next »

[Mysteria Studio]

Like others wrote before, my main reason to stay up late and work is to have a long time window (~7pm-2am) where I can work undisturbed. This isn't really a thing for trivial tasks where interruptions are no problem, so I try to do those on days where I can't work late due to RL.
However when working on core functionality of the game or fixing a difficult bug a short disruption can set me back for hours, which is really frustrating when it happpens.

I think the only way to get out of this unhealthy habit would be to make sure the undisturbed 7h start earlier in the day. I'll try to work on that for my next project, but it is hard to achieve this without making sacrifices in RL/social life.

[jgrams]

I think it can also take a while for your body to adjust. I once had some doctor-type tell me that if you have spent a long time sleeping on an irregular schedule, it can take up to six months for your day-night hormonal cycle to re-stabilize and your body to "expect" to be awake at a particular time. And I know that after college (three years of running on 6-ish hours of sleep a night) it took me nearly a year to get back to the point where I could bounce out of bed and be instantly awake and ready to go.

But I think it's totally worth it. I grew up with prescribed (early!) bed-times well into my teens, and I always feel like people under-estimate the health and productivity benefits of being really well-rested. Heck, most of them don't even know what it's like.

And sleeping from 9pm to 5am can buy you a pretty good window of uninterrupted work too... Love that feeling of having put in half a work day when everyone else is just rolling out of bed...   OK, I know I'm weird.

[Praying Mantis]

I've that ideally instead of sleeping a minimum of 8 hours every day, sleeping two times a day at a minimum of 4 hours each is the best way to ensure that you don't get tired during the day and are able to work at your peak efficiency. I have yet to try it but would be interested in seeing how it works. I usually wake up between 8 and 10 am, and become so tired during the late afternoon that I don't have the energy to do anything, which usually results in wasting 1-2 hours of doing nothing until I get a surge of energy again.