Do you know what time of day you’re most effective?
Can you gauge your daily rhythms? Do you know when you’re at your most creative? Your least?
If you had a line chart of the hours of the day that showed when you were most efficient and/or effective with which tasks, would you follow it? If you were to finish the work that was most effective to do in the morning and most painful to do at night, would you do it in the morning?
You wouldn’t drive while drunk, why then would you work on the business plan when you’re tired?
If someone had a machine that measured all of this and it spit out a report that said:
- 5 to 6 AM: Meditate
- 6 to 7 AM: Create (write, paint, etc.)
- 8 to 9 AM: Exercise
- 9 to 10 AM: Focused analytical work
- etc.
Sure, such a rigid schedule every single day might be a bit overkill–maybe it would even put a damper on some of those creative mornings (but probably not). If there’s not such a machine, how well do you know your own self, your habits and moods, energy levels and brain functions at different times of the day?
Personally, I feel like I’m practically a different person with different DNA in the morning and in the evenings. I might develop a new type of light bulb by 8 AM and then by 8 PM I need guided help to screw it into the socket.
I bet there’s an app for this–or at least there might be in the future. Something that connected to your heart rate, your breathing, your brain function and it gave you maybe a color-coded chart or weighted map of what you should be doing and when. I’d pay $4.99 for it.
Do you know when you’re at your best and when you should call it a day?
Do you know what time of day you’re most effective? [Sunset in Bako, Borneo, Malaysia]
