It’s 7:45 am in the office. Someone walks in, already back from the gym, already through their emails. He cheerfully asks if everyone is “okay” because it’s very quiet and people seem a little tired.
In the office, people grab their coffee like it’s a life raft, waiting for their brains to connect and cursing the 8 a.m. meeting. And the cheerful colleague. But at least they arrived early enough to find parking and grab coffee before it ran out, this time.
Now: what person are you? The one who gets up early, or the one who looks at them, wondering why you can never feel that awake at this hour, no matter how hard you try?
Those who reach for their strong beers are probably not only tired, but also socially jetlagged. Up to 80% of the workforce uses alarm clocks to wake up earlier than their body is ready. That’s not a discipline problem. That’s a design problem.
That coffee is not a character weakness. And the fact that most humans require chemical and digital intervention to function during socially mandated hours should tell us something important about those hours.
Neurodiversity and Chronodiversity
What comes to mind when people mention neurodiversity at work? Many people have heard that neurodiversity refers to ADHD or dyslexia, or they equate it with cognitive diversity: different ways of thinking or processing information. However, these interpretations are limited and insufficient to support neurologically friendly environments.
Neurodiversity is neurological diversity: the full range of ways human nervous systems can be wired. It covers cognition, emotions, sensory processing, motor coordination, speech, and, crucially, circadian regulation: how our nervous system manages sleep-wake timing, energy fluctuations, and daily rhythms. But the latter is rarely analyzed in the context of talent processes in organizations, and almost never in the context of neurodiversity.
Neurodiversity and chronodiversity are as fundamental to human life as biodiversity is to life on Earth. Maximizing the flourishing of human talent at work requires understanding the many ways in which diversity manifests and impacts the way we work.
Regulations and their application
The parallel between neurodiversity and chronodiversity is that societies and cultures treat some forms of neurological wiring and temporal orientation as normative, and others as aberrant. While neurodiversity and chronodiversity They are biological facts, neuronormativity and chrononormativity They are the social imposition of what is considered “normal.”
Chrononormativity is expressed in assumptions and behaviors in the workplace that are rarely encountered:
- Early arrival is equated with ambition and commitment.
- Morning responsiveness reads like professionalism.
- Meetings are held early by default, preferred by those with more power
- Morning Leadership Visibility Groups
- Performance Appraisals Implicitly Reward Temporal Compliance
Just as neurodivergent individuals often feel pressured to mask themselves, performing neurotypicality to appear “normal,” chronodivergent individuals fake the morning with sheer determination and coffee.
This has a cost.
The current reality: the difference tax
Most organizations have yet to achieve meaningful neurological inclusion. The few that have begun to address neurodiversity tend to focus strictly on its cognitive aspects or communication styles. And most organizations continue to operate as if everyone’s internal clock is identical.
The time structures of modern work (early meetings, fixed schedules, morning-focused performance expectations) were inherited from agricultural and industrial time systems. But they were never designed for biological reality, and those whose bodies do not “fit” cultural models pay a significant price not only in fatigue, but also in mental (e.g., depression) and physical health (cardiovascular risks, metabolic dysfunction). The health cost of this avoidable damage also increases.
Population-scale research reveals that chronotype follows a normal distribution, with approximately 30% early chronotypes, 30% intermediate types, and 40% late chronotypes. Among specific populations, the distribution skews later: studies of young adults consistently find the prevalence of nocturnal types.
Chronic misalignment between biological and social time (the social jet lag that most of us feel) results in accumulated sleep debt, loss of cognitive function, and increased health risks. Chrononormativity produces what could be called chronodiversity paradox: a biological majority is treated as a cultural minority. When late chronotypes struggle to start early, they are labeled as unmotivated and lazy, while mismatches with the system are ignored.
Neurodivergent populations are disproportionately affected. Research consistently demonstrates that adults with ADHD exhibit delayed circadian rhythm phase, with up to 75-78% exhibiting significantly later physiological preparation time for sleep and preferred sleep-wake schedules compared to their neurotypical peers. Autistic people also frequently experience irregular or delayed sleep-wake patterns.
These are No “poor behavioral choices” or signs of “insufficient discipline.” They are psychological neurological realities coming from genetic, neurological and hormonal processes.
A holistic inclusion framework: where chronodiversity fits in
Morning meetings exclude late chronotypes from social participation. Fixed schedules ignore variations in cognitive performance throughout the day. Forcing temporary conformity produces emotional exhaustion. Misaligned timing creates physical stress through chronic sleep disruption.
Early risers can also suffer from mismatches: night shifts, late-night email expectations, commutes that eat up their best creative time. Without attention to chronodiversity, everyone suffers.
A workplace that insists that everyone work the same schedule hurts people and limits the expression of all their talent. But applying the principles of holistic and intersectional inclusion developed in Ludmila’s book, The Canary Code: A Guide to Neurodiversity, Dignity, and Intersectional Belonging at Workcan make a big difference. Here are some suggestions on what this could look like:
- Stake: Include employees in schedule design rather than imposing “flexibility” designed by normative morning managers. Those who have experienced social jetlag firsthand understand the impact that an “optional” 9am meeting has on the rest of the day. Design for people without their input produce policies that appear inclusive on paper but exclusive in practice. Even when shift work is required, having choice makes all the difference.
- Focus on results: For most jobs, productivity is not time stamped. If an employee delivers an exceptional analysis at 3am, does it matter that it wasn’t visible at 8am? When performance evaluates the “responsiveness” of the reward as measured by the speed of response to the morning email, or when “engagement” is evaluated by early arrival, we evaluate temporal style rather than substance. Review your criteria: do they measure what is achieved or when someone is seen achieving it?
- Flexibility: Eliminate arbitrary time barriers. Genuine flexibility means examining each time-bound requirement: Should this meeting be synchronous? Should it be tomorrow? Does everyone have to attend the same session? Expanding flexibility to include self-determination of hours supports the vast majority of employees. Both larks and owls can thrive when design is thoughtful and work is aligned around meaning.
- Organizational Justice: Examine timelines and policies from the perspective of justice. Are scheduling procedures applied consistently or are other leaders denied flexibility? Are decisions free of bias or do early risers receive more favorable evaluations? Are parking, food, and work spaces available for people of later chronotypes?
- Transparency: Make temporal expectations explicit. Many organizations claim to be flexible but maintain hidden norms: the tacit understanding that the “real players” attend the 8 a.m. leadership meeting, that promotion requires visibility during “executive hours,” and that working remotely in the afternoon indicates lower commitment. Make expectations explicit and make them relevant to the job.
- Valid tools: Stop using temporary substitutes for personal qualities. Early arrival does not indicate dedication. Visible presence during specific hours does not measure performance. These shortcuts incorporate a chronotypic bias into talent decisions. Valid evaluation examines what someone produces, not when they produce it.
Moving toward a chronoinclusive practice requires organizations to recognize that morning is cultural, not biological, and eliminate the stigma around biological differences in time. Normalizing chronotype differences can help develop systems that offer significant flexibility and create infrastructure (parking, food access, workspace availability, and chronoleadership approaches developed by Camilla) to address time bias.
Talent thrives when organizations practice holistic inclusion. And holistic inclusion requires neurological and time rhythm inclusion; Neither option is optional if depending on coffee, alarm clocks, and smoke to function is no longer a default.