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Interesting thread. My best hours are late at night, when the world is quiet, and there are no distractions. But... Recently I discovered that this also works
by zkarcher 18y ago
Interesting thread. My best hours are late at night, when the world is quiet, and there are no distractions.
But... Recently I discovered that this also works if I rise early, _very_ early. This month, I've been waking up at 3am and accomplishing a LOT, until about 10am, when the outside world comes alive. It's nice because my mind is sharp -- I get to wake up and do something I love. I'm not racing against the urge to fall asleep, like when I code at the end of my day.
The downside is that I go to bed at 6pm every night... But apart from that, I really like this sleep cycle.
- pj 18y agoYes, those kinds of mornings are great too!
- moe 18y agoYeah, same here. During the day I usually only get small things done, if at all. Only after 10pm, sometimes closer to midnight, I really manage to zero in on a task and work it through. Most of the time I'm either done or get tired at around 4am. Sometimes I'll churn through till 9am without even noticing. This style of work tends to occassionally push my sleep cycle around in funny ways. After intensive "sprints" it's not uncommon for me to have a week where I wake up at 6pm in the evening. That seems to be my recovery mode then, I don't get anything done in these weeks. But sometimes, towards the end of such a recovery week, I notice the same thing that you mention. As I slowly adjust my cycle back towards the accepted norm there is often a period where I get up between 2-4am and many of these days have turned out amazingly productive, too. Sometimes I wish I could just sustain either one of these rhythms (either getting up very early or getting up midday and working late) but for some reason I'm always slipping towards the "recovery state" after a few weeks. I guess that's my body's way of telling me when to stop...
- zkarcher 18y agoThat's exactly how I discovered the über-early cycle... I stayed up later and later, one day 8am arrived and I wasn't even slightly tired. I knew I couldn't sustain that sleep cycle (waking at 4pm feels grim) so I pushed my sleep cycle forward, living 26-hour days. I'm drifting forward (woke up at 7am today), I may be cursed with an inability to sustain a healthy rhythm at one specific time. Not sure yet.
- jyothi 18y ago_very_early mornings have worked for me too on all critical work. One has to experience the 4 am bliss to appreciate it. When I have company I do end up working late night.
- lallysingh 18y agoDitto. But, I have to point out that what also works is a good morning run for me. Run before work. It's like 3 hours of regular brain bootup/procrastination are all taken away by that run.