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I'll vouch for everything in this article [1] and add: if doing this, sleep consistently every day. If you're in the middle of something, just drop it and go t

by tekacs 13y ago

I'll vouch for everything in this article [1] and add: if doing this, sleep consistently every day. If you're in the middle of something, just drop it and go to sleep. If you've been working on something all week, you're not going to forget something or lose your place or indeed, if done right [2], even lose your 'flow' by sleeping. Getting 80-100 useful hours out of an 168 hour week can only come if you use a good chunk of the other 68+ hours sleeping - but even moreso than getting enough hours of sleep, getting them at roughly the same time every day can make a big difference. [1]: Having learnt most of this the hard way. [2]: As inadvisable as it might sound, working immediately before bed is the only way I've found that ensures this.

thenomad 13y ago
Definitely! I really should have put that in the article: sleep is vital. What I've been doing on my current death march is ensuring that the only non-working time I'm taking is right before bed: just long enough to watch an episode of a serialised TV show or otherwise unwind a bit. That seems to work well in at least minimising the amount of time I spend lying awake at bedtime.
- tekacs 13y ago
  > minimising the amount of time I spend lying awake at bedtime. ... this being the reason why it's conventionally inadvisable. :) I think that unwinding like this before bed does work well for many - personally I've found that if I end my day in the middle of solving a problem, I am able to pick up and continue much more rapidly in the morning if I don't interrupt whatever I was working on before bed. For similar reasons, I try to take out time to exercise and really move about just before midday/lunch, usually about the time that I've started to feel myself naturally slowing down and losing focus anyway after a few hours (even with breaks) of working.
gordaco 13y ago
Absolutely agree. I'm in a kind of death march of my own, since my exams start tomorrow and yet I haven't asked for days on my full time job (as a software engineer, i.e., a completely brain-oriented job). For the last 15 days I've done basically nothing but studying, working and satisfying vital needs like eating... or sleeping. Not for a single moment have I thought of sleeping less than 7-8 hours a day, since I know for past experiences that it would be the stupidest thing to do. Anyone advising to undersleep, especially when you have to do a lot of work, is completely clueless (or worse, wants you to fail). I'm so concerned with not undersleeping that I'm getting up extremely early, so that if my body is asking for more than 8 hours, I still have plenty of time to sleep before going to work. (This break, that I'm using to write this message, will be the last one until the end of the next three days, which include 4 exams)
- tekacs 13y ago
  Good luck!

by tekacs 13y ago

thenomad 13y ago

Definitely! I really should have put that in the article: sleep is vital. What I've been doing on my current death march is ensuring that the only non-working time I'm taking is right before bed: just long enough to watch an episode of a serialised TV show or otherwise unwind a bit. That seems to work well in at least minimising the amount of time I spend lying awake at bedtime.

tekacs 13y ago
> minimising the amount of time I spend lying awake at bedtime. ... this being the reason why it's conventionally inadvisable. :) I think that unwinding like this before bed does work well for many - personally I've found that if I end my day in the middle of solving a problem, I am able to pick up and continue much more rapidly in the morning if I don't interrupt whatever I was working on before bed. For similar reasons, I try to take out time to exercise and really move about just before midday/lunch, usually about the time that I've started to feel myself naturally slowing down and losing focus anyway after a few hours (even with breaks) of working.

gordaco 13y ago

Absolutely agree. I'm in a kind of death march of my own, since my exams start tomorrow and yet I haven't asked for days on my full time job (as a software engineer, i.e., a completely brain-oriented job). For the last 15 days I've done basically nothing but studying, working and satisfying vital needs like eating... or sleeping. Not for a single moment have I thought of sleeping less than 7-8 hours a day, since I know for past experiences that it would be the stupidest thing to do. Anyone advising to undersleep, especially when you have to do a lot of work, is completely clueless (or worse, wants you to fail). I'm so concerned with not undersleeping that I'm getting up extremely early, so that if my body is asking for more than 8 hours, I still have plenty of time to sleep before going to work. (This break, that I'm using to write this message, will be the last one until the end of the next three days, which include 4 exams)

tekacs 13y ago
Good luck!