding your chronotype and adjusting around it. Overriding is trying to force yourself into someone else's pattern and expecting it to feel natural. And there may be circumstances in our lives where we have to do that, so I think it's an understanding of why this doesn't feel natural, and doing the best we can to care for ourselves in other ways while we get through it. Adjusting is acknowledging your real pattern and building a structure that works with it as much as your circumstances will. And that's what I'm hoping to guide you to today. Now I'm not a natural early riser. I've mentioned this how many times on the podcast, and I'll mention it again in part because I'm still getting over the guilt of it. You know, my mom used to guilt me into this all the time. You can sleep when you're dead. She would say Lazarus has risen when I would sleep later than she would. I'm getting over a lot of this too, so I'm hoping that my healing will help you if you're feeling the same way. So again, not a natural early riser, not my favorite thing, not ideal for me. However, I'm a mom and I have children who need to be to school on time and have been for many many years, and I have business clients who often need me earlier in the day. I have them in different time zones, and sometimes they have jobs they need to get to, but they need my support first. I also have cats that are very certain of when breakfast time is supposed to be, and will not let anyone in the household forget it. So getting up early isn't optional for me, unfortunately. Here's what I've done to make that sustainable instead of completely miserable. First, I'm strict about my bedtime because I do believe that good bedtime makes for a good next day. I'm very careful about my sleep hygiene and my routines in the evening, because I know I need to sleep well. Because I know my wake up time isn't negotiable. I use alarms because I can't necessarily count on my body to wake itself until I've trained it to do so. And if it's an hour that it doesn't want to be awake, that alarm is going to be important for me, and it will help me from stressing out and not sleeping as well, being worried I won't wake up. I also split my morning into two parts. Now, again, I have this option because I am an entrepreneur, but there are ways to do this even when you have work that you need to do, and you can kind of see the pattern here as I describe it. So the first part for me is intentionally limited because I'm not a morning person. I do only what's essential to get the kids out the door, the cats fed, maybe a daily plan reviewed, just the basics, the minimum. I don't do anything that requires deep thinking or real decision making, unless I absolutely have to, and again, these would be the exceptions, not the rule, because that's not ideal for me to be doing at that hour. Now, once the first part of that morning is completed, everyone's where they need to be, and I've had a chance to regroup and even have the quiet, which helps me. The second part of my morning routine can begin, and that's where I ease into tasks that need more from me. Maybe that's the chance that I have to exercise, depending upon my schedule. See, I'm not asking my brain to perform at its peak during the part of the day when it physically can't, or where I'm using most of my energy to wake up and ensure that others are taken care of. I'm just getting through the non-negotiable part and then building into the parts of the day where I can function so much better. I've had many clients who feel similarly to me, and one who dealt with an extreme version of this. And you'll be able to see the distinction with chronotypes. I'm definitely what I would consider an intermediate, but you'll notice that she is a different chronotype from that. What she and I created together is one of my favorite examples of how disparate your schedule, effort, and chronotype can be, and how you can adjust to make it much better. She'd been trying for years to follow standard morning routine advice, the kind you hear about constantly in productivity content: wake up early, journal, exercise, plan your day before eight a.m. Yeah, it's exhausting just thinking about it. And she kept failing at it, or what she felt like was failing, and assumed that meant something was wrong with her and her follow through, and her efforts, and her willpower, and just her in general. But when we dug into it, what we actually found was she was a true night owl. Not even the intermediate like I am. Not even a not a morning person, but a true night owl. And she was trying to force herself into an early riser's schedule. Talk about a square peg in a round hole, right? So we flipped it. She still had to get up early for appointments and function in the morning, but instead of front loading her effort in the morning when she doesn't have the capacity, we shifted the weight of her routine to the evening, the bulk of it for the entire day to the evening. I guided her to take advantage of nighttime when she felt most energetic, as a time to prepare for the next day to do everything she needed to do for that day that could wait, as well as preparing for the next day. And if there was something that couldn't wait, that's when you do it at night for the next day. She'd lay out what she would wear. She would review her calendar, decide what her top priority would be: exercise, do chores, prep in any way she could, so that her actual morning could stay as light and low effort as possible. The roll out of bed kind of morning that she would need, and she wasn't skipping her structure, she wasn't skipping routine. She wasn't skipping the tasks she needed to do. She simply moved all of that to the part of the day where her brain was actually available to show up for it. She felt like a weight was lifted off her shoulders when I gave her permission to roll out of the bed the next day, and also she was ready for the next day because of the work she'd done the night before. That new pattern made all the difference for her. In the same way, the other assessments we address on the podcast are all about learning how you work best. Your chronotype is there to help you. It's not a flaw to fix. It's information about how you're built, and it's been there the whole time, whether or not the world around you has ever acknowledged it or appreciated it. The takeaway of all of these conversations is simply this: you don't have to become a different kind of person to be productive, you have to understand the person you already are, and then build something that actually fits. If your schedule allows some flexibility, use it. If it doesn't, you can still work with your rhythm instead of constantly fighting it. Either way, the goal isn't to become a morning person because someone told you that's the productive kind you want to be. The goal is to know your own clock well enough to stop apologizing for it, and to make choices that honor it whenever you can. For more on building systems that fit your real life, you'll want to check out the many resources on the positivelyproductive.com website. If you go to the resources page, so that's positivelyproductive.com/resources, be sure to check out the positivelyproductive toolkit specifically for this episode. Inside the assessments workbook, you'll find many links for personality strength and values, including a chronotype quiz, perfect for this episode. And as always, I'd love to know what you thought about this topic and how you approach your day. Are you a morning person, a night owl, somewhere in between like me? And what do you do during your day to honor that person? Remember, what you do matters. When you do it might just matter more.
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