Perks of an unconventional workday

We all aren't suited to doing our best work during conventional business hours. Certainly, some night owls find they're just getting their juices flowing round about midnight.

Then there's Ngozi Odita. Other early birds don't stand a chance with those worms—not when Ms. Odita is around.

The founder of Society HAE, an events production company and online portal for alternative musicians, filmmakers, photographers and the like, Ms. Odita usually starts work at 1 a.m. She often continuues until as late as 4 p.m. that afternoon. Her commute makes that possible: She runs her business from her home in Brooklyn. With no salaried employees, the tiny company turns enough of a profit to support Ms. Odita, who uses independent contractors.

Ms. Odita has been what she calls a “wee hours of the morning type of worker” for as long as she can remember. An early riser from childhood, she remembers her mother waking her up at the age of 6 at 6 a.m. to help with the laundry. She continued that habit in college, at Emory University, where she ran an events planning company from her dorm room. When she started a boutique and art gallery in Brooklyn, Harriet's Alter Ego, eight years ago, she opened for business at 11 a.m., although she usually got to work six hours earlier.

But it was when she launched her current business—the HAE stands for Harriet's Alter Ego, which she closed in January 2009—that Ms. Odita formally adopted her current unusual hours. Her prime time is from about 3:30 a.m. to 6 a.m., when she writes articles for her site or composes six- to seven-page proposals for events. After that, she says, she starts getting emails from early risers. She also finds that the hours are useful for communicating with a few regular freelancers in other time zones—two writers in London and another in Beijing.

“Most normal people are sleeping; nobody is going to call me or email me, so there are no distractions,” said Ms. Odita, who mostly works with people on the East Coast. “I can work, and the world is asleep.”

If entrepreneurs have to operate in a punishing schedule to establish a business, it's important to take advantage of their own high-energy times, says Dawn Fotopoulos, a Manhattan-based business coach who heads Bestsmallbizhelp.com.

That means teaching others to contact you only during specific hours of the day. “If you train people about emails and phone calls—that you're not available after a certain time—you don't have to be a slave to their time frames,” Ms Fotopoulos said. As for herself, she makes it clear that she answers emails at three periods during the day. After that, she won't get back until the next morning.

At the same time, however, the business coach fears Ms. Odita will suffer from a double whammy—working a continual night shift, which can have negative health effects, along with simply laboring for too many hours at a stretch. The National Sleep Foundation recommends adults get 7 to 9 continuous hours of sleep a night, and reports that lack of sleep can lead to problems completing tasks, concentrating and making decisions.

“When you are running a small business, you are in a marathon, not a sprint,” Ms. Fotopoulos said. “And like any marathon runner, you have to pace yourself.”

Ms. Odita—whose site is an eclectic mix of articles by freelancers, as well as 1,600 members, who sign on for free for the right to post original artwork or other content—acknowledges that lack of shut-eye is a big downside to her schedule. She generally takes a nap at the end of her day, then hits the hay in earnest at about 9 p.m. “I don't sleep a lot,” she said.

Now 35, she knows the schedule can't last forever. “When I was in my 20s,” she recalled, “I could go two days without sleep, but now my body just feels tired when I do that.”