Chris Pirillo put together a nice post, Ten Secrets of an Earlier Adopter Tech Entrepreneur, as a guest blogger on the Chitka blog.
Chris’ tip #4 is: Stay up late - you’ll get more work done after hours than you ever will during the middle of the day.
I’ve been living this mantra for the last six months or so and it is true. I’m now getting anywhere from 2-3 hours of “extra” work done a night, depending on when the wife and kids go to bed. To do so I’ve only had to trim my sleep to about 5 hours a night. I make up for it on the weekends, though :)
Mad Money’s Jim Cramer suggests that a large part of his success as an investor was because he got up much earlier than everyone else, starting work by 4:00AM and sometimes earlier.
It sounds to me like one of the key factors to success is putting in the extra hours that most of your “competitors” are not. Doesn’t matter if it’s early or late, it just matters that you’re doing it. Committing those extra couple of hours a day is probably the best thing I’ve ever done for myself professionally - I wish I would have started the habit years ago.