I am afflicted with occasional bouts of insomnia. They are nothing serious, they just manifest as me finding myself at 1:30 in the morning thinking: "Wow. I'm not at all tired, am I" when I have to be at work the next day. This is one of those nights. If you are a cow-orker and reading this tomorrow morning, you may wish to wait until I have had a few cups of tea before approaching me.
I am not a morning person. I'm not even entirely convinced I'm a day person. I still miss working nights, even if that did entirely put paid to any chance I might have had of developing a social-life at university. I enjoyed being awake at 3am, and really liked having the days free to go out and get things done while the shops were open.
Years ago, when I worked tech-support (my first full-time job), there were three shifts. Two people worked 7am--4pm, one worked 10am--7pm and one worked 11pm--8pm. When I moved from tech-support to programming, it was expected that I would fall into a more traditional 9--6 schedule, but that never really eventuated. Instead I ended up turning up some time between 10am and 11am, and considering my official working day done nine hours after that.
Eventually, the three of us working in the web-hacking department were pointedly asked to come in earlier. We compromised, and set up a rota whereby at least one of us would be in by 9am on any particular day to be available to answer phones and technical questions, but that was our one concession to timeliness. We got our job done, we worked the requisite number of hours. So what.
That sort of thing is less applicable in my current job, where there's much more of a need for me to be there at the same time as everyone else, and everyone else seems to turn up at ungodly hours of the morning. It still has echoes, however, in the way I never quite manage to hit that elusive 9am.
Nights are nice :)
As a PhD student at the Uni of Ballarat I have managed to talk my way into working from home (although I only live a 2 minute drive away and spend a large amount of time over there anyway).
My productive hours don't start generally until about 9-10ish. I normally crash around 8-9am. I attempted the 9-6, but failed quickly. I have this theory that it is easier to adjust to such a schedule by going to bed progressively later, rather then getting up earlier. At least as it stands now, being awake at 8/9ish in the morning is not a totally foreign feeling, so I believe I am making some progress in that regard :)
Maybe I should just move to the states :|
I've had much the same pattern, down to work schedule issues. In fact you've said quite a few things I wish I'd remembered when I wrote this : http://bossavit.com/thoughts/archives/000079.html
Looking back, I think "insomnia" has become what I used to call "being a night person", back when I was 20ish, still young enough that I rarely had to suffer for going to bed at 3 or 4, and could pull off 72-hour workdays about once a month. I'm only 33, dammit, but nowadays I'm *lousy* at work when I haven't had my 6 or 7 hours.
OK, OK. I'm sitting here counting the number of cups of tea you've had. The answer, so far, is zero. Which is why I'm going to tell you this offline....
The development database is down today. You could have stayed in bed. :)
AAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
ahh the good old days when you could always rely on Kevin starting at 9am... (and Charles with his tea ;) )
I'm now working for a traditional business Chinese family who demand programmers start at 8.30am in case issues arose overnight... as if that ever happens :/ adding to the pain is the hour trip to work by tram (not to mention the whole shirt and tie thing).
People wonder why I have 3 litres of soft drink (read caffeine drink) sitting on my desk.
A long time ago (10 years?) I heard an interview with a fellow who'd written a book about night-shift workers -- nurses, firemen, all sorts of people. He concluded that night-shift workers not only worked graveyard because they were disposed to it, but that they even had a different outlook on life than early risers. Unfortunately I can't find the book or the author anywhere, too bad.
I'm exactly the opposite, and probably due to similar "conditioning" at the other end of the day. My brain is as sparky as it gets at about 7.30 in the morning, and all my best design and development is done before midday. Frankly, anything after 4pm is a bit of a washout.
I put this down to my first job, working in a newsagents - sorting out the newspapers as they got delivered to the shop, and doing several paper rounds. I got up at 5.30am every day (bar holidays) for 5 years, between the ages of 13 and 18. I actually enjoyed it, and it paid relatively good money. I also got the chance to read most newspapers everyday, something which I miss.
Even now, 12 years after I left the job to go to university, I tend to wake between 5.30 and 6 in the morning. 20 mins later, I'm on the way to the tube station. 40 mins after that, I'm in the office.
If the world was anywhere near a decent place, of course, I'd be able to leave about at 3 or 4 in the afternoon. But of course, deadlines etc. conspire against us, so if I leave before 5.30 it's a bonus. Sigh. Well, it pays the mortgage.
The world is spectacularly, unfairly biased towards morning people. I suspect that is because they got up first and had it all organised that way before anyone else was out of bed.
The same goes for me, really, though I attribute its beginnings to my "slack" and "stay up until 4am coding because it's due tomorrow" cycle (with it's weekend counterpart "sleep" and "stay up with gamer geeks until 4am") during university, rather than the tech support job with late hours I picked up along the way.
I have to get to my current coder job at nine-ish because there are a lot of people around here that surreptitiously shorten their work day the more flexible the hours become. This is rather annoying when I have a deadline and wind up staying here until ungodly late anyway because my productivity doesn't change from caffiene-induced flashes to a full-fledged stream of creativity until eight or nine at night anyway, no matter how I try to force it.
That said, it's 9:51 AM, I got here twenty minutes ago (dressed like a freak and no one cares), and no one is expecting me to get any work done yet, as they've only seen me head to the coffee machine once yet this morning....
One of my first real jobs was working third-shift work, 11pm to 7am, and that was back when I was 19. I am not cut out for staying up all night and into the next day, myself. However, I would posit that I am an afternoon person, as that's when I like to wake up, get fed and ready (as though it's morning) and then go out and do things with the day until it turns to night, at which point I turn on my friends, or my electronic entertainment devices, and stay up till the wee hours--later, if there's good reason. I've been up out of bed now for around four hours now, and still feel as though I could go lay down in bed and be asleep in ten minutes....
Never am I morethankful for my job than when I think about the hours. I never start work before 8pm, and I'm always finished by 8am. Being qable to keep to a nocturnal schedule is the only thing that makes my job enjoyable.
Accidentally found your site on some weird link trail that I was investigating. Anyway, I thought I'd ask about your "comments" thing. Mine sucks and I like how all the comments show up on the same page as your post. I never did like those pop-up comments page.
Did you make this yourself? Is there anyway I could get a code from you?