I do the same thing as the author does. Moreover, I keep these notes more frequently, to the project's notebook with my other thoughts during the day.

When I return to the task, I get up to speed in ~10 minutes, and things way go smoother because a) I'll be rested, b) My brain would have processed the plan and came up with a refined version of it. When I read the plan I wrote, I automatically recall the refined version most of the time.

Then, I get to work and finish what I have started.

Interestingly, sleep doesn't erase my emotions, but pause them. I just continue from where I left.

sounds like you are more of a morning person,

as a non-morning person, it usually takes me about 4-6 hours to get up-to-speed. because there would be some unexpected twists and turns that will distract me from the task.

meanwhile, exact opposite. if i cannot "solve" an issue, if i just wait till the evening by going for a 100+km bicycle ride, i magically solve the problem in the evening (right about at dusk and after).

That doesn't sound like you are a non-morning person, but that you have a very inefficient start of the day. Good news: you might be able to add as much as 20 hours of productivity to your week!

I’d love to hear how to start today efficiently. Please do share!

Sincerely, A true night owl.

Go to bed not later than 11pm. Wake up not later than 6am. Try to avoid HN after waking up and get straight to work.

If you are productive as a night owl, you will be even more productive this way.

The problem is the falling asleep part for many night owls, insomnia is the issue.

Have you tried sports? Someone mentioned bicycling 100km which imho is quite exhausting and gives me a good night of sleep.

I do cycling, currently based in Luxembourg. I cycle (for fun & sports) about 10.000 (ten-thousand) kilometers per year. I also like 100+km rides, although I do that weekly mostly between mid-April to mid-September period...

I can easily sleep 10 hours, start at any time. It's not a problem of falling asleep, it's a problem of waking up :)

That's the thing about insomnia, it simply doesn't work the way you think, it can sometimes be an actual sleeping disorder.

Sure, this is not medical advice. In case you are not sick, this will work though.

That he doesn’t react to the suggestion of trying daily a few hours of cardio exercises instead preferring a few hours of insomnia, indeed tells me there are other issues in his/her life.

That's because every person who struggles with sleep has heard this advice a thousand times. It just doesn't work for all of us.

I lift weights, and I make sure to do big muscle groups. I wake up around the same time every day, ish. I do not drink coffee in the afternoon. I do not use blue light screens at night. And any number of other advice that people keep bringing up.

Like the comment above that says if you wake up at 06, you will be tired at 23. Yeah, sure, but you still won't be able to sleep. All that does is make you more tired permanently, but sleep still doesn't happen.

People just do not work the same, some people are really more active at night. And this advice is echoed constantly whenever this topic is brought up.

For what it's worth as one bit of advice: Try to make the best of what you can do in those long deep night hours. If you can't use them for sleep, as a deep night owl, then make them count for something else that's useful. Many of history's most interesting, famous and also infamous characters (and overall very productive people by sheer virtue of their achievements) were extreme night owls. It didn't stop them from creating and working. For certain types of endeavor or work in particular, the part of the day in which the hours are put in isn't nearly so relevant as the hours simply being used in the first place.

Just a few observations from one night owl to another; I can rarely go to sleep before 4 am.

No, it's because if you have an actual medical condition, doing exercise doesn't work. I do exercise daily, it doesn't actually solve the core issue. It's like saying you can solve a broken leg with exercise.

Ah yes, the tried and true “Have you tried not being a night owl?” method. Works every time.

I'm like GP too, I'm usually at my peak performance somewhere after dinner. Used to be a stereotypical night owl, but eventually life forced me to act like a morning person (small kids + partner who is a genuine, bona fide, textbook morning person slash productivity beast).

Close to a decade of that lifestyle, and my body didn't adjust. In my case, there's no insomnia - I indeed start feeling tired around 21:00 - 23:00. Just that my performance curve didn't shift accordingly; only thing that's changed is that I had to give up my most productive parts of day (afternoon, late night), because I'm too tired to do anything at that point.

I'm open to suggestions on how to fix that.

I don't get it, what do you do for 4 to 6 hours? I can understand an hour as sometimes I get coffee and relax into the work but 4 to 6 hours? That's like most of the workday already gone.

