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Comment by jmcomets | Hacker News Reader

> Why does writing in the morning (anecdotally so far) seem to be so effective for writers, even ones who are not morning persons? While programmers, which seems like a similar occupation, are invariably owls?

Also anecdotal, but I've met my share of early bird programmers. I often wonder how much of these habits are driven by ~~stereotypes~~ culture, since theoretically your energy level depends mostly on your lifestyle.

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Perhaps the boring explanation is, if you don't start writing in the morning, you're already doing something else when you think you should start writing.

I program equally well early in the morning or late at night, basically the two times in the day when my daily tasks are mostly settled. If I advertise early morning programming, it doesn't feed into the mantra of "hard working" in corporate USA as well as the "burning the midnight oil" tropes.

So, I come into the office two hours early and get my programming done before the meetings start and get little to no recognition, or I stay three hours late doing the same and get lots of recognition. Savvy people will soon learn to feed the trope of working hard, working late, especially when it can excuse a late entry to work (but arriving early never permits a late exit).

I'd say the late night hacker is more a stereotype driven by culture.

Maybe others can sympathize with my personal experience. I'm a morning person. But mentally, I can't completely focus when there's things that I have to do later. I'm always worried about those upcoming things (responsibilities, meetings, kids, etc). By programming at night, after everything else is done, I can truly focus. Getting in the flow, I'm not tired and I'm completely absorbed by the current task. No future distractions.

Night is also quiet and peaceful.

No one is up or going to be up, likely. People aren't outside making noise. No inbound calls, less inbound emails or chats. Less notifications across social media.

I think this is why I was most productive at anything in the morning. I would get up at 5 or 6, because I just can't sleep past six hours, and have a good two hours to myself before my wife was up or I needed to head to work.

But now I have a kid, so either he wakes up soon after I do, or I don't dive into anything but because I need to drop it when he's up.

Worth noting that we found putting our child down a little later helped with her not waking up till later.

For instance, if she went to sleep at 7.30 she'd wake up at 7.30 and so on. Might be helpful if you're looking for more time in the morning.

Or it might not be, because kids are high variance and what works for one is useless for another.

From a history point of view, early mainframe programmers were required to be night owls. Mainframes were expected to be running all day doing the calculations they were purchased to do - the only time they were allowed to be idle for development and maintenance was after the close of business. This is also the source, to a certain extent, of the unusual freedoms programmers often enjoy within organizations. They needed to have unusually free access to the most expensive equipment (and the building in general) and weren't supervised in person by the usual hierarchy of bosses.[1]

[1] From The Computer Boys Take Over, a very good basic history of the professsion: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9247209-the-computer-boy...

Interruptions are costly to both programmers and writers. But I don't think writers get interrupted as much, so they can work during normal waking hours. Programmers get interrupted a lot if they work during business hours because their projects usually interconnect with other people's projects.

Yeah, I think it's stereotypes + reinforcement of peer groups that follow similar schedules as you.

I am a pretty ok writer & programmer in the morning; my productivity & quality of work falls off after 2pm. Under pressure, I'd much rather go to bed early and wake up very early to work on a next-day project.

I am a night owl, but most productive in the morning (if not exhausted). I dont think the two are as connected as people think. You need to be not tired to be productive, but there is more than that to it.

I feel exactly the same. Never been well-represented by the owl / lark dichotomy.

Another consideration is that people write differently depending on their state of mind/body.

I effectively can't do "work" writing at night. But I've found that fiction, humor, and other creative writing can benefit from being in a different headspace. Being tired to the point of feeling a bit punch-drunk can take you to interesting places. The few times I've truly surprised myself, I was writing in a somewhat (not drug-induced) altered state.

I'm not a morning person, and when I try to write a blog post or something late at night, right before bed, I'm already kind of spent and my mind is full of things.

On the few times I've woken up both early and well-rested, I have both the quiet and a clear head, although I almost always have something that'd be better tackled in the morning than cranking out a blog post or an e-mail to a friend.

A hunch: paper vs. screens or, going fully digital, paper-like software vs. terminal-like software. Microsoft Word, MacOS Pages, WordPress WYSIWYG, etc. come with the default background bright and was/is a pain to change; terminals, IDEs, code editors, etc. come with the default background dark and is a pain to read lots of code on a bright background and interface with other tools, mostly dark backgrounds.

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