I always do this: I have grand expectations about how much work I can actually get done in any given amount of time. This week marks the end of one of our coding milestones at work, and once again I find myself a long way from the fnish line. I got in at 8:30 on Monday morning, and stayed until midnight Tuesday night. It's now Wednesday, at 2:00am, and here I am, plunking away. I hadn't intended to make this another all-nighter, but the 9:00 spec review may require it.
There are some funny things that fall out of your head when you're really tired. Sometimes the world sways a bit. Around four am on Tuesday morning I spent about 45 minutes trying to fix a bug only to realize that the bug wasn't there at all -- I was misreading the test baselines.
Not too long ago I realized something: sleep matters. I don't generally get a lot of sleep, and except for extereme situations of sleep deprivation I never thought it affected my performance too much. Then, Halo was released. I normally really suck at Halo and I receive a great thumping from my co-workers whenever I play. But, I find that if I play Halo after being well-rested I can actually keep up with pack. Sometimes the pack is actually quite far behind, little more than a bloody pile of corpses. The scary realization for me was that if a good night's sleep affects my twich kill-skillz this much, what else an I missing out on?
Obviously learned my lesson...2:00am...debugging code.