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.
Anytime someone tells me that I can't do something, I want to do it more.
All anyone asks for is a chance to work with pride.
I believe that constant effort, tireless effort, pursuing clear goals with sincere effort is the only way
I want the same thing I've wanted since I was 7 years old. I want to be No. 1.
You've got to love what you're doing. If you love it, you can overcome any handicap, or the soreness, or all the aches and pains and continue to play for a long, long time.
What's the point of being the best in the world if you scratch and claw your way to the top, and you push everybody down instead of lifting everybody else up with you?
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