Re:Late sleepers are tired of being discriminated against
by hinkley on Thursday March 31, 2016 @01:18PM
(#11398812)
You may have some of the same problems I have. Flow state entry is easier to achieve when I can structure my environment, and of course that's super easy to do when you can take pretty much everything else out of the equation. Things like people, traffic, pets, TV shows, breaking news and the sun.
I am, I believe, a late riser, but I also stayed up late so I can have quiet time by myself.
But there are also other ways to get some of this time, and I use a lot of those now. Communication hygiene is the most obvious one. Just because you send me an email doesn't mean I'm going to drop everything and answer you. But it's not enough by itself. Other things like reminders, wiki pages to dump half-cocked notions onto, pomodoro (this is a big one) and when I can manage it, working remotely one day a week from a coffee shop where I don't know anybody, all achieve some of the same effects that nocturnal coding used to do.
That said, in an environment where 24/7 operations are the norm, encouraging part of your dev team to show up at 7 am and the rest to show up at 10 is actually the saner option, as long as your truck numbers can handle it.
At 3 the early birds can hand off to the late risers, and there's still a couple hour overlap with your second shift and on-call folks before anybody has to get woken up or cancel their evening plans.
I am, I believe, a late riser, but I also stayed up late so I can have quiet time by myself.
But there are also other ways to get some of this time, and I use a lot of those now. Communication hygiene is the most obvious one. Just because you send me an email doesn't mean I'm going to drop everything and answer you. But it's not enough by itself. Other things like reminders, wiki pages to dump half-cocked notions onto, pomodoro (this is a big one) and when I can manage it, working remotely one day a week from a coffee shop where I don't know anybody, all achieve some of the same effects that nocturnal coding used to do.
That said, in an environment where 24/7 operations are the norm, encouraging part of your dev team to show up at 7 am and the rest to show up at 10 is actually the saner option, as long as your truck numbers can handle it.
At 3 the early birds can hand off to the late risers, and there's still a couple hour overlap with your second shift and on-call folks before anybody has to get woken up or cancel their evening plans.