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Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

I've noticed that many of us with a hacker mindset (myself included!) have this innate need to optimize / maximize / minimize... For me, this often leads to "all" or "nothing". I have to drink either 6 beers or no beers, eat 6 donuts or no donuts, code all night or not code at all. On one hand, I like it this way. It gives me a chance to harness that energy to accomplish a lot in a short period. On the other hand, sometimes I just wish I were more normal and would love to find a happy medium.

OP is doing the same thing here. Going from (probably) overload to zero. I wish him the best and I'm sure he'll learn a lot about himself.

Hopefully he, I, and a lot of others like us will learn to find a way to thrive somewhere between all and nothing.

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I never understood the all or nothing mentality, especially among developers.

Coding all night is the most pervasive example. I wake up before 6 AM every day so I'm physically tired by 9 PM. Usually I'm mentally tired well before dinner. Maybe "all night" is a euphemism for "a long time" and I'm over thinking it but I consider it a productive day when I get 3 hours of work on a side project done in addition to my day job.

That being said, I have no problem going home and spending time with my family and not doing anything on my phone, computer, or even Xbox, so maybe it's just me.

EDIT: I don't want to be that guy, but isn't it a fairly commonplace meme among programmers to argue against 8-10-12 hour coding sprints for their employers because you can really "only" get 4-6 hours of good programming time out of someone in a day?[0]

[0] Citation needed

Yeah - I've never used 'all night' to mean 24 hours/no-sleep. I did used to do a lot of work well past midnight in a former life, but also wouldn't get started before 10am (usaully) and have some downtiem (or at least non-coding time) in the afternoon.

I recently did several 2-3 day stints of 'all night' - almost - meaning up at 6am and going to bed at 3:30 or 4am the next morning (fruitlessly trying to track down and fix some bugs on a system that was live). I was pretty unproductive at 2am, but kept thinking "almost got it... almost got it"... then didn't have it. I might have found it faster with more sleep, but maybe not - the 'fix' only came to me after digging around with the code and settings and numerous tests (was only occurring on production system, not dev system). Oh, that was the other reason for late night - could only reproduce this on production, and it was better to do it at night when there were far fewer users.

The last time I stayed up past midnight to work on something was probably close to a year ago. I stopped when I made what I thought was a simple change and ended up completely fubaring the font end of the site.

I went to bed and first thing the next morning fixed what was an insurmountable obstacle just a few hours before. Maybe it's because I wasn't on a deadline, maybe it's because I could sleep as long as I wanted because it was a weekend, but since then I haven't had any reason or desire to work past the point where my body wants to go to sleep.

Yeah, most of the time, I find that when I hit a 'hard' problem, I can shelve it and sleep or go away, and probably 95% of the time I have a decent (sometimes good!) solution soon (the next day or two). Perspective, more brain work, whatever - not sure what happens. The all-nighters are certainly less frequent for me - the recent stints in Jan/Feb were the first time in probably more than 4 years, if memory serves correctly.

The trick to "all night" is that you can only work X hours in a certain 24 hour period. You can do them during the day, or during the night, but you cannot do 2X by doing both. It just doesn't work that way.

I'd see it as also being that all night is a lot more conducive to no interruptions.

I definitely understand the all-or-nothing mentality! And I think it's rational in that it solves the slippery slope problem. It's the same reason to identify as a vegetarian instead of, say, only eating meat on special occasions. Slippery slopes are slippery!

Shameless plug: My startup, http://beeminder.com, is "safety rope for slippery slopes" -- a commitment device tool that let's you hard-commit to anything graphable. Like time spent online, which you can track with our http://rescuetime.com integration.

I've done the "all night" thing a few times, especially during phases when I had no external schedule constraints (like a dayjob). It's hard to explain, but I kinda like those crazy marathon coding sessions, although I'd shy away from them now, even if I had the option. If for no other reason, because I associate them with drinking lots of coffee and energy drinks and eating lots of junk food, and since I was diagnosed as a diabetic, I'm trying to cut back on unhealthy stuff.

Strangely enough though, I feel like I've written some of my best code near the tail end of a 20+ hour coding binge, when I can barely keep my eyes open. But maybe it just seemed that way at the time. :-)

I regularly stay up until after mindnight doing stuff, and up at 6am. I simply don't sleep that much. If I go to bed before that I tend to toss and turn and don't get a lot of sleep anyway so I figure why not be productive.

Most nights I'm working on code or writing or gaming though I occasionally will stay up and read a book.

I think you can get more that 4-6 good hours of good work out of programmers so long as you break it up. 12 hours is possible on occasion but not daily. You will burn out and become brain fried, but if you break it up, say 4 code 1 doing something completely different 4 code 1 something different and 4 code you can do it on a more regular basis.

And by 'something different' I mean engaging different parts of the brain. Paint, write, clean house, yard work.. something that gets you away from and disconnected from the computer and the work. Gaming might qualify but if your on the computer or XBox your not really disconnecting from the tech.

> 12 hours is possible on occasion but not daily. You will burn out and become brain fried, but if you break it up, say 4 code 1 doing something completely different 4 code 1 something different and 4 code you can do it on a more regular basis.

Before I had a real job I used to work in a supermarket. Other than that I'd usually game or code and now and again watch TV. My favourite was Saturday when I worked from 1pm to 10pm. I'd then come home and be up until 2 or 3am gaming or coding. The next day I'd wake up around 8 or 9am and code some more.

For the past few years I've had a proper 9 - 5 (+) job. Here in the EU nobody seems to work crazy 80 hours weeks, but I hardly ever get home before 6:30pm. This year I've been trying to do One Game A Month [1], and really I just haven't had the time or energy to do it. In the evening I hardly ever feel like coding more, and at the weekend I can usually only get around 6 hours before I've had enough. I would love to be able to spend as much time coding on what I want as I did 5 years ago :)

[1] http://www.onegameamonth.com/

I have this exact same problem. Whenever I try to make a new good habit or break a bad habit, it's always all or nothing. Once I slip into the grey my mind is to good at rationalizing my way towards the other pole.

You are not alone :-)

... if you don't want to fall back into old tracks, turn 90 degrees.

I wake up before or at 4. If not I have to force myself out of bed at 08.30.

You don't fall into, 'oh I didn't wake up at 4 so the 8.30 doesn't matter' trap?

No, by then either the kids wake up or office hours are closing in on me :-)

Well, my wife is not a hacker, but we share the motto "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing."

The only one of those examples that really makes sense in terms of all or nothing is coding, at least for me. If I don't have at least a few hours then I don't really get much done, although that may be from my inexperience.

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