It's the first time in almost three years since I spend all night working. I used to pull all-nighters all the time back in college where I used to have a full time job while enrolling in 7-10 courses per semester only to finish faster - the normal workload was 5-6 courses -, and I guess I got addicted to a fast pace and an efficiency and productive mindset.
I stopped having this lifestyle when I began traveling. I traveled for 3 years non-stop, I went to more than 30 countries and experienced a lot. I was probably sleeping as much as I was in college but the motivation to do it was a totally different one, but the outcome was pretty much the same: I believe sleeping is wasting time.
Now, before you come up with the oh but anomad, we all need sleep, you are slowly killing yourself by having this lifestyle hear me out. I do sleep, and I love resting and being with a full battery on a new day or a new week, especially when the first of the month is a monday - I guess it's a psychological thing - but the thing is, I see sleeping time as a must or a need, not a pleasure or something I do because I want to.
Sleeping to me is like eating in a healthy way, meditating or exercising daily. I do each of those things because I know I have to, I do them because I understand that I need to in order to perform at my very best level. It's like my medicine.
Sleep time is a need, but like everything in life, if we hedonistically succumb to our needs and turn them into wants, then we are dangerously threading on a thin line where pleasure, self indulgence and apathy can take over the wheels of our life.
I've been getting a lot less sleep time later, but I'm loving every second of it. I'm not sleeping less because I want to, but because I have to. I recently had a huge change in my life that is keeping me up from 11pm to 5 am.
Instead of playing vidya & chess or reading novels, I am taking this time that I have to stay awake, to work on myself. I am doing a lot of work for my job, learning more JavaScript and slowly getting into React and Python, and I'm trying to do more research on projects that promise or that have a ton of potential.
I think I'm doing quite well in all of these fronts.
The social side of Leo is kicking ass, I am learning much more programming - to me, night time is the best to learn by the way - and I recently made a 500 dollar investment that is already 50x up.
Nice, isn't it?
I have no idea if I would be where I am right now if I hadn't start with this lifestyle and mindset where I use the nights to be as productive as I can be instead of mindlessly watching series or playing video games whenever I have to stay up at night.
I remember that back when I was traveling I was constantly volunteering in hostels to sustain my cheap lifestyle and extend my traveling time. When there was a night shift available and there was no party in the horizon, I would take it just to be able to have all that time to work on myself. You see, night time in hostels is basically checking that every guest arrives, making sure they are not too loud while eating away their drunkness, being there if a guest has any question which is literally 10 minutes per night, and just doing some small tasks that take no more than 1 hour. That used to leave me 6 full hours to do stuff for myself.
I am rambling, perhaps it is because I've been awake for 24 hours and out of those, like 16 have been in front of my desk, maybe I do need my sleep medicine right now.
By the way, this is the featured desk, do you like it? I know, it's messy as fuck but that's what I get after so much productive time with no cleaning time in between.
What about you? When are you more productive?