I’ve been doing some pretty hard times trying to put together a beta release for Neely’s venture. And since caffeine and I don’t really mix well, and through trial and errors, I’ve discovered a few ways to keep at it without external chemical stimulants (that work for me anyway)… Besides, I think chemical stimulants are just for the weak-minded… 😉
1. Take a shower — this helps to keep me stay awake for at least until that ‘freshness” wears off (about an hour or two?).
2. Keep the stomach full — it’s amazing what an empty stomach does to the morale. By having late night (or early morning, depending on how you want to look at it) semi-meals, I can plow through quite a bit of code more clear-headed. Maybe the stomach protests hunger by telling the brain to shut down in order to conserve energy.
3. Get lots of rest prior to “the long haul” — people don’t realize how tiring it is when the brain is bitch-slapped for hours on end for attention intensive tasks like programming. So sometimes I do activities that are relaxing and don’t require the brain for a while, like playing with Bryan for 20 minutes.
4. Get up and walk around about once every 30 minutes just to get the blood flowing.
5. Drop and do some push ups.
6. When “in the zone”, stay in the zone. DO NOT STOP until you can barely keep your eyelids open. Sometimes I stay in the zone even when I am asleep. All my dreams would be about how to solve particular programming problems I’d gone to bed with — pretty freaky.
7. Power nap for 15 minutes — this is usually followed by a quick shower. All this before diving into code.
Starting usually at around 2AM, I’ve managed to stay up until around noon of the same day by doing these things. And they seem to work well for me personally. I mean, I’ve tried coffee and even RedBull. But they just make me super duper hyper that I end up not being able to concentrate at all. So I guess my body just isn’t made for coffee…