But from my own experience, I wonder how much of those long hours are truly productive. At least in my own case, i often observe that the quality of the work I do early morning when I’m fresh is significantly better than what I do late at night, and that the late-night job is more liable to contain subtle bugs, thus often needing to be “polished” in the morning again. Additionally what I can finish in the last 4 hours at night (after a full days work) I can easily do in about 2 hours in the morning. So while there’s an egocentric feeling of satisfaction of wrapping something up before going to bed, from a pure productivity perspective I find it better to call it quits at a decent hour and take a fresh look in the morning.
So recently, I’ve started to do things in a way that things that need to be created from scratch, or otherwise need more mental/intellectual involvement, I do them while I’m fresh, and reserve the more mundane things or interpersonal tasks (like meetings, etc.) for the later part of the day when I’m slightly tired. I wonder if any of this resonates with other peoples’ experiences.