Good news for night owls: When you need sleep is determined not by laziness, but chronotype. Here’s what that means

Are you a night owl who cringes—maybe even yawns—at phrases like “the early bird catches the worm”? If so, Matt Walker gets you.

“We lambast evening types as being slothful or lazy, but it’s not their fault,” Walker, a renowned sleep researcher, told an audience at the Equinox Global Sleep Symposium in New York City last week. 

That’s because when you need sleep depends on what’s called your chronotype—your body’s natural inclination towards certain times of day. And that, he explained, is largely genetic.