

Stay up late while you can. It pays off - yarapavan
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/stay-up-late

======
brc
For all those in their early 20's who are reading this - you should know one
thing. Nature has blessed you with the ability to stay up late and still get
things done the next day.

Most people in their twenties abuse this skill and go out partying all night.
I know I did a lot of that.

The reason you have this skill is because it's designed for child-rearing in
your 20's. That's my hypothesis. People with children don't get much sleep.

So either use this skill to push your career/skills forward, or use it to
raise small children while you're still young. Either way will leave you
better off. If you push hard to make some money, and then have kids, maybe you
won't need to work 9-5 when you do have kids. If you have your kids early,
then you'll have the time and energy to put into your work when you're a bit
older, because your kids won't be draining your energy.

The sub optimal solution is to have your kids later on, at the same time you
realise you need to work hard to push ahead. That's doubly taxing and twice as
hard.

~~~
callmeed
It's a weird thing though ... now that I'm 35 I definitely can't bang out work
until 3am like I used to 10 years ago. On the other hand, I have significantly
more knowledge and better methods than I did then.

It's a bit unfair.

~~~
brc
Youth is wasted on the young - my new favourite saying.

Somehow a young person has to work out a way to hack the process, by gaining
wisdom and maturity before their youth has run out, and apply it successfully.
(and, to be fair, 35 _is still young_ ). To be more correct, someone in their
20's need to work out how to think like someone in their 30's or 40's, before
they turn 30. Young people who do that are going to be successful, no doubt.
The big problem is that a 20 year old has to listen to, and accept advice
from, a 40 year, something many have problems with.

~~~
billswift
Getting the young to have the experiences of the older and wiser is never
going to happen. It is more productive to retain or regain whatever you
consider the value of being young into old age. Personally, except for some
aches and pains in my joints, I haven't noticed any real decrease in any of my
abilities as I have gotten older.

------
tzs
There are no obnoxious ads on the site (no ads at all that I saw). There is no
obnoxious Flash or scripts. No weird color schemes. No animations. Nothing
objectionable at all that I could see, even to the most sensitive person.

So why did the submitter link to the print page, which for many of us will
bring up a print dialog that we then have to dismiss, instead of linking to
the main article page?

~~~
terrym
Well one advantage the print view has is that it's at least centered, whereas
the normal view is off to the left. Though this only makes a difference on
higher resolution screens and it isn't enough of an issue to outweigh everyone
having to dismiss a print dialog / deny ad impressions, in my opinion.

~~~
neatoincognito
On the contrary, the print view has longer lines, which makes it harder to
read on a widescreen display.

------
MrFlibble
A while back I worked for a company that didn't care about the schedule I
worked so long as the work got done. Eventually I was rolling in around 11am
to noon and leaving around 9-11pm. Having that place to myself in the evening
was bliss. Also sleeping on my natural sleep schedule (3am to 10am) greatly
increased productivity.

Sadly they refused to switch me to salary (I was hourly & quick at my job &
actually had to underperform & work slowly to keep my paycheck decent) so I
finally quit. The best feeling in the world was when they had to hire 2 hourly
replacements to do my job.

Moral: If someone is good at their job & is a happy, trusted and efficient
employee, value them and treat them accordingly. If their job is not 9-5
critical, let them work the schedule when they are the most productive.

------
greenlblue
What he really means is work on your craft. Staying up late has nothing to do
with it.

~~~
megablast
The advantage to staying up late is that you can focus on what you want to do,
rather than having to work for someone else. Being in the office alone can be
incredibly productive, I find it a lot better than being at home alone. I used
to do a similar thing, go into the office on weekends and stay late at night,
to work on my own projects. I started my own business that way.

~~~
Psyonic
Not to be a hater here, but I believe by working at the office on work
computers, your job might be able to claim the rights to your business. I'd be
careful with that one.

~~~
jfarmer
Not might, they can. Don't work on non-work projects on work computers.

------
gruseom
Wow, this line just triggered a memory for me:

 _I played music really loud and drank Mountain Dew_

As an undergrad I briefly had a job in a warehouse somewhere working the
midnight shift. I don't remember who I was working for; I'd actually forgotten
the whole thing. But reading that line about working late at night brought
back a sudden rush of how fun it was. There were two or three guys and we
cranked up _Brave New Waves_ (a reliable source for what became known as indie
rock) and in between getting the work done played tricks with the fork lifts.

This was not to become my craft, though. Maybe I missed a calling.

------
davidst
Longfellow put it well:

"The heights of great men reached and kept, were not obtained by sudden
flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the
night."

------
ojbyrne
This doesn't really seem to counsel staying up late, as much as it counsels
working while your spouse is asleep. It could just as easily be really early
in the morning (which was my method at one point in life).

~~~
leftnode
Likewise. I've never been good at staying up late, but I wake up at 4am
everyday for about 3 hours of uninterrupted work time.

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abronte
There are two things my dad has always told me. 1) "Always make sure you get
paid" and 2) "Work hard when you're young, you can handle staying up late"

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quizbiz
I would be interested to read a good paper about how sleep patterns changing
with age.

I also wonder about how waking hours not only shifts as we grow old, but I
wonder if life-span has been tracked and analyzed in terms of waking hours.

~~~
jaaron
For all my career, I've worked late. When running my own business or
consulting, I tended to have a 3 or 4 am bedtime.

This fall my daughter started school. I have to be up at 6:00 AM in order to
get the day started and drop her off for classes.

