US President Obama's 'Biological Clock'

Since taking office as US President, Mr. Obama has barely slept more than five hours a night. He often spends time sitting alone in his private study and calls himself a “night man.”

President Barack Obama always takes time out of his evenings for himself.

The 'lonely' man in the night

Last month, an email sent at 12:30 a.m. to Benjamin J. Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor, and Denis R. McDonough, White House Chief of Staff, from President Barack Obama's address said he had just revised a draft of his speech for the next working day.

It is known that he spent three hours to create a rough outline and immediately sent it to his assistants, with a request to complete the speech when they started working hours.

This is no longer a surprise to those who work with Mr. Obama. His emails often arrive late, often after 1 a.m., long enough for the recipient to know that the head of the White House has not slept.

Mr. Obama calls himself a “night man.” As President of the United States, he finds that alone time in his private office at night is essential.

Almost every night in the White House, Mr. Obama has dinner with his wife and two daughters at 6:30 p.m. Then he goes to the Treaty Room, his private study, where, according to his closest aides, he spends four to five hours alone.

He prepares speeches, reads the stack of meeting reports his secretary gives him, reads 10 letters from the public that his staff selects each day, watches ESPN, reads novels, or plays Words With Friends on his iPad…

Michelle Obama stops by occasionally, but she goes to bed before her husband. For Mr. Obama, alone time has become more important.

Former President George W. Bush always went to bed at 10 p.m. and woke up very early. Meanwhile, former US President Bill Clinton also slept late like Mr. Obama, but spent a lot of time making phone calls to friends and political allies...

“A lot of times, for some of our leaders, the energy they need comes from being around other people. Obama is different, he’s like a person who likes to be alone,” said historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has dined with Obama many times.

Seven salted almonds

When he first arrived at the White House, Mr. Obama made it a habit to go to the game room around 7:15 p.m., after dinner, where he spent 45 minutes playing pool with Sam Kass, his family’s personal chef at the time.

Mr. Kass said that swimming with Mr. Obama was often a way for the President to relax after stressful working hours in the Oval Office. During that time, Obama kept the habit of playing billiards and putting his children to sleep before going to the study.

Now that they were both in their teens, after dinner he went straight to the Treaty Room and began his nightlife alone.

Mr. Obama walked from the West Wing to the White House.

Obama's way of staying awake is also different from people who often work at night. He rarely drinks coffee or tea, instead always has bottles of purified water available.

More specifically, his only nighttime snack is seven lightly salted almonds. “Michelle and I joke: Not six, not eight, always seven almonds,” Mr. Kass said.

He also sometimes takes his day work into his study. In 2011, for example, a photo taken in the Treaty Room showed Mr. Obama with Mr. McDonough and John O. Brennan, Obama’s former counterterrorism chief and now CIA director. There, they made a call to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan after the country was hit by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake. “The call was made near midnight,” the caption read.

But mostly, Mr. Obama used his time in the Treaty Room for himself.

“I’ll probably read a meeting report, do some paperwork or write something until about 11:30. Then I usually have about a half hour of reading before I go to bed at midnight, 12:30, sometimes a little later,” Obama told Jon Meacham, editor-in-chief of Newsweek magazine, in 2009.

Mr. Obama and his wife are also fans of cable TV shows like "Boardwalk Empire," "Game of Thrones" and "Breaking Bad." Every Friday night, he and his family go to the Family Theater on the first floor of the East Wing (a building belonging to the White House) to watch films provided by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Now, Mr. Obama has only a few months left to be alone in the Treaty Room. After leaving the White House, he once said: "I will spend 3-4 months just sleeping."

According to NYTimes