I keep my laptop in a backpack next to the bed. It is leaning against my nightstand. I will sometimes read a bit or attend to some correspondence, or even pay a bill or two before going to sleep. It is handy.
Now I retired at the end of June, and immediately set about dismantling my business, Short year tax returns, one last 941, shredding documents older than seven years. Then I got a call in September asking if I would come back for a short project.
No longer having a functioning business (I finally closed the bank account today) I called up a company that had supplied contract programmers to my worksite in the past, and arranged to be a part time employee, and let them bill for my time.
Getting back to the laptop issue, don't do it. Don't have your laptop within reach when you go to bed.
Sometimes I sleep till seven or seven thirty. Sometimes I wake up at 5 AM. It's cold here at that hour. Too cold to get out of bed, but not too cold to reach for that laptop. And that's what I do, I reach for the laptop and start working. And often leads to working 10 hours when I can only bill for 8.
After scope creep, and the inevitable "while you are here can you also..." a one month project looks like it will be three months. And a significant amount of those hours will be free ones because it is just too easy to just start working when I wake up.
