What's Your Best Time?
Posted On: 2015-06-17
Well it certainly isn't my best time right now. I'm grumpy and annoyed and not in a good place thanks to some technical issues and some family issues so instead of heading home soon I'm going to be stuck here in the office for three or four more hours and that does not make me happy.
Sure, I can spend those three or four more hours working and I certainly will. I hate just sitting around twiddling my thumbs and doing that here are the office makes me even worse so I am going to work but it's not my best time to be working. My creative juices have all be used up by this time of the day so I don't expect this extra work to come easy and I'm not even going to try and spend it being creative. Instead I'm going to be doing some basic grunt work that doesn't even require me to think too much.
So what is your best time of the day? Have you even thought about the possibility that there might be a good time of day to be working and a not-so-good time when you really shouldn't be trying to achieve much?
In the back of my mind I've known that I always produce far better work in the mornings than I do in the afternoon or evenings and now it seems researchers have confirmed that the time of day is important if you want to be creative.
I've always liked to get up early and our alarm still goes off at 4.30pm most days of the week because both my partner and I like to get stuck into work early. I had assumed that getting our best work done was all about getting up early because that's what we do and that's when both of us are at our most creative but, while the time of day is important, it's not about being a morning person.
What the research has shown is that the vast majority of us do have an optimum time for work. It's the time when we're most creative and it's a finite time. It has its limits and the longer we spend working the less creative we become. It's as if we wake up with our creative tank filled to the brim and from that time on our ability to be creative grows less and less until the tank is finally empty.
And how long does it take to empty? Well the researchers suggest that most of us have a creative window of about four hours each day and after that we're done; the tank is empty and there's no way we can fill it again other than by having a good period of sleep ... like 7 or 8 hours of sleep.
But what was even more interesting for me was that it doesn't matter if you're a morning or a night person. Morning people have no more creative juices in the tank than people who like to sleep through the day and work at night.
What does matter is when we actually settle down to do that work and ideally we should get stuck into the work we want to do almost as soon as we get up. So for me, if I want to get a lot of work done then I should start on it as soon as I get out of bed because, by 8.30, my creative tank is going to be just about empty.
On the other hand, if you were someone who liked to get up at 4.30 in the afternoon then you can achieve just as much as I do if you're in a position to jump straight into your work. If you can then by 8.30 at night you'll be running on empty too.
So it doesn't matter when you settle down to do your creative work just so long as it's as soon as possible after you get out of bed. Sadly that's not good news for anyone who works a 9 to 5 day job and then goes home to work on their porn empire.
Sure, those people will get work done but their creative tanks are way beyond dry after 8 or so hours at work so it's going to be harder for them to achieve much at all. They shouldn't be down on themselves when they don't achieve much for the hours they spend in front of their computer.
Ok so why is all that stuff important? Maybe it will help you reorganise your day so you get more creative work done at the time when you've got something in your creative tank. Maybe it will help you understand why you're struggling to achieve much even though you are putting in the hours.
Maybe it will encourage you to see if you can reorganise your daily schedule so you can spend more time working during the time when you are at your peak. Maybe it will help you make more money or maybe it will help you understand why you're not making more money.
Hopefully it will encourage you to work when you're hot and rest when you're not.