Owls, larks or maybe going slightly cuckoo...

I have never considered myself to be a morning person.

Having worked from home for over two decades, I know that my natural waking time can be anywhere between 7 and 10, depending on a range of factors, because sleep is often problematic for me. Right now, the Spanish summer temperatures are a big factor, and even the fan which mercifully moves the hot air around all night can feel like a noisy irritant.

In my chosen home of Spain the traditional solution to this issue has always been the siesta, and there's a lot of evidence that taking an extended rest during the middle of the day has many benefits. However, this tradition evolved primarily from highly localised agricultural working practices, and the typical working day of 8.30am or 9am to around 1.30 pm and then from 4.30pm or 5pm to around 8pm is a terrible fit for the commuter lifestyle. If you're not able to easily go home and eat lunch, never mind fit in a power nap, then what it really means is a very long day and curtailment of social/family time in the evening.

Once again, remote work for the win of course, but it still offers zero flexibility for individual preference and inclination, or for changing external circumstances.

Take high summer - a predictable phenomenon for sure, but this year subject to unprecedented temperatures in less accustomed parts of the world, such as the UK. You can't count on homes and offices to have air conditioning in places which never routinely needed it, and the working calendar has never been structured around the calendar in that way.

I remember when we first moved to Spain when our girls were little being astonished at the length of the school summer holidays, and the way the whole economy seemed to basically shut down during August... but now this is normal for us. What was not normal was the UK school term closing several days early due to temperatures in the high 30s, in classrooms never built to accommodate this.

Of course not everyone in Spain can take the summer off as holiday, so for many this means adapting the working and socialising day, to make the most of the cooler hours. our local GP has no afternoon appointments at all during July and August (it remains a bad time to be unwell generally, as a lot of secondary referrals are on hold.) Meanwhile, open air cinemas schedule showings late at night, and British tourists are confused that restaurants haven't even opened until long after what they consider dinner time - not until temperatures have dropped a little, many hours after sunset.

We are seasonal creatures

It's interesting to reflect that primally, however, a lot of our behaviour would have been driven by the calendar as much as the clock. It would have made sense to migrate and hunt during long summer days, to store resources against cold dark winters (and I am fairly sure some species prone to hibernation must be well represented in my genetic legacy). Too often in professional life, at least, we fix the hours and control the environment in rigid attempts to create a consistent experience - while forgetting this is not what we are evolved to.

When do you work best, live best? And does that vary through the year?

Here's an irony for you:

Having spent most of my professional life recently advocating for the joys of naturally waking and scheduling flexible freelance work on your own terms, it's strange to find myself presently being startled awake several mornings each week, by a predawn alarm clock.

That's because I am in training for a 3-day walking event in September, which involves 125km of the Camino de Finstere, to raise funds for the UK charity Walk The Walk. When I committed to undertake this, one of many things which didn't immediately surface in my attention was that the training plan would happen at the hottest time of the year, in a much hotter part of Spain where I actually live.

So for that reason, I have been discovering a strange world of beautiful skies, weird pre-Today stuff about farms on Radio 4, and... So many people. Cleaning and repairing the streets, picking by floodlight in the farms at the edge of the city, and construction workers stopping for a break after putting in a full shift through the early hours.

All of them keen to not waste a second of the precious respite from baking heat, because when you know it will hit 40C by midday, it's great to have the bulk of your labour done and dusted...

For your average Spanish manual worker, the afternoon may be spent relaxing or resting and to be honest that is working for me too. Like I said, I am definitely not a morning person, and certainly if I do a longer hike (such as last Saturday's 24km), I am good for nothing afterwards. It's as though my brain sweats out of my pores, as the heat rises (because even a 5:30am start means walking till midday), and I can barely even read or think in the afternoon.

Playing for sympathy? Yep, you bet - it's for a very good cause.

You can guess what's coming. Would you like to sponsor me? I badly need every scrap of motivation I can get, when that alarm goes off tomorrow morning, and it is for a VERY good cause - you can read more about it, and donate easily, here:

That's all for now folks, as the podcast is on a seasonal break - so at least the show is resting, even if I am not.

Stay chilled out this weekend wherever you are, and seriously try to make the most of the cooler hours if you can,

Maya Middlemiss