Somewhere down the long path of the career of an IT professional, is a milestone which is called an all nighter. Almost every other IT professional has spent some nights in front of his computer or laptop to catch up to meet impossible or difficult deadlines. I have had a share of All Nighters myself and I have somehow started to get through them without much difficulty. Tonight is again one of the nights when I have to be up the whole night to meet some deadlines.

So I thought it would be somewhat a different experience to document the current all nighter. First of all here some tips which have been helping me in pulling through the nights.

Motivate yourself - if your brains know its important for you then the body will follow. If you are not mentally prepared to not sleep, believe not even the best energy drink can help you do it. So make up your mind that you have to do it no matter what.

Plan and Focus - Make a plan for the whole night and follow it to the very detail. It is easy to get distracted if you do not have a plan it place. Avoid distractions like chatting, Net surfing and visiting your favorite social networking websites. You will get nothing done if you get entangled in all these distractions.

Preparation - A little preparation will help you a lot. Generally a shower before sitting down and a light dinner helps me stay awake longer without any help of caffeine.

No Power naps - This has never worked for me. These power naps turn into monsters that eat away all the time you wanted for work. The next think you find out that you have slept through the whole night with the task at hand unfinished.

Eat and Drink - Generally on the night that I have to stay awake, I eat a light dinner which keeps me awake. But that also results in hunger pangs during the night. So the best thing is to have a light snack, like munching on a apple or couple of cookies to cope with this. Also do not keep the food items close to you, as it always a good idea to get up, walk to the kitchen to get them. This way you also get the much needed respite from the back breaking work posture.

Also keep ice cold water with you. This tip was given to me by pixel master Shane Mielke (A.k.a. Pixelranger) and has help me all these years. If you feel sleepy drink a couple of glasses of ice cold water and watch yourself shiver off the sleep.

Music and Entertainment- I just cannot work without music and this surely helps through the nights . My iPod touch (generously gifted by my kid bro) is always with me to dish out all the fast paced trance numbers to keep me pumped up. Also avoid slow songs, they would work as a lullaby and make you miss your sleep. So its either rock or trance for me.

Sometimes I hook up my favorite movie on my second machine which somehow helps me cope up with the pressure and helps me loosen up a bit.

If all else fails its time to get some caffiene in your system - I am a caffiene junkie so I need small excuses to get it in my system. In times of crisis a cup of coffee or a Red Bull can help me stay awake for hours. There is a downside to this though, too much of it and I turn into a energised muti tasker who tries to do a lot of things at once, which of course takes away my focus and i waste lot of time. So 1 generally pace myself in such a way that I get the right amount of caffiene in me.

So this is how I pull off an all nighter, hope this helps somebody out there who has to catch up with his backlog of work in a single night ;).

I would ofcourse update this post throughout the night to report in my progress. Keep watching this space.

UPDATE I @ 3:15 AM
Status : Feeling fine till now. No signs of sleep.
Listening to : Linkin Park / Minutes to Midnight
Caffeine counter : 1 Red bull consumed
Tasks status : 80% of task one. two tasks queued.

UPDATE II @ 5:00 AM
Status : Feeling a little sleepy but still able to focus on the task at hand
Listening to : Paul Van Dyk / Politics of Dance (Disc II)
Caffeine counter : 1 Red bull consumed + 1 coffee
Tasks status : Task 1 completed. Task 2 40% Done. Task 3 queued.

UPDATE III @ 6:30 AM
Status : All Nighter Success !!! Surprisingly now I don’t feel sleepy at all but ill try to catch some ZZZ’s
Listening to : Above & Beyond / Anjunabeats (Volume III)
Caffeine counter : 1 Red bull consumed + 1 coffee
Tasks status : Task 1 completed. Task 2 completed. Task 3 abandoned.

After the must awaited launch of App store for iPhone, there has been a flood of new apps for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Today Wordpress also launched their app to manage wordpress.com as well as .org powered blogs. Though a little bit late than the Typepad app, it’s here.

Connecting to your blog is easy and fast. One can also post pictures but you cannot resize them as of now. I am not posting any images as of now as I am using the iPod Touch for this post.

I am now really waiting for the iPhone to launch in India.

P.S. - my thumbs hurt now after posting this.