Night Hacking (the productivity boost of 2 am)

In the daytime, you're supposed to work, whether you're in the flow or not. At night, if you're coding, it's because you're in the flow. So the phenomenom is explained by a biased sample.<p>Order people to work at 2 am and see what remains of this productivity boost.

I've noticed the night effect for a long time too, and while the lack of interruptions might have something to do with it, I don't think it nearly explains my 3x boost in productivity.<p>I think there's something biological going on as well. Around 1 or 2 am, I sometimes get a bang of energy and creativity that I never get during the day. It's the "second wind," the injection (possibly) of cortisol and other stress hormones that cause my body to go into stress-protection mode. I become hypervigilant, which causes fewer bugs. I think more quickly, writing code faster and coming up with amazing design ideas instantly.<p>If you think about this from an evolutionary perspective, it makes perfect sense-- in the animal world, when you become stressed (i.e., a tiger comes up behind you, or you get exhausted looking for food) the outcome is binary: either you die or you live. So the body does extraordinary things to keep you alive, like make you temporarily smarter and more focused.<p>Over hundreds of thousands of years, perhaps, the body has developed in such a way that the lack of sleep for some number of hours (for me, almost exactly sixteen or seventeen hours) triggers the release of stress hormones which sacrifice the body's current state for mental and physical agility.<p>When will someone figure out how to hack my brain to make it like that all the time, without the nasty side effects (sleep deprivation) the next day?<p>More info:<p><a href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/502825" rel="nofollow">http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/502825</a><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisol" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisol</a><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norepinephrine" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norepinephrine</a><p>I should do more research on this.

I've come up with my best ideas at 2am but I've learned from experience that's the worst time to try implementing them.<p>In the wee hours typos, syntax errors and simple transposition bugs seem to abound and those take an annoying amount of time to track down and fix. Best to just write the plan out in detail and leave the implementation until morning, unless you want to peck at the keyboard for much longer than you would have when awake.

I think this is because your inner voice is doing this at late night:<p>"Dude, what the hell are you doing at this ungodly hour?"<p>"I am trying to get _____ done"<p>"Oh okay"<p>So, you are continuously conscious and aware. Naturally you are more productive. I create the same phenomenon during the day too by using a simple tool that I wrote for this exact reason: Smacklet <a href="http://www.smacklet.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.smacklet.com</a><p>( shameless plug, but I mean it )

An significant factor might also be that when you are tired, you want to get the job done quickly and you spend less time thinking about the options and more time just going ahead.

Funny, this has never worked or made much sense for me. I have always been able to kick butt from 6 a.m. until as late as midnight, but after that, forget it.<p>Then when I read the author's reasons for being so productive at night, I realized that you can do all of that during the day. I never IM, text, or RSS, only a few people have my cell phone #, I only check email (and hacker news) every hour or two, and the door is closed. Works great.<p>Whatever works for you, do it.

Coding at night is good. But I noticed another thing: texts written at night suck. In the morning you will inevitably be ashamed of what you wrote. The best time for blogging or writing emails is the beginning of the day. I wonder if it's the same for other people, and why this is.

Since I work for myself (from home), no one sees when I work. So I code at night when they're not calling and emailing. I often just stick to communication and getting menial stuff done during the day. Sometimes people start to notice though, and some people I work with don't bother calling me until the afternoon, in case I sleep in a bit late after a solid night of coding...<p>On the one hand it might look less professional in some peoples eyes, but in others they think it means I must be some kind of super hacker. Either way, it's amusing for me :)

Thyroid-stimulating hormone,among others, are released prior to sleep. The thyroid controls how quickly the body burns energy, makes proteins, and how sensitive the body should be to other hormones. So it may be that you get a burst of energy just prior to sleep(to make you feel tired enough for a good night sleep).<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyroid_gland" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyroid_gland</a>

Working at night is great. Trouble is, you pay the price the next day when you're downing coffees just to keep from falling asleep on your keyboard.<p>I'm guessing at least some here have made that trip out to the parking garage around lunchtime while simultaneously setting their cellphone alarm for +20 minutes for just a quick nap. Extra points if you keep a blanket in the back seat. :)

Night-time is best for my writing but worst for my coding - go figure. If I have a big backlog of emails, or I'm trying to write a journal paper, I don't even bother trying during the day anymore, unless there's a deadline.

Long flights work well too, if you can find a way to ignore the in-flight service. You're just stuck. Might as well do something...

Wow, there's other people <i>like</i> me? Who <i>don't</i> think I'm crazy for working in the middle of the night?

So true, too bad you can't work like that every night.