Tag: morning

Find your peak energy window

On By MarishaIn Organization & Productivity3 Comments

By doing difficult or important work in your peak energy window, you can greatly increase your productivity and the quality of your work. Here is how to find out when your peak energy window is.

Have you ever been asked, “Are you a morning person or an evening person?” If so, what did you answer?

While this is a useful question in order to get to know yourself better, the truth is more nuanced than that. Till Roennenberg, author of Internal Time, developed a useful way to think about this. With a couple of simple steps, you can figure out for yourself when your peak energy window is.

Let’s say you’re on vacation; you don’t have to wake up early for work, and you also didn’t stay up too late last night. You went to bed when you got sleepy, and you woke up rested.

On that morning, at what time did you wake up? That is your natural wake up time.

After you’ve naturally woken up, the body has some sleep inertia which lasts for 2-3 hours. Once the sleep inertia has receded, your peak energy window starts and lasts for about 4 hours. To illustrate this, let’s take an example:

Natural wake up time: 8:00
Sleep inertia: 8:00-10:30
Peak energy: 10:30-14:30

In order to take advantage of your peak energy, you should work on the most important task for the day (or the most difficult thing for the day) in that peak energy window. Other tasks, such as email and administrative tasks, can be left for other parts of the day.

So if your natural wake up time is around 8:00 and you start work at 9:00, you’ll be trying to work in the middle of your sleep inertia. It’s not surprising, then, that you can’t get yourself to focus or be productive. You’d be better off doing some simpler tasks until about 10:30 and then starting on the important/difficult task.

You may have noted that lunch falls right in the middle of that peak energy window for most of us. This could be a bit of a waste since many of us experience an after-lunch dip. To minimize it, you may eat a medium-sized lunch instead of a big one since a smaller meal will make you less sleepy. Also, metabolizing carbs tends to make us more sleepy than metabolizing protein or healthy fats, so you may want to minimize carbs at lunch and include more at dinner, for instance.

If you’ve seen my previous blog post about swallowing the frog first thing in the morning, you may be confused: these two blog posts seem to give conflicting pieces of advice. This may very well be the case, and you need to figure out what works best for you. That’s why it’s best to try out both and see how you feel and perform with each.

For someone with an early natural wake up time, doing the important task first thing in the morning may be effective since it coincides with her peak energy window. For someone with a later natural wake up time, however, this would mean trying to work on something difficult during their sleep inertia period, which may not be a great idea.

My natural wake up time is early, so my peak energy window is approximately 9:00-13:00. Often I actually move my lunch to 13:00, so I’ve used all my peak energy time for focused work. In the afternoon, I can focus, but it’s more difficult (unless I have some green or black (!) tea). After 17:00, don’t count on me to concentrate well.

In contrast, I know people who are only really awake from 14:00. A colleague of mine knows this about himself and has purposefully switched his working hours to 12:00-20:00. He does his best work 14:00-18:00. He used to try to work in the mornings, but he ended up not delivering results because half of his days were wasted.

This is why it’s important to figure out when you do your best work and, if you have the possibility, try to adapt your schedule to that. I realize that not everybody has such a flexible schedule, but for those of us who do, it’s a shame not to use such a simple tool.

What is your natural wake up time? Do you experience sleep inertia? When is your peak energy window? Are you able to focus in the afternoon/evening? I’m really curious, so please let me know! Comment below or on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

The eternal debate: “Swallow that frog” or start with small tasks

On By MarishaIn Organization & Productivity4 Comments

My struggle and search for the right way to start the workday.

On most days, I enter my office early when there’s nobody there yet. Time feels precious: it’s quiet, and the sun is tentatively streaming through the window. My mind is sharp, and I feel like I can tackle anything.

But I don’t feel like taking on the most difficult project of the day yet. This is what numerous productivity books recommend and refer to as ‘swallowing that frog’ because it’s the thing you don’t want to do. I have the whole day ahead of me, do I really need to start on that daunting task already?

Instead, I’d much rather read an interesting paper or respond to some emails. Maybe send out a couple of announcements or complete several small tasks. That feels much more manageable and fun.

By the time I’ve done all those little things, hours have gone by. My golden morning hours are over, the office is buzzing, meetings are about to take place, and external demands start coming in. It becomes difficult to concentrate because so many things are competing for my attention. It’s a challenge to try to do deep, focused work.

Swallow that frog

Ah, why didn’t I use my early morning to work on that difficult task? The later it gets in the day, the more difficult it becomes to find uninterrupted time to really focus on a task. Often it takes me longer (e.g., 2 hours) to complete a task that would have taken me less time (e.g., 1 hour) in the morning when I’d have been able to focus solely on that. Alternatively, I might not find the time to work on that task at all, so it may get pushed to tomorrow.

In principle, I know the benefits of tackling the most difficult thing of the day first thing in the morning. But I don’t want to. It feels too daunting, and it’s just so much easier to start by doing something small.

Also, I am afraid that if I don’t check my email, Slack, and Trello the moment I get to work, I might miss something important. Maybe someone needs my response urgently. How can I keep them waiting?

To be honest, there are very few urgent matters in my job. I can’t think of an email or message that couldn’t wait for a couple of hours. So this concern is mostly in my head. Nothing would happen if I responded to an email in a few hours rather than immediately. Nobody would even notice.

The Pledge

Okay, blogosphere: I pledge to you that next week I will start every day by “swallowing the frog.” I will begin my work day with that big, daunting task and work on it for about 2 hours before doing anything else. Only after that will I look at emails, respond to messages, or do small tasks.

At the end of the week, I will give my verdict: does it make a difference? Did I get more done by working on the main task first thing in the morning? Or did it not matter? Also, did it make me nervous to not respond to external demands right away? Or did it feel good to have the main task, that gray cloud hanging over my head, out of the way early? I’ll let you know.

Stay tuned for the results of my little experiment!

What do you do? What do you work on first in your day? Let me know by commenting below or on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.