| When I get like this I can write code and design systems as easily as breathing, but only for short stints, and once I go to bed and get a full nights sleep I'm done for a couple days. It's like hyper vigilance but all I see is the computer, it's awesome (probably unhealthy), but I can't turn it on and off. There are triggers that usually work though. If I stay up playing past 10pm it almost always turns on, and all of a sudden it's 4am and I've got standup in a couple hours, but I got a shit load completed. I used to be able to take a lot of uppers, like smoking and drinking too much coffee/red bull, and that would stretch it out, but I can't do that anymore because I want to live past 40. So now I get the effects over shorter periods of time, and really only when I stay up late. I also find that when I'm really exhausted from lack of sleep, it actually kicks in faster, but when I do that, I just end up sleeping all weekend because I invariably end up working on something until 4am every day. I'm still trying to figure out how to attain that extreme level of focus at will but it feels like it would require me to stop focusing on computers/electronics to try to figure it out, and that simply won't do. |
"... and really only when I stay up late"
My "productive mania" that I mention in this thread, was predominantly late at night. I've always been something of a night owl, and at the time in my life where I began programming, I was able to stay up very late, and sleep in late.
Sometimes I wonder if productive mania is attainable only when you're functioning day-to-day, in your 'ideal' sleep cycle.