Staying up late

Typical career advice says to “Follow your passion” (not to be mistaken with “Follow your dream”). “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life”. I think this is true, but the definition of “enjoy” is important here.

Everyone has a thing or two that keeps them awake until 3 am (besides algorithmic feeds). You may think - if that’s not your calling, what is?

Anything but this.

The true passion you should pursue is not the one that keeps you awake until 3 am. This idea sounds legit on the surface. But try to stay up late, and you will be knocked out for the next two days. So, you got extra 4-6 hours, but lost the next 16 hours of work. If I got it right, you just voluntarily lost 10 hours of this activity from your life. Are you sure you love it?

If you do something until 3 am, it doesn’t mean you love it. It means you are trying to avoid something in your real life.

True passion

True passion is the one that keeps you awake until 21:00, after which you shower, rest, and go to bed. You do so voluntarily. Because you want to be ready for tomorrow. Because you love your work, and you love interacting with your peers about it. Because you want to be fully present at work.

True passion is a “sustainable passion”.

Something you look forward to doing tomorrow every evening.¹ Something you want to be in the best shape for at any single moment, not once in a full moon. Of course, you will want to take these 2 extra hours of rest now, so that you can enjoy an extra 4 hours of this work tomorrow.

Albeit,

If you are in your 20s and working your ass off to get promotions and money quickly, I can’t give this advice to you. If your body allows you to stay up until 3 am, you like what you do, and you need this money or career - go for it. I have done the same. The number of times in my early career I found myself debugging at 3 am is embarrassing. So it would be hypocritical of me to tell you to do differently. But know it was never as productive as debugging at 8 am the next morning and be pragmatic about this.