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.
Passion is the thing that won't let you sleep at night because you want to get up in the morning and go do your thing.
Damn it all, you have been given a life on this beautiful planet! Get off your ass and do something!
Hold up a mirror and ask yourself what you are capable of doing, and what you really care about. Then take the initiative - don't wait for someone else to ask you to act.
The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.
No matter how much pressure you feel at work, if you could find ways to relax for at least five minutes every hour, you’d be more productive.
If there's one thing this team doesn't lack, it's competitiveness and a desire to win. No matter if we come off a win or come off a loss, it seems like we don't really care. We're always motivated to win.
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