It has nothing to do with 'how much sleep' you get, it is all about what you are use to doing; pure habit nothing more. This will have been something you came to over a number of years as such simply going to sleep early and getting up expecting to magically be able to focus isn't going to cut it.

When I was a school kid I would get up at 7am and be in school for 9am, my productivity already ready to go. Over the years I slowly got into the habit of getting up later and later until, in my early 20s, I was getting up at 2pm each day and if I got up before then, regardless of how much sleep I had had, I couldn't get my brain to kick in at all before it would normally. Once I got a job and was forced to work at 'normal' hours I adjusted this, it took a while and for the first few months I was basically useless before 1pm, but after a while I could crawl out of bed at 9:30am and be on the ball by 10am when I got into work.

Due to F1 times I spent a week getting up at 7am and going to bed at 11pm; my normal cycle is somewhat closer to sleep at 1 or 2am and up again at 8:30 to 9:30am. Every morning, despite getting 8h sleep, I would wake up and feel tired still and had to force myself to get up. My mantra for that week was 'you have had 8 hours sleep, feeling tired is just psycological' and two days in I had adapted and was just as productive earlier.

My point is it is possible to change your 'productive time' it is simply a matter of reprogramming your brain so that you can enter that zone; I use music to make it easier but simply forcing yourself to work would probably function just as well.

Now, I am of course assuming everyone can do this and I assume I'm not "special" in anyway... maybe due to the way I grew up I'm perticually adapt at adjusting my own brain and its internal chemistry to suite my needs.. however I suspect this isn't the case and I'm willing to bet with some practise anyone could do it, at best I just might find it easier than most

My main problem with this is that whereas you went to school @ 9 am, for me, from middle school to the end of college (middle school starting @ 6th grade), all my classes started @ 7:30. (Elementrary school was 8 am). And summer camps, jobs, etc., kept my schedule the same way, and all throughout that time, I was ridicuously tired in the morning. (And yes, I did go get 8 hours of sleep during that time). Not everyone is built the same nor has the same internal clock. It's similar to how people learn. Some people are visual learners, some people audial, etc.

Sleepyness is more physiological than psychological (i.e. the effects of melatonin). Yes, you can reprogram your brain, but in my opinion, only to a certain extent. I'd say a bigger issue with this though is rather than trying to force hours of going to sleep or staying awake, it would be more effective to regulate how much natural sunlight you receive during what are suppose to be your productive hours. This is something the corporate (officeless and windowless) cube culture is horrible at. The workplace is one of the least productivity inducive environments.

it would be more effective to regulate how much natural sunlight you receive during what are suppose to be your productive hours. This is something the corporate (officeless and windowless) cube culture is horrible at. The workplace is one of the least productivity inducive environments.

Intrestingly you don't really need natural sunlight, all you need is a light which can generate the correct blue wavelength of light to cause this effect as there are cells in the eye which react to those wavelengths and trigger the chemical release. Which explains why the lights at Codemasters are both the normal 'white' lights you find in offices but also have blue spot lights too.

(The 'blue light only' thing was something I saw on a TV program recently on colour; a bar in the UK decided to go with a blue light effect, which would fade up as the natural light went away. They noticed that at 10pm when they were expecting people to be winding down they were in fact waking up.)