11–20 of 23 posts
In the wee hours typos, syntax errors and simple transposition bugs seem to abound and those take an annoying amount of time to track down and fix. Best to just write the plan out in detail and leave the implementation until morning, unless you want to peck at the keyboard for much longer than you would have when awake.
Funny, this has never worked or made much sense for me. I have always been able to kick butt from 6 a.m. until as late as midnight, but after that, forget it. Then when I read the author's reasons for being so productive at night, I realized that you can do all of that during the day. I never IM, text, or RSS, only a few people have my cell phone #, I only check email (and hacker news) every hour or two, and the door…
I do find that having nobody around me is a huge boon to productivity, enough that it can sometimes offset the nighttime effect. It's not just the lack of interruptions: I've found that the mere presence of people makes me concentrate on the work less, whether they're talking/IMing me or not.
An significant factor might also be that when you are tired, you want to get the job done quickly and you spend less time thinking about the options and more time just going ahead.
On the one hand it might look less professional in some peoples eyes, but in others they think it means I must be some kind of super hacker. Either way, it's amusing for me :)
I've noticed the night effect for a long time too, and while the lack of interruptions might have something to do with it, I don't think it nearly explains my 3x boost in productivity. I think there's something biological going on as well. Around 1 or 2 am, I sometimes get a bang of energy and creativity that I never get during the day. It's the "second wind," the injection (possibly) of cortisol and other stress hor…
Still, I look forward to the alone time when I code at night too. I even structure my day around it a lot of the time.
I've come up with my best ideas at 2am but I've learned from experience that's the worst time to try implementing them. In the wee hours typos, syntax errors and simple transposition bugs seem to abound and those take an annoying amount of time to track down and fix. Best to just write the plan out in detail and leave the implementation until morning, unless you want to peck at the keyboard for much longer than you w…
An significant factor might also be that when you are tired, you want to get the job done quickly and you spend less time thinking about the options and more time just going ahead.