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Working Late
Posted by Scott on 12th December, 2007 | 10 commentsI’m not a morning person. I do my best work late at night, between 12am and 4am, and I usually sleep till at least 11am or 12pm. I just don’t seem to be able to get into the groove and really accomplish lots of quality work at other times of the day.
If you’re the same way, don’t let what others say bother you. It’s natural for someone to think you’re a slacker if you sleep ’till noon, but you have to remember that you worked half the night.
If I’m working on a big project, one that can’t be completed in a day and probably needs several days of constant work, often times I will work as many consecutive hours as possible at a time, which would probably be about 14 hours straight for me (like 12pm to 4am) . This way, my concentration isn’t interrupted and I’m able to stay on task.
I don’t know if this has to do with my success, but it definitely has a lot to do with my ability to concentrate and finish everything I start - implementation, finishing what you start, is in my opinion more important than the quality of your ideas. People have ideas all the time, but it’s the ones who actually rise to the challenge and implement them that end up succeeding.
Staying up late at night if you’re wide awake (like me), when it’s quiet (no phone calls or emails, no one awake around the house), can be a great way to get things done and go into an ultra-focus mode. Only downside - if you need to talk to someone else while you’re working, tough luck, unless you work until 4am and want to talk to someone on the east coast at 11am :). It’s best to do these late night sessions in bursts, in those cases. For me, it has always been a way of life. My hours do vary; I don’t always stay up until 4am, but usually at least until 2am. It works for me. And when I’m not up late working, I enjoy vegging out watching an old episode if the X-Files or Seinfeld on the Tivo at 2am just as well.
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Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 7:10 am and is filed under Web Business. If you like this post why not subscribe to my full text RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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I do the opposite - I’m up at 4:30 AM and work often until 5PM or so.
I get all the benefits of the early morning hours being quiet, plus any communication I need to do with others can be done.
As an extra side benefit, no one gets the idea that I’m lazy. Instead, I’ve got a Protestant work ethic. =)
I used to work late as you mention, but I started watching too much of the X-Files instead of working. At 5 in the morning, there’s really not much to distract you, and your mind is refreshed.
Good points though about working in general.
I am the same way. I am up at 4:30 AM and start working about 5:30 AM. My first hour awake is spent making coffee, eating breakfast and checking news and espn.
I love the quiet of the early morning more than I love the quiet of the night. I like getting all my work done and still be able to relax and watch primetime tv before bed.
I am the same way, but I have a full-time job that I need to be at by 7AM. I like to stay up late and work on my sites, but I never am able to because if I don’t get a good night sleep, I don’t wake up in the morning.
I really need to find a way to quit my day job.
I too have a full time job which is a pain as it gets in the way of my online activities!
I also do my best work at night, once the good lady has gone to bed! Less nagging late at night.
The last two nights I have been working fairly late on my latest project, I get so engrossed that I forget what time it is and then struggle to get up early for work!
One day I will be able to give up the day job!
Jim
I too face the same problem working late. I tried doing something during the day but it doesn’t really work. It’s like too much noise around me (just in my mind because the house it’s quiet) and can’t concentrate.
Sounds familiar. I stay awake every single night, seven days a week, until 2-5 am. I do almost all the writing at nights. My challenge is that I need to wake up 7 am to go to my day job. I run pretty challenging software engineering projects in a medium sized company and I need focus into it on daytime. I sleep 3-6 hours a night. Sometimes I feel like I am a living dead but my passion to entrepreneurship is too strong to forget online business.
I love to stay up late and work online as well, but a wife and two kids makes that very difficult. One of these days I am getting an office separate from the house :).
I agree. I love staying up late working on blogging or other things. I am so wired sometimes. But that hinges on whether I got up real early that morning. If I did (since I have a baby), then the nighttime thing might not be good. In that case, going to sleep early, and getting up early works better.
I agree - I work best late at night as well. Too much distraction during the day to really get anything done that requires focus.
I’ve been a night person most all of my life. Even going back to school days I would be up late and hate getting out of bed early in the mornings. It got nothing but worse once I got into the restaurant and bar industry. I eventually became a bartender and would work nothing but nights.
I got use to the “you sleep to late” mentality. It wasn’t until I pointed out the fact that I in fact only sleep between 6-8hrs a night, just a different set of hrs, that people would back off.