When to work: How to optimize your daily schedule for energy, motivation, and focus
There’s nothing worse than losing those few, precious peak hours of productivity to meetings, emails, and other distractions. With a bit of experimentation, reflection, and research, you can map out when to work based on when you know you’ll be most productive each day.
What are personal productivity curves?
Our energy, focus, and motivation follow their own path throughout the day-what I like to call a “productivity curve”
- It allows you to perfectly line up the work that matters most with when you’re naturally most suited to doing it.
See when you’re hitting your communication threshold
Productivity and time management are about using your time in the most optimal way
- It’s not always easy to know when’s the best time to do what work
- By understanding these different productivity curves, however, you’re able to take the guesswork out of scheduling.
Energy curves
We’re naturally more energetic and motivated at specific times of the day
- Researchers call this our Circadian Rhythm-a 24-hour internal clock running in the background of your brain that cycles between alertness and sleepiness
- Every person’s rhythm is slightly different, but the majority follow a similar pattern
- After waking up and breaking out of our sleep inertia our energy levels start to naturally rise around 10am, by around 10:30am we’ve hit our peak concentration levels that ride out until a natural post-lunch energy dip between 1-3pm
- In the afternoon, energy levels rise again until falling off again around 9-11pm
When to work: How to design the perfect day based on your productivity curves
At their most basic levels, these curves remind us that we can’t do it all and need to be strategic in how we plan our days.
Work best in natural cycles of 90 minutes
Ultradian Rhythms
- These are 90-120 minute periods of alertness that our mind cycles through before needing a break.
- When we need a break, our bodies send us signals such as becoming hungry, sleepy, fidgeting, or losing focus. We ignore these signs and think we can just work through them.
Discover your daily energy/motivation curve
Look at how your energy levels look throughout the day to get a sense of when you have the most and least energy
- This can help you schedule meetings, calls, and other busy work based on what you feel energized and motivated to do
Stress curves
The right amount of stress at the right time can make us more productive
- According to the Yerkes-Dodson law, performance of simple tasks increases with stress but decreases for more complex ones
- This means that controlling your stress levels throughout the day isn’t just good for your mental health, but also your productivity
Communication curves:
Email and IM makes us more productive (to a point)
- The more we let them in, the less productive we are
- By understanding the curve and finding your own personal threshold, you can use communication tools to their fullest
- While still optimizing the rest of your day for focus on meaningful work