Allnighters for assignments

I'm sleepy. It's 3:22 am (my time), and I've just come up with a 2000 word piece in the last 6 hours. And I've still got plenty to go: it isn't even finished yet.

(An amusing/unamusing note: My lecturer is thankfully and depressingly modern (postmodern? I can't think which), and hasn't given us ANY word count at all, which is all very well in its own way, but leaves me completely befuddled. She thinks such silly things as word counts shouldn't be hindering our creativity and individual perspectives. It does not help that this is her essay question:

 Brief

Your task is to come up with an assessment plan for T. You need to indicate the language schema you have that is the basis of your thinking about language. You need to indicate the questions you have, and why the tool you have chosen will give you the answers you need (and be specific, not general answers about the kind of assessment it represents). If you need answers to some questions (ie results of some assessments) before you can proceed with a next step, you can hypothesise some of these. Use the sample above as though it were a larger sample if you would like.

Use at least 3 tools of assessment for which you can provide references. Use other tools as you see fit. It is not necessary to assess everything; the aim of assessment is to give direction and goals for language intervention that are appropriate for the stage of development and the particular context.

The more specific and in-depth you can be, the better your marks will be. You can put your work in tables if that helps, and please use headings and sub-headings to indicate the organisation of your work.

Yes, very open, very unstructured, unbelievably vague.)

I'm excited by the assignment, so this isn't at all a Pits of Hell topic, but I AM finding it so hard to focus, especially at this time of night.

How to focus? (Suggestions on the essay would be good too, but I don't think anyone here is a speech language therapist.) Here are my current strategies:
- sleeping for 20 minutes when I stop focusing
- writing out a timetable that I can report on every 5 minutes
- stopping when I get distracted (eg by Southperry. oops.)
- keeping paper and pen handy so I can brainstorm
- having all my textbooks on hand
- trying to direct myself from a top-down approach so I can keep my mind on the bigger picture

I steadfastly don't believe in drinking coffee, but maybe you do... How else do people pull off allnighters efficiently?