This has completely changed my sleep patterns, and thus my work patterns.
Feels like it takes a lot longer to get anything done. So I definitely agree
that you should take advantage of late nights while you can.

~~~
MrFlibble
I spent several years in an industry where we'd have call time at 6 or 6:30am,
which meant a 5am wakeup. I am a night owl so needless to say it sucked. By
the weekend all I'd want to do was sleep. The thing is, between shows my body
clock would revert right back to the old 3am bedtime schedule.

Isn't it amazing how you can get the same number of hours of sleep but if it
isn't on the schedule you naturally prefer it can feel less refreshing?

------
whackedspinach
Psh, everyone at my school thinks it's crazy that I stay up until 2 or 3 in
the morning. That's when all of my best work gets done.

------
Mz
Something he doesn't touch on, but it's one reason I am willing to work on
Saturdays: When the office is mostly empty, it's quiet and you are more
productive.

~~~
zmmmmm
For me it's not just quiet that helps. It's that doing things on my own time
makes me much more relaxed about how I do it - want refactor that bit of code
that works ok but you know it's ugly as hell? Want to try YUI3 when your whole
site is written with YUI2 and you've got no great reason to upgrade? Want to
redo that button with a background image that isn't quite antialiased
properly? There are a whole slew of things that I just can't justify from a
business point of view, but that have huge potential in terms of personal
payoff. But once I'm on my own time I can sit down and try them out. Those
that work out I take with confidence into businesss hours, those that don't
are just a little self-development time.

Before anyone mentions it, I am somewhat internally conflicted in the sense
that this kind of stuff _should_ be built into the "on the clock" time. But it
is how it is.

NB: the sad thing is - what he says about kids is absolutely true. With 2 kids
now, even when I do get a little time to myself it is still laced with some
guilt that I could be spending that with my family. And if I do put extra
hours into to work it affects the whole family. So work stress translates
directly to family stress.

------
checker659
The issue for me isn't so much about working till late at night, but the fact
that I cannot wake up in time for my engagements for the next day.

Anyone solved that problem?

~~~
MaysonL
Wake up real early and work _from_ late at night.

------
gallerytungsten
Michael Bierut has a funny slide he uses in his presentations, in which he
notes that his name is not spelled "Beirut" (like the city in Lebanon).

------
known
Plan your career so that you can retire by 40.

------
pxlpshr
I love that this is on HN from AIGA. Advertising industry is more brutal than
tech startups... you kill yourself working on client demands, not your own
products.

So if you're hiring a front-web developer and their past history includes a
reputable ad agency, you're likely going to have a good candidate for early-
stage startup.

------
fishercs
you work hard and it pays off, it's amazing how many people forget that.

------
tickle_me_elmo
This article recommends working an extra shift at the office for free and
creating an expectation with your boss that you can do twice the work everyone
else can do in the same amount of time.

My recommendation would be the opposite. Carefully manage expectations and
pace yourself if you want (a) to ensure your longevity as a tech worker, (b)
to avoid serious health problems and (c) to avoid later regretting missing out
on the valuable social and emotional opportunities of your youth.

You can develop your skills in your twenties without creating unfortunate
imbalances.

~~~
petercooper
_My recommendation would be the opposite. Carefully manage expectations and
pace yourself if you want (a) to ensure your longevity as a tech worker, (b)
to avoid serious health problems and (c) to avoid later regretting missing out
on the valuable social and emotional opportunities of your youth._

Sure, I can see how that would work for perhaps even most people but it's
different strokes for different folks. Ultimately, people need to make their
own minds up because it doesn't always work one way or the other.

I regret _not_ working a lot harder in my early 20s and haven't ultimately
derived much value from the "valuable social and emotional opportunities of
[my] youth." Indeed, working harder and more deliberately has led to _better_
social and "emotional" opportunities. It's hard to "regret" the past
significantly considering I'm happy now but if I could go back and wipe most
of my memory, I'd work my ass off 100x as hard at that stage of life.

~~~
gruseom
Strongly agree. One of these days I want to write a manifesto against "work-
life balance". Yeah, you heard me: against. "Balance" implies a tradeoff.
Work, when you have the right work, _is_ life.

That's not to say there's no such thing as overwork, spending too little time
with your family or what have you. But it's time someone stood up to the
prophets of complacency.

~~~
mortenjorck
As you allude to, work-life balance is something we tend to need if we aren't
able to make our work something we believe in wholly. I spent the past year
hoping to trade my day job for my dream job, but I think I've come to the
conclusion that at least for me, the only way I'll ever find it is to make
that job myself. It's liberating and daunting.

------
jjrumi
I'm somehow in the same situation Michael was in the 80s. I'm young, my couple
has to wake up at 6 and I can stay in bed easily till 8. I've been trying to
be productive in my personal projects (programming) either at night, after she
goes to bed, or starting up very early at 6... but I haven't been able so far.

At night I'm brain-dead after the whole day programming at the office. On the
other hand, in the morning I need at least 30 min to _really_ wake up and
start thinking correctly in front of the computer and that doesn't leave much
time to do almost anything before going to work.

Anyone with a good advice?

~~~
eru
Having a nap after work before continuing, and then continuing may help.

Or have you tried going to bed really early and getting up much earlier?

~~~
jjrumi
Never tried to have a nap before continuing, although now that I read you it
sounds like a natural thing to try. Thanks.

~~~
eru
Good luck! And keep in mind that napping is a skill to practice. Don't despair
if you can't fall asleep within a few minutes the first few times you try it.

