For creative night owls, the 9-to-5 is pointless

Most offices run on a 9-to-5 schedule, or one that closely resembles it. But being clocked in doesn’t mean you’re locked in.

While many workplaces still run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., not all minds do. In fact, many of the most creative forces on the planet function best after quitting time.

A 2025 U.K. survey from Adobe Express of 1,500 workers employed across a wide range of industries found that 31% are most creative in the morning, while 19% experience their creative peak in the afternoon. But interestingly, a large percentage of employees get their creative juices going later on—when most offices are already shutting down for the day.

Seventeen percent reported that they experience peak creativity in the evening hours, while another 13% said they peaked at night. That means that a whopping 30% are brimming with their best ideas once the work day is long over—almost as many as the early birds.

This means that some companies are thinking outside of the box (and outside typical work hours) to get the most creativity out of their staff.

Night owls may be creatively stacked

A 2024 study from the Imperial College London found something interesting about night owls (those who were more active in the evening hours).

“Our study found that adults who are naturally more active in the evening, what we called ‘eveningness,’ tended to perform better on cognitive tests than those who are ‘morning people.’ Rather than just being personal preferences, these chronotypes could impact our cognitive function,” says Dr. Raha West of the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London.

Off-the-clock creatives may also be some of the greatest visionaries. The music and art world, for example, provides plenty of examples of late-night genius: Bob Dylan famously did his best songwriting at night. Carl Jung, Franz Kafka, Prince, and Picasso were also often hard at work after dark. Likewise, Fiona Apple has described herself as being nocturnal, while Taylor Swift wrote her record-breaking album Midnights after dark.

So why do some people get more creative while burning the midnight oil?

Science tells us that getting a brain boost at night is largely genetic. Some studies have pointed to a gene mutation that may keep some more alert into the night hours. Other research says it depends purely on your body’s natural and unique circadian rhythm.

No matter what causes night owls to do their best creative thinking after working hours, the reality is, modern office life is not set up to play to these after-hours strengths.

How can workers who thrive at night adjust?

Jared Plumb, lead content manager at InFlow Inventory, an inventory management software company, tells Fast Company that workers who struggle with this dynamic should separate their “collaborative responsibilities” (such as team meetings and phone calls) from “creative ones.”

That’s something that media professional Toni Ferrara, who has her own company, understands well. She says that the normal 9-to-5 mostly lends itself to productivity, rather than creative thinking—especially when it comes to brains that seem to ramp up at night, like her own.

“Creative thinking doesn’t always happen on command or fit neatly into a calendar,” Ferrara explains. That means she has to adjust her own expectations around what she can get done during the workday, versus in the later hours.

“During the day, I’m solving problems for clients.” But at night? “That’s when I can write, edit, research, and think strategically without constant interruptions,” she adds.

While some hack their creativity by focusing on the more structured tasks during the day and more creative ones at night, others take advantage of having colleagues in different time zones.

“My best ideas are mostly around 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. in Amsterdam, but then it’s still working hours in the U.S.,” says Amsterdam-based Johan Konst, owner of EUSA PR, an agency that helps European companies build visibility in the U.S. “I have learned not to expect my best creative work during office hours, but at night.”

Still, while the dynamic may prove useful, it also may mean that those who thrive after dark could end up working pretty much around the clock. If companies truly care about their employees’ well-being, they may need to adjust, too—rather than simply expect workers to.

How can companies better support their night owl employees?

There are plenty of reasons why the typical 9-to-5 is impractical and inconvenient for many workers. (Hello, parents endlessly battling the school day schedule.)

But when it comes to actually getting the best out of employees, the typical schedule doesn’t seem to make sense for a large chunk of the population either.

“Organizations can set aside time blocks for meetings and team decisions during common core hours, allowing employees to do their deep work in their best cognitive space,” InFlow’s Plumb says.

While Plumb says giving employees too much freedom won’t automatically lead to results, allowing for asynchronous work, which involves less real-time communication, can leave time for uninterrupted productivity. That’s especially true given that some studies have found that workers are no strangers to interruptions.

One 2022 study from Next Work Innovation, a German think tank, found that knowledge workers are interrupted an average of 15 times every hour, or about every four minutes. For workers who are already struggling to find their flow, that constant work noise likely creates an even bigger challenge.

Konst agrees and says that while he doesn’t believe workplaces should “scrap the 9-to-5” (given that it works for some people), there is major “value in giving people flexibility rather than expecting everyone to do their best thinking at the same time.”

Flexibility is certainly on the rise since the COVID pandemic. And most employees—even those who don’t struggle with daytime creativity surges—seem to agree that it’s a good thing. A 2023 Zoom survey of 4,000 workers found that 43% of all survey respondents believe that flexible work is not a “perk,” but an expectation. Asynchronous hours are just another potential part of office flexibility—and could well be a boon for night owls.

One 2023 Harvard Business Review study from sociologist and management scholar Aruna Ranganathan found that an asynchronous working style has powerful impacts on creativity. The researcher studied the performance of 49 female singers and 50 male singers in India. Interestingly, the women were rated 17% higher when they were recorded asynchronously rather than when recorded with the group. In a paper, Ranganathan wrote about how the project further displayed something she already believed to be true: that women are often held back by teams and work better when allowed to work asynchronously.

According to Karrin Randle, an associate client partner at Korn Ferry, a global management and organizational consulting firm, asynchronous work can also help night owls maximize their productivity. Randle said, per a Korn Ferry blog post, that night workers need to communicate effectively with their managers about their preferences.

“Reaching agreement on how success is defined, and when responsiveness and availability matter, can help make night owls more effective,” she explains.

Certainly, it would be easier for companies if every employee was at their creative peak all day. The truth is, the human brain is much more varied.

And while employees who are naturally night owls may be able to phone it in from 9 to 5, once they clock out for the day, their brains are just ramping up. But if they don’t have opportunities to tap in, those creative juices have nowhere to go but down the drain.