Stay up late while you can. It pays off
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aiga.org
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.
It's a bit unfair.
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.
When I was 22, I could easily get up at 8am, and work till 4am five days a week, then go out and hammer it at night clubs until the wee hours at the weekend with a bit of a rest on Sunday.
Now I'm lucky, if I can stay away until 11pm.
I always have an answer for people who try to act like putting in long hours makes them a better employee, or more dedicated, "if you can't get your work done, give it to me and I'll do it, and still leave on time every day. Then they can cut your salary and give half of it to me."
[If you want to live an Erdos lifestyle, I imagine you can maintain late night productivity very late in life with only slight, completely-unavoidable age related decline. While this lifestyle is socially expected of college age students or the norm, it's socially discouraged and deviant for older Americans ... I think social causations should be slightly more heavily weighted than an age based causations]
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?
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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?
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.
Anyone solved that problem?
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.
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.
I saw the lesson emerge in this sentence: "The more work I did, the faster I got, and the better I got."
He illustrates: "I loved working late at night. I worked on office stuff, and I worked on personal projects. . . invitations for my friends' parties, packaging for mix tapes, one-of-a-kind birthday cards, and freebies for non-profits."
I saw the point as when you're young, and you're passionate find the extra time to practice and hone your skills.
That extra time can pay huge dividends to your career in the long term, and that time is harder and harder to find as you get older.
24 thousand dollars a year with very little work each week is pure gold.
You'll never have your back strapped to the wall and you can do whatever you want.
Please elaborate?
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.
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.
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?
Or have you tried going to bed really early and getting up much earlier?