How Long Does Productivity Last?
As I was doing my daily reads, I was pointed to an article about working the 9-to-5 job. The gist of the article is that in our profession, and others, working a 9-5 is a thing of the past. And reading throughout the whole article, I couldn’t agree more.
It’s a challenge being productive for 8+ hours in the workday. I’ve come to realize, that I have peak times when I am at my best and most focused. One of those times is very early in the morning, before everyone is awake, and it’s really quiet. Another one of those times is very late at night, with the opposite scenario of the morning.
In the case of the modern information worker, nearly all tasks involve creative or strategic thinking. The way someone answers an email or interprets a piece of information can differ drastically depending on his or her energy level. Nobody does their best work 5:30 in the afternoon after they’ve been sucking down coffee all day to stay awake.
That’s not to say that I can’t get work done during the day, because I can, however, it’s not when I’m at my best. Especially when having to sit in a cube. In an ideal world, I think I would wake up early, crank out the important work until I feel drained, and handle all of the other miscellaneous duties (email, paperwork, etc.) for the rest of the day.
I’m pretty sure that I could get more creative work done in the first few hours of the day, than being forced to crank out something within 8-hours. This approach would be similar to 37signals’ 4-hours upfront strategy. After those few hours, come up for a recharge and evaluate what has been done.
So to the readers, do you find it hard to crank out 8 solid hours of work each day? And if not, what times of the day do you perform at your best?
3 Comments
Yeah, I agree. Productivity is achieved in bursts. I know 4 hour work days are not realistic in a lot of corporate settings, but it does bear thinking about. I fear a lot of managers/directors probably dismiss this theory no matter what science/research is behind it, and thus 2/3 hrs a day on average are probably spent working at only half pace or less. Multi-tasking is another sticky point - on the face of it being a great multi-tasker is socially revered and managers love it - but in reality the human mind is not built to perform all those tasks equally well. You’re much more likely to produce a quality result from focusing on one task until it’s complete than constantly shifting attention from one thing to another.
Productively it’s more the time of the day, but regarding creativity I find it’s less the time of the day and more the time of the week.
I’m usually more productive earlier on in the day, from around 10am till around 4ish. Creatively however I’m normally better early on in the week, Monday to Thursday, rather than a Friday when I’m just winding down. I separate the two here because I see a difference; on Friday I may not be in much of a mood to design, but I’m still good for doing more mundane tasks like bookkeeping and quotations. Whereas late in the day I’m not really in the mood to do much at all, other than chug along and finish the day. Hope this makes sense!
That’s interesting that you are more creative earlier in the week, Steve. I never thought of it that way. Personally, I don’t think the time of the week matters for me. I assume that is because I work on the weekends sometimes, so there’s not differentiation between, say, a Wednesday and a Saturday. In other words, I don’t get lazy towards the end of the week from the thought of doing nothing all weekend.