When are you most productive?
In college, my answer was “2 a.m. on the night before the deadline.” I thrived on the last-minute rush of procrastination.
I still have big deadlines, although now they’re for clients’ manuscripts, not for 20-page papers on the Brontë sisters.
But my life now doesn’t quite allow for the same late-night flashes of inspiration. So over the last 2 decades (!!) as a working person, I have learned how to recognize when I’m most naturally productive and build my work routines to capitalize on those highs, while avoiding the low-energy slumps. And, spoiler alert, I’m not magically productive from exactly 9-5 on Monday-Friday…so I don’t expect productive work to happen during all of those hours.
Here’s how I’ve learned to give my work structure and guardrails and gently push myself to be productive when I know I’m my sharpest.
Set realistic goals
Back when I worked at a marketing agency, I remember having a lot of conversations about our team’s writing output. We used the general rule that we could expect people to put in a max of 5 hours a day of “focus work.”
5 hours a day of intensive writing work is … a lot.
After years of trial and error slowly making progress on big projects, I’ve learned that a more realistic goal for me is 3 hours a day of deep writing work.
If I can focus from 9-12pm, I can get a lot done…and I don’t push myself to clock more than that on a given day.
Lean into your natural energy rhythms
Understanding my natural rhythms has been the most transformative productivity lesson for me. I’m 10x more productive in the morning (about 8am-1pm) than I am in the long, slow fog of the afternoon. It doesn’t matter what I eat for lunch — no matter what, my energy tanks in the afternoon.
Accepting this truth, and not fighting against it, has been freeing. I used to snag whatever window of time I could find in my schedule (oh, I only have 1-3pm available for deep work today? I’ll take it!) but then feel frustrated when my brain and body wouldn’t snap into order on command at that time. It wasn’t until my pilot husband came home from a training on Circadian rhythms that I finally had an aha moment.
He gave me my new favorite term: SWOCL (second window of circadian low). The SWOCL is the early-afternoon slump, or your window of peak sleepiness. The FAA published a report about aviation fatigue that defines it this way:
Window of Circadian Low (WOCL). Individuals living on a regular 24-hour routine with sleep at night have two periods of maximum sleepiness, also known as “WOCLs.” One occurs at night, roughly from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m., a time when physiological sleepiness is greatest and performance capabilities are lowest. The other is in the afternoon, roughly from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
So if you’re feeling bad about feeling sluggish at your desk in the afternoons, according to the FAA, it’s not your fault. (LOL.)
Instead of beating myself up about my afternoon slump, I have shifted the way I structure my days. I protect my mornings for focused work (all the writing) and leave less intense tasks (admin work, collaborative calls, folding laundry, walking the dog, running errands) for the afternoon. If I have a conflict in the morning that keeps me from writing…I just skip that day and wait for my next free morning to make progress.
Eat your frog first
My best anti-procrastination tip! Basically: do your hardest/biggest/most important task FIRST.
Here’s the origin of the term, via the personal productivity thinkers at ToDoist:
The Eat the Frog method was made well-known by productivity consultant Brian Tracy in his book Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time. But the main concept is attributed to Mark Twain because of the quote:
“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”
This tip works well for me since my natural energy peak is in the morning. If I don’t eat my frog (drafting a chapter, reading through complicated edits, a big creative project) first thing, I won’t eat it that day…and I’ll waste a lot of time circling the work and fretting about it instead of just doing it.
Again, back when I managed an agency team, this was my top piece of advice when people needed help structuring their time. I’d ask: Did you eat your frog today?
Just get started
I also think of this concept as “work begets work.” Basically: just start.
If you’re dragging your feet on a project, or can’t seem to get going, make a deal with yourself that you’ll just start.
I often use the Tomato Timer to make myself start and stay focused for just 25 minutes. When the timer goes off, I’m free to go back to my Wordle or whatever I was wasting time on before.
But, here’s the magic: by the time I’ve made myself work for 25 minutes, I’m plugged in and humming along. When the timer goes off, I almost always ignore it and keep on working.
The official Pomodoro technique (the method behind the Tomato Timer) is to work for 25 minutes (a “pomodoro”), take a 5 minute break, and then work for another 25 minutes…but I find that just using it to get started is enough to shake off my procrastinating ways and get moving before the SWOCL looms over me. 🙂
