I'm an accountant and work the evening shift. Here are the benefits.

I was diagnosed with ADHD in November 2021. It is very common for adults to be diagnosed with ADHD but this will trigger the question, "why didn't you know sooner?" I worked in an office my whole career and had built up a toolkit of coping mechanisms around me without even realizing it. I dreaded waking up every morning, dragging myself out of bed 10 minutes before I needed to leave, and frequently arriving late to work. The possible shame of missing a meeting or email was the only motivator to get me to wake up. I started a fully remote consulting role in November 2021 and working with people in the US while being in Europe meant I needed to accommodate the US hours during the fire-hose that is joining a new role. I thought that working the evening meetings would be temporary. And then I discovered that I prefer working the evening shift. Below I outline what I learned and how I make it work for me.

What is ADHD and some common symptoms?

I think the internet does a good job of covering most of this but I will highlight a few points that are simply relevant context for what follows in this blog. Simply put, ADHD is an executive disfunction of the brain that has a difficult time regulating certain behaviors. It can result in hyper activity, inability to focus, impulsivity, and sleep disorders amonst other outcomes.

ADHD, for me, is characterized by (amongst others less relevant to this blog post):

• Constant exhaustion and feelings of wanting to take a nap.
• Impossible time waking up, snoozing 10+ times, sleeping 15+ hours if I don't set an alarm.
• Ability to drop into a deep (and productive) hyper focus that can last 3-6 hours depending on the topic (which can be detrimental to my sleep if the hyper focus stretches after 11pm).
• Difficulty focusing for long periods of time on less interesting tasks. I'm either in hyper focus or can't focus more than 10 minutes, there is no regulated/smooth space in between. My methylfenidate (Ritalin) prescription helps regulate this unregulated part of my brain.

What is an evening shift like as an accountant? And how I discovered it.

At the same time I received my ADHD diagnosis I also started a new contract position where I spend all of my time working on one client. It is like I am an employee in my function but it is for a specific term. At the onset of a new contract I have to spend a lot of time learning the business which means lots of meetings. Working with team members in the US meant a lot of meetings between 5-10pm my time in Europe. At first I was trying to setup my day by starting at 8am, doing most of my work, and then taking a few evening meetings "as an exception". This resulted in two unfortunate outcomes:

• I was constantly switching back and forth between work and personal appointments which made it harder to pick things up that I had set down (remembering where I left off, motivation to finish, etc). This sucked.
• I would end up working 12-15+ days because even though it seems like "just a meeting" you always have take-aways you need to action. "Can you send me notes?", "Can you draft that up for me before you log off?", or "I'll just do a few more things before I log off..." which would lead to a few more hours online. This was not sustainable, I had no time for myself.

I started evaluating my sleeping habits with the help of a therapist using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT. My therapist and I took a deep look at my sleep habits and why it was so hard for me to wake up. Even though I wasn't getting any more quality sleep, why did my brain constantly hit the snooze button? When we wake up our brain makes a split second decision: the reward of waking up and going to work vs the reward of going back to sleep and getting more sleep. The second option is a perceived reward rather than a real one because science knows that we are not actually getting any more sleep or rest by hitting snooze.

So I tried an experiment that has now beeing ongoing for 6 months:

• I wake up to a TED Talk Podcast alarm at 9am, laying in bed for 15 minutes while it runs and giving my brain a reward of "knowledge" to gently awake. This gives my cats their cuddle time as well rather than me jumping out of bed and rushing to the office.
• From 9am-10am I am showering, doing my skin care routine, and checking my To Do list for the day.
• From 10am-12pm I go to a cafe and use this as "Personal Focus Time". I write blogs, I research, I read the news, I scroll Facebook/Twitter, or anything else I feel inspired to do or is nagging on my To Do list [stay tuned for my ADHD guide for To Do lists...].
• From 12pm-1/2pm I go ride my bicycle in the park or nature. Or do anything I want really.
• Around 1/2pm I log onto my work laptop and work until 9/10pm.
• I log off by 10pm (with some urgent exceptions that come with the job).
• I start winding down by 10:30pm/11pm by beginning my bed time skin care routine.
• Between 11pm-midnight I am in bed, reading a book, and my cell phone is charging on the desk in my office.
• I sleep from midnight to 9am.
• I have a solid 5 hours at the beginning of my day for "my day". I do not allow work email or Slack on my phone so that I will not have the urge to look/check. People know that if there is an emergency, they can directly SMS me and tell me "log into your computer, emergency". But this never happens because most of my colleagues are in the US and therefore between 9am-1pm they aren't even awake yet.
• This is my routine from Monday to Thursday. On Fridays I go work from a friend's apartment (since I normally work from home) and I work 9am-5pm. I don't take recurring meetings on Fridays so I get a lot of "quiet time work" done on this day. I can freely make Friday night evening plans with friends.
• I maintain the sleep habits on the week for good sleep hygiene purposes.

TLDR: The benefits of the evening shift.

You might be able to imagine the benefits from my previous schedule, but let's run through them explicitly. This is my experience from the last 6 months:

• ​I start my day as MY day.
• My reward for waking up is looking out the window and thinking of the possibilities of what I can get done, enjoying the sunshine, going for a bike ride, meeting a friend for a morning or lunch coffee, going to the gym, etc.
• I do not start my day with dreading work.
• I work to my US colleagues time (for the most part) which means I don't log in at 1/2pm finding a barrage of messages (only a few they might have sent me at the end of their day).
• I have a forced end of my day being 10pm. I am simply too tired to go on because I started my day with MY day. Back in my 8am-5pm traditional office days it was too easy to work until 5pm and then keep going until 10pm because I had the energy and wanted to just finish the task(s). Now, I have simply run out of steam by 10pm no matter what.
• In the winter it is really hard to go to work when it is dark and come home when it is dark, looking out the window at the sunshine and regretting that I have an office job. But by working the evening shift, I can enjoy the daylight during MY day and then work in the "dark" (don't worry, I have lights in my apartment).

• As is quite common amongst people with ADHD, I hyper focus really well after dark. This is because during the day, there are so many distractions, sunshine, activities, noises, etc but after dark the world seems to calm down and we have less FOMO. So I actually get more work done after dark and now I'm taking advantage of that. This means I'm actually more productive. Working in the daylight means I might drag my feet more and get easily distracted, taking twice as long to finish a task. After dark, I'm going to power through more easily and be more efficient with my time.
• Some people might say "but what about your friends that might want to hang out in the evening, aren't you missing out??". Maybe, but in the 6 months I've been doing this, none of my friends have asked me to hang out in the evenings except on Fridays! Thinking back to my office days, this makes sense. Even when I would go home at 5/6pm, I was so wiped out from my day that I had no energy to go out and meet friends. I would stay home not enjoying my evenings as I had zero motiviation to do anything. Now I'm making better use of my days.

Let me know in the comments if you work the "evening shift" and what other benefits you've found.

---

​Want the FREE finance and tax checklist for moving abroad or digital nomads?

cartoon png from pngtree.com/