Sometimes you need to burn the midnight oil to get a project or release out the door. It’s part of life when creating exciting new products, but it doesn’t have to be painful. Here are some tips that I’ve collected to make late night work sessions effective. The list doesn’t even include caffeine or 80’s dance music.
Keep your eyes going strong
At night, your eyes can get tired quickly from your computer screen blasting white light at them. I either dim my monitor, or better yet use the High Contrast Chrome extension. This extension inverts the colors of you monitor, making your screen mostly black and thus easier to read. Instead of most websites or online tools showing black-on-white, they become white-on-black. For example, instead of reading a blog like this:
You can read it like this:
You can quickly toggle the color inversion off and on with the Chrome toolbar in case you need pictures in their normal colors. It’s a free extension, so give it a try. I even use it during the day if I’m going to be on the computer a lot.
Keep on target with Pomodoros
As I covered in a previous post, using the Pomodoro method can ensure you stay focused. You’ll work in 25 minute blocks, with 5 minute breaks, giving you a goal of focused work with a treat to take a break. I’m easily distracted late at night, so it’s even more vital to enact external systems to keep me on track. Plus you can set a goal of, say, 3 Pomodoros to feel accomplished before going to bed.
Save your typos for tomorrow
Working late at night also introduces common mistakes like typos due to your sleepy mind. If you’re working on emails, save them to the draft folder rather than sending immediately. In the morning, give them a quick proofread, and then press send. You’ll save yourself some embarrassing mistakes as well as wasted time explaining to co-workers what you really meant last night.
Block your temptations
Nighttime is also the time to be easily tempted, and for me it’s watching videos on YouTube with cookies and milk. There are many browser tools you can use to block access to websites that might distract you. Depending on your browser, you can make it a restricted site, or change your system proxy, to block the ability to get distracted.
If you have to pull an all-nighter, I hope you find these tips helpful, and you meet your goals.