{"id":1,"date":"2012-04-02T10:00:15","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T15:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/?p=1"},"modified":"2015-11-07T15:56:06","modified_gmt":"2015-11-07T21:56:06","slug":"overnight-website-challenge-personal-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/overnight-website-challenge-personal-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Overnight Website Challenge: Personal Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a 4-year veteran to the Overnight Website Challenge, I’d like to share some of my personal rules.\u00a0 I’m not going to tell you what platform to use, what revision control is best \u2014 well, actually I will, but at a later date.\u00a0 We’re here to discuss one thing:\u00a0 sleep, and lack-thereof.
\n
\nSomething new to me is that you can apparently “bank” sleep ahead of time<\/a>.\u00a0 I didn’t know this and will be adding it to my routine next year, since I usually\u00a0stay up late a few nights beforehand prepping hardware & software. In the past, the event prep. has made me very anxious come Friday night.\u00a0 I’ve more than once had a sleepless night contemplating trivia such as user accounts and PHP libraries which were already configured.\u00a0 This brings me to my first point:<\/p>\n

Get to bed early on Friday<\/h2>\n

If you’ve found yourself up late the night before, take a sleeping pill like Unisom<\/a> or some other sleep aid from the pharmacy.\u00a0 Don’t take it right when you go to bed, take it 2 hours before you want to fall asleep.\u00a0 Otherwise you’ll be laying in bed for 2 hours before it kicks in, and you’ll also be very drowsy the next morning while it’s still wearing off.<\/p>\n

During the challenge, no matter how much sleep I’m running on from Friday, I follow this rule:<\/p>\n

Avoid caffeine until early Sunday<\/h2>\n

Free caffeinated beverages are in abundance at the Overnight Website Challenge.\u00a0 Do yourself a favor and lay off of them, at least until the wee hours of Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

Personally, besides hyping me up, caffeine makes me jittery and unfocused, as if my ADHD went into overdrive.\u00a0 If you really feel the prospect of free Red Bull is fleeting, then grab a couple and keep them in a cooler by your team.\u00a0 This isn’t Vegas folks, you don’t want to overdo it like this guy did:<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t
5PM: too early<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t<\/figure>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t
Done and done<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t<\/figure>\n

I strive to stave off any desire for caffeine until most of the heavy lifting (development-wise) is done.\u00a0 For me this is 4-6AM or even longer if I can hold out. Also after about 4AM you’re probably doing menial tasks that won’t be derailed by some stimulants.\u00a0 Plus, that cup of AeroPress<\/a> coffee will taste better and be more effective right before breakfast, judging, and the final awards.<\/p>\n

The challenge is actually much longer than 24 hours.\u00a0 You have 24 hours to work, but factoring in awake time before you arrived, during judging & awards, and after you go home \u2014 it’s more like the 36 Hour Website Challenge.\u00a0 You’re going to want to prepare yourself for the long haul.\u00a0 That’s why the last rule is critical if you want to have a productive work day on Monday:<\/p>\n

Get 15 hours of sleep<\/h2>\n

I’ve found that this is the amount of sleep I need to have a useful day on Monday.\u00a0 To time it right, I also suggest forcing yourself to stay up to a set time so you can reset your internal clock.\u00a0 If I go to bed at 4PM Sunday, I’ll assuredly wake up at 7AM Monday.\u00a0 Even if you do take Monday off of work, I suggest doing some timing just to help reset to a normal schedule.\u00a0 If you go to bed right when you get home at noon, I suspect you’re going to be up at 3AM, wondering why the hell you thought you could go to work after all this.<\/p>\n

Until next year… good luck, and for God’s sake get some rest!<\/p>\n

Send to Kindle<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a 4-year veteran to the Overnight Website Challenge, I’d like to share some of my personal rules.\u00a0 I’m not going to tell you what platform to use, what revision control is best \u2014 well, actually I will, but at a later date.\u00a0 We’re here to discuss one thing:\u00a0 sleep, and lack-thereof. Send to Kindle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[107,106,71],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-overnight-website-challenge","tag-nap","tag-sleep","tag-the-nerdery"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2137,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/2137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foell.org\/justin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}