Concentration and motivation from the task at hand. Most of my all-nighters have been unplanned and were reactive to a software upgrade gone bad. A memorable

Concentration and motivation from the task at hand. Most of my all-nighters have been unplanned and were reactive to a software upgrade gone bad. A memorable one was a software upgrade to Cascade switches at AADS. Turns out the new firmware consumed more RAM than anticipated and we ended up with 10's of thousands of circuits down throughout their network of ~250 backbone switches. I spent 3.5 days straight with nothing more than a couple of two hours naps and LOTS of pizza, coffee, soda, etc. The magnitude of the situation pretty much prevented me from sleeping. Had a couple of other 36 and 48 hour shifts during that same job. Every time I've done any marathon sessions, it was always unplanned and urgent.