> That's like most of the workday already gone

if you don't work in the evenings, which he explicitly mentioned he does

probably he does things easy tasks, things that can be done on autopilot, gradually moving on to initial attempts at harder tasks?

So they're just in a state of quasi work for the entire day in the evenings too? If they spend 6 hours on easy tasks when do they have the time for the hard tasks unless they work something like 12 hour days?

it sounds like they have time to go on a 100+ km bike ride throughout during the day, which isn't work. just going off of what they wrote..

seems like they enjoy what they do and/or enjoy what they do, which is critical for non-morning people

Brain don't work (comment written at 8AM my time).

I'm not a morning person either. Coffee doesn't really help. For me it not 4-6 hours, but 2 is common.

I'm not a "very" morning person. I generally wake around 7am in the morning, and start my wind-down at 11:00 pm.

I generally plan my next morning and half day before I go to bed. This allows me to create a routine with some flexibility for the morning.

While I can, and like to work, at nights, I do it less and less. Increasing the efficiency of my work routine is a more rewarding process for me. Also, I'm more conscious about my biorhythm now, so I want to give my bods enough time to detox itself, esp around 1-3pm, when your brain "takes the chemical trash out".

> Interestingly, sleep doesn't erase my emotions, but pause them. I just continue from where I left.

That is interesting for me. It's something I wish was the case for me, because I've been struggling with this a lot. I started referring to it as "lack of emotional continuity" or "emotional cache flush". It's like a context switch, but on emotional layer. I basically can't seem to hold on to my emotional state for extended duration, and in particular it gets reset at the day boundary (i.e. when I sleep). This affects both positive and negative emotional states.

Practical consequence of that is that I prefer "sprints" to "marathons" when dealing with tough problems, whether intellectual or emotional - it can take up to an hour for me to "work myself up" the right way to focus on a hard task, or to talk about some difficult personal topics, so I need to make the best of it.

I really, really wish there was a way to do the emotional equivalent of the "write down plans and thoughts at the end of day, read them again in the morning" trick.

Curious. That's the complete opposite of me. My sleep is akin to MacBook's Power Nap. Everything stays put except some small background processes. My version also has good and bad sides (esp. dealing with hard events in life).

I understand how your emotions/body work and how upsetting the current "configuration" is, but maybe it's the way because your body is trying to process or overcome something in the grand scale.

Did you try meditation, esp. not the canned ones from the apps, but a proper practice with a proper instructor and mentor? A good practice generally help you to understand what makes you tick, or live a more balanced inner life, which may help you reducing in this "work up" time, or change the things which you doesn't like about yourself.

I will first offer you a cliche from a movie that I saw in my pre-adolescence in the '70s from a much older era, the title of which I do not recall:

The palest ink is better than the best memory.

How I obey this rule at the end of the day is to continue my code in the necessary points, interspersed with "blahs" if I am feeling verbose (and necessary means that nothing critical is left out, and nothing irrelevant is included in reminding tomorrow).

How I disobey this rule is to verbally say (out loud) the idea that comes to mind in odd moments, as they are prone, followed by "note this" (at which point everyone around you admires your incomprehensible spontaneous demeanor). This imposes a tag on the inspirational memory of perspective and involvement, and I find that I retain it until no longer needed.

This works for me.

> that said "feeling of incompleteness" will distract me for the rest of the evening

I find that it can even ruin an evening. I'll find myself trying to solve a problem in my head rather than being present with my family.

The only thing that works for me is waiting for clean breaks that happen mid-late afternoon. As soon as I reach a happy stopping point, I must stop and switch to shallow work for the rest of the afternoon. Then it's easy to leave my computer at the end of the day.

It's hard but after years of struggling with this, I found a sustainable way to balance work and life.

I also track my consistency with doing this so that I notice myself slipping back and correct it before it becomes a problem.

I have 3 small kids. Sleep is an achievement itself. I only get to experience at most two of "good", "night" and "sleep" :).

(Back before that, in some previous night, my body would still take 8-10 hours of sleep if I let it, and the more I did, the more tired I felt throughout the entire day.)