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 is closed. Works great.
I've always felt that I was superbly productive at night, but when I measured how much I actually got done, I was working 3-4 times more slowly than I do in the morning or just before dinner. Sleep deprivation does weird things to your perception of time; it's easy to think that you've been busily coding away, only to find that you've written about 2 functions and it's 4 hours later. So without hard data, I'm a little skeptical.
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.
I was a night person until the final year of my PhD. Something about that year made me switch to being a morning person, strange as it sounds.
Now I get my best stuff done before most people wake up. I start to slow down a little after lunch. After about 7 or 8pm I find it hard to get any good work done.
I was just trying to find a quote I used to like, about it being uncivilized to expect people to work after lunch... I think it was by a famous mathematician or philosopher, but I can't find it now - does anyone know who I'm thinking of?
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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 is closed. Works great.
Whatever works for you, do it.
I've always felt that I was superbly productive at night, but when I measured how much I actually got done, I was working 3-4 times more slowly than I do in the morning or just before dinner. Sleep deprivation does weird things to your perception of time; it's easy to think that you've been busily coding away, only to find that you've written about 2 functions and it's 4 hours later. So without hard data, I'm a little skeptical.
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.
I was a night person until the final year of my PhD. Something about that year made me switch to being a morning person, strange as it sounds.
Now I get my best stuff done before most people wake up. I start to slow down a little after lunch. After about 7 or 8pm I find it hard to get any good work done.
I was just trying to find a quote I used to like, about it being uncivilized to expect people to work after lunch... I think it was by a famous mathematician or philosopher, but I can't find it now - does anyone know who I'm thinking of?