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Comment by vkr | Hacker News Reader

Here's what works for me:

  - Intense workouts early in the day
  - A lot of water
  - Sunlight

  - Airplane mode
  - Batching email, IM, SMS, ..
  - Automate payments
  - It's ok to be late with administration sometimes

Books that really helped me:

  - The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss [1]
  - Getting Things Done by David Allen [2]
  - Rework by Jason Fried [3]

[1] http://amzn.com/0307465357 [2] http://amzn.com/0142000280 [3] http://amzn.com/0307463745

edit: added Rework

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> Intense workouts early in the day

Solid advice. Your body learns from your habits and exercise is a great way to teach it when it needs to be awake.

Another trick is regularized sleeping patterns. I had sleeping issues when I was a teenager and had some "soft" sleeping therapy. The most important thing I learned is: don't aim for a certain amount of hours, aim for specific times. E.g. Go to bed at midnight sharp and wake up at 7AM, come hell or high water. If you do stay up late, wake up at your usual time so as to not throw your clock off any more than it already has been.

Finally, if you are sleep deprived you are stupid. You're doing everyone a disservice by being that "hero" that pulls an all-nighter. Get your regular sleep and carry on with the task tomorrow: you'll finish it faster and do a better job of it.

I've struggled for years with getting up at a respectable time. I can't overemphasize this. There are classes (yes, multiple) in college I failed because I just simply could not get myself up and to class at 8am three days a week. That was when I was 18-20.

I'm 28 now, almost 29. I go to the gym 5 days a week at 5:30am. I'm up at 4:45 whether I set an alarm or not. I'm sure part of it is circadian rhythms and the fact that I'm going to bed at 9pm instead of 1am now. And as a result, my most productive coding hours have shifted from 7-11pm to 9am-12pm (give or take). So I keep my morning schedule open for the real work, and pack my afternoons with meetings and administrative work.

I have a lot of flexibility over my time, unlike the OP, but I've found shifting my workouts to 3pm has been much better than 6am, which is when I used to do them. I tend to now start work at 6am, run out of steam around 1pm, have some downtime, gym from 3pm to 5pm, and then I'm either in good form to see some friends or do some side projects... I had always assumed early morning worked best for me, until I tried something else.

+1 for GTD, too

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