If you stay up late and you have another hour of work to do, you can just stay up another hour later without running into a wall and having to stop. Whereas it might take three or four hours if you start over, you might finish if you just work that extra hour. If you're a morning person, the day always intrudes a fixed amount of time in the future. So it's much less efficient. Which is why I think computer people tend to be night people - because a machine doesn't get sleepy.
Interpretation
Perseverance during late-night work can lead to greater efficiency than starting fresh in the morning.
This quote emphasizes the idea that working late into the night may allow you to capitalize on your momentum and complete tasks more efficiently than if you were to stop and restart in the morning. Bill Joy suggests that for those who are naturally night owls, the uninterrupted time can foster productivity, especially in tech-related fields where continuous focus is valued.
In practice
In a motivational speech for tech entrepreneurs, to illustrate the benefits of late-night productivity.
The Open Source theorem says that if you give away source code, innovation will occur. Certainly, Unix was done this way... However, the corollary states that the innovation will occur elsewhere. No matter how many people you hire. So the only way to get close to the state of the art is to give the people who are going to be doing the innovative things the means to do it. That's why we had built-in source code with Unix. Open source is tapping the energy that's out there.
And once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species - to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself.
You can't solve a problem with the management of technology with more technology.
Whatever course you have chosen for yourself, it will not be a chore but an adventure if you bring to it a sense of the glory of striving.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those who want to get things done, and those who don't want to make mistakes.
Driving race cars was an avenue for me to learn how to build my own car, and that was my ambition all along.
Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye, and you will be drawn toward it.
I am driven by great work and seeing people do incredible things and having a part in that.
You gotta keep trying to find your niche and trying to fit into whatever slot that's left for you or to make one of your own.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.