Reconsider that all nighter.

Forget about that all nighter you are considering right now.
Even better, forget that it is a great idea.
Even better, forget about how much are you going to be able to catch up, and go to sleep.

I use to play the all nighter card, multiple times a week in the past, I don’t know it was the fact that I was younger or that I required less horse power the day after, but I was convinced that I was not only able to do that, but to be productive the next day.
With age, not only I am not productive the next day, sometimes take me days of recovery for a night of poor performance. There is nothing wrong with the days of recovery if you have an amazing performance, the problems comes when the performance is mediocre at best. We convince ourselves about how much we will be able to accomplish, and sometimes we actually do, but most times we just waste time, procrastinate and just loose our sleep.
I wish to say that even today it is an automatic behavior, it is not. I have been waking up at 4:00AM for a long time, even wrote a book about it (Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble) and had learn that those hours in the morning are maybe my most productive of the whole day, but in days that the level of satisfaction is low, I try to negociate with myself about staying up, one more hour.
I sometimes considered, even many times stay a little more late than what I should, but under really defined conditions. If I begin to browse, I go to bed. If I begin thinking on reading or watching TV, I go to bed. If I start daydreaming -as a form of procrastination-, I go to bed.
The cost of staying all night is way to high, I pay for it in the next days for sure. It is not that you stay later, it is that you understand those things you do that are not productive. Reading a chapter of a book to find inspiration to write, it is not OK, I sent myself to bed and rest.
Make sure that if you are going to make an investment in time -you will be sacrificing the next couple of days of productivity most likely and that it is a big investment- you get out of it the most value, otherwise, you do better going to sleep and waking up an hour earlier.

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Published by

Augusto Pinaud

Augusto Pinaud es Coach de Tecnología de Productividad Bilingüe, Especialista en Nozbe Teams. Augusto trabaja con dueños y gerentes de pequeñas empresas, ejecutivos y profesionales en productividad, tecnología y mejora de procesos utilizando una variedad de tecnologías de productividad.

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