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Productivity comes and goes in waves. Restful sleep increases the amount of time the wave is in and decreases the time the wave is out. If you haven't slept so
by staunch 15y ago
Productivity comes and goes in waves. Restful sleep increases the amount of time the wave is in and decreases the time the wave is out.
If you haven't slept soundly and regularly over a period of 5+ days I'd concentrate on that before worrying about anything else.
I came to this realization myself a few years ago and it was quite an epiphany. I realized that nearly all my bouts of nonproductive could be traced back to poor sleep habits.
I think sleep should be treated as methodically and rigorously as any form of exercise. When you sleep, how well you sleep, when you wake up, what you eat/drink before you sleep, etc, etc.
When I'm doing good on sleep I manage to program productively for around 6-10 hours a day and it's generally invigorating rather than draining.
- AznHisoka 15y agoI agree. It's night and day how you feel when you get a good 8 hours of sleep vs 6 or less. When you don't get that 8 hours, you blame it on other things but as soon as you repay that sleep debt, it's like an a-ha moment. Same with having the discipline to exercise first thing in the morning.
- mgallivan 15y agoI remember when I first started to learn C in university - we had a (relatively) large project due and I had yet to start. I convinced myself to program for something like 30 hours straight. It seems to be a bit of a badge to pull all nighters, but I can safely say that 80% of the time I spent in that stretch had no impact on my code at all. I would make stupid mistakes, and introduces more bugs trying to fix those mistakes. There comes a time when you realize that a lack of sleep not only reduces productivity, it can actually hurt your existing code base.