As a programmer, I generally prefer to start coding after dinner and into the wee hours of the morning before heading to sleep at almost all weekends. While working in the salon, which made me so tired during the day, I would spend the late nights learning to program. If you ask a random programmer when they do their best work, there’s a high chance they will admit a lot of it’s done late at night. Some earlier, some later. Some people are naturally not morning people, so they sleep till noon and work afternoons and late nights, still maintaining a healthy amount of sleep.
I love coding at night due to no constant interference when there’s nothing to disturb your aloneness. Coding during the day means having to deal with interruptions in the form of people, calls, texts, and life in general. But in the wee hours of the night, there is no one to disturb me, no social notifications to bug me, and I can code just the projects I want to.
The tranquility of the night is when the background noise of endless activity around you, like cars passing by, people talking, and whatnot, becomes completely muted, so much so I can have a pin-drop silence. If that is not the perfect atmosphere to work or chill, I don’t know what is. You might say that we can have a similar atmosphere in the daytime by using noise-cancelling headphones and getting your groove on listening to your favorite music.
But constantly listening to music on headphones should be avoided to keep your hearing sense in good health. It is actually recommended not to use headphones continuously for more than an hour and to take breaks in between. The quiet atmosphere at night actually feels a lot better for mentally stimulating tasks like coding.
The brain works best when it’s late at night because it turns out that late at night/really early in the morning, the brain gets tired enough that it can only focus on one task, not on multiple tasks. There will be flexible and creative thinking.
Studies have proven beyond doubt that night owls/early birds tend to be more intelligent and creative than others.
When you code at night, interacting with humans is at a minimum. There’s nothing better you can do than become a programmer. Not only will you not have to see people during the night because everyone’s asleep, but you can also avoid them during the day because you are asleep!
Again, coding at night always puts me in the flow: I start working on the problem with full focus, leaving behind the world around. At such wee hours, I am much more likely to get in the flow of things, developing the project without thinking about things happening around.
No matter the time you prefer to work, always keep in mind that developers need an adequate amount of sleep just like everyone else. If I don’t sleep, I tend to screw up more, so I always make sure that I have sufficient hours of sleep and a proper sleep schedule to prevent feeling burnt out and weakened during the day.
The core reasons I work at night or very early in the morning have to do with deep thoughts, flow, focus on one’s work.
#women-in-tech #programming #productivity #learning-to-code #software-development
