I remember once having a boss that had what seemed an endless supply of energy. He was at his desk from 8am and normally didn’t stop until 2am the next morning. His energy was seemingly infinite and it was rare to see him flag. At the time I thought that was amazing. It wasn’t until after I’d left the company I learned he was a regular user of cocaine. Ah. Yes. Well…

As it is, in recent days and weeks I have discovered my own way of being able to get an endless stream of energy, all without illegal narcotics. I have been working 9am until 3am - occasionally 10am until 4am - for the last couple of weeks, and feel fine. I’m not tired, I’m not bored, I’m getting real stuff done, and I figured I’d share how I got here for those who need a hand getting focused for a year-end coding rush:

• Variety is the spice of life. Right now I have 5 open projects which means when I start getting tired of one, I can move to another. It’s all Ruby, true, but they’re different problems needing different approaches. This helps break the day up.
• 50 minutes work, 10 minutes break. Every hour. Without fail. Get up, walk around, have a drink, listen to music, stretch, whatever. Don’t sit there all day.
• Don’t read RSS, Mail, Usenet, IRC, whatever, unless you really have to. You have no idea how easy it is to get distracted.
• Time slowly becomes irrelevant, and that has interesting effects. I now look at a clock reading ‘00:12’ and instead of thinking “gosh, it’s late!” I think “Classic FM get less adverts now, I’ll put that on for the next few hours”. I can’t quite remember how many days ago it was that I listened to the opening session of the Ashes, nor am I quite sure what day it is today without looking at the top right-hand corner of my screen, and I don’t remember the last weekend I had. This is an acquired taste, and would scare most people.
• Coffee is my new friend. This is not an excuse for drinking it constantly though, I find if I drink more than four or five cups in a 24-hour period, I can’t concentrate.
• Taking a break for an hour is not cheating. This morning I went for a walk for an hour. I enjoyed looking up and seeing sky and clouds, which is odd but necessary.
• No alcohol. I used to drink quite heavily, but about a month ago I read a book on alcohol which left me not wanting to touch it ever again. The last month has been the most productive of my life, which I could have predicted: I knew that if I had even one pint, it would change my ability to concentrate with the level of intensity that is optimal for me for perhaps 24-36 hours afterwards.
• Lists. There is more power in ticking off an item on a list than you can possibly imagine. Looking back at a list of things that have been crossed out makes you feel as though it was worth it.
• Let your body do what it wants. The other night I went to get ‘a quick hour’ of rest around 8pm with the intention of working through until about 5-6am that night. I woke up the next day at 9am. Clearly my body needed the sleep. It would be unwise in the extreme to ignore it.
• Also it is important to realise this is only a temporary measure. If I tried doing this for a year, it would kill me. I’m doing it for a month to get a load of work out of the way, and then from the 15th December to the 15th January, you will do well to find me near a line of code or a phone

Momentum is definitely the best productivity tool I know of. Years ago I read a book on procrastination that suggested you promise yourself to “just do half an hour”, and then you would just find yourself carrying on - that is basically what I did, except I did it weeks ago and haven’t let the momentum slide yet. When you see pieces dropping into place, and you ignore the boundaries of time it is easy to say to yourself “oh, I can do just one more bit here and it’ll be loads better”.

I can’t stress how important it is that this is something I can do for a month, and then need to take a month off. If people start thinking “that’s insane”, they are right, and I wouldn’t advocate it for somebody who doesn’t know what they’re getting into. Nor would I suggest it to anybody who isn’t single. It’s also a false economy in terms of the long game because whilst I might be able to get over 100 hours a week in right now, I won’t get 5 hours a week done for the next six weeks. But that’s not the game I’m playing this month.

You might wonder what game it is playing, and why I’m prepared to put myself through this. Well, my company has its first year end at the end of December, and I want to put everything outstanding to bed by the end of November giving me a month to tie up my accounts and outstanding invoices. Two projects have ‘hard’ deadlines that can’t slip. One is for a friend who wants a site for her business. The other two are important for other reasons.

I would never do this if it wasn’t my own company, and I wouldn’t expect anybody else to do it either even for their own company - I accept the madness this entails. Hard work is always part of running your own business, but like I say, it’s a temporary measure. If your mind is moving towards New Year resolutions this early and you’re thinking about setting up your own business, ask yourself if this kind of work blitz is something you feel you could do once in a while whilst still enjoying it and if the answer is not an unequivocal “yes”, perhaps you should just stay on your comfy salary and stick to 9-5.