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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Good morning.
This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is to protect your best hours.
If you have a time of day when you are most productive or creative or focused, you don't want to give that time away if you don't have to.
Structure your schedule mindfully, and you may find yourself getting a lot more done.
So if you have ever monitored your energy during the day, you know that not all hours are created equal.
Around 8 a.m. in that first cup of coffee, people often feel like they can conquer the world.
Come 2 p.m., energy is waning, and there is no more conquering the world.
Something that felt doable at 8 am now feels like it is taking forever as you keep getting distracted.
Many people then get a burst of energy around quitting time as they need to finish things to get out the door, though it is probably not quite as big as that initial morning zip.
This pattern isn't universal.
Some people are most productive from say, 4 to 7 pm, or from midnight to 2 am, or maybe from 4 am to 6 am, But most people aren't extreme.
And the idea of focused mornings more or less during business hours and less focused afternoons is pretty much the norm for adults.
This also means that for most people, the opportunity cost of doing something outside your zone of genius is much lower in the afternoon than in the morning.
And yet studying time.
I am amazed how many people don't think about this when setting up their schedules.
Sometimes you don't really have a choice.
If your manager two levels up wants to meet you at 9 a.m., well, you should probably do it.
But if you are setting a team meeting with a group of people you see frequently and who you know are mostly still doing their jobs, why would you put this at 9 am?
?
This is time people could be executing on their tasks.
Unless a meeting is really requiring everyone's best and most creative selves, it is a waste to put it during most people's most productive hours.
You can all tell everyone what you are doing and that you are still doing your job at 2 p.m.
I mean, unless you work with all night owls.
But if so, you probably know that.
If you want to be more productive at work this year, one of the best things you can do is figure out when you are at your best and then, as much as possible, devote these hours to the work that truly moves things forward.
And I know this is easier said than done, but here's the thing.
It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
You might start by seeing if you can protect some focused hours when people are less likely to request meetings.
If you do happen to get more done in the mornings, like many of us, maybe you can try to put your first meetings at 930 am or later and work from 8 to 930 or so on your chosen projects and then decide you'll make up the time by taking a real lunch or leaving a little earlier in the afternoon, if you might otherwise have been starting work at 9.
Or else you might try to protect late morning time.
Sometimes people start thinking of lunch around 11 or 1130 and won't schedule meetings over whatever they consider that lunchtime window.
If you know that you are usually on fire between 11 am and noon, try acting like that is lunch and protect it.
And then actually take a lunch at 12.30 or 1.
You might be able to do this more days than you think.
Of course, if you are going to protect this time, it is good to know what you intend to do with it.
One reason to do a regular weekly planning session is is that you can then identify what tasks might move you forward toward your professional goals in any given week.
Then you can look at your schedule and identify some open high productivity times where you might block these things.
Maybe you won't get every day, but if you need two good sessions and you block three, most likely you'll get two.
One might get taken away from you, but hey, You've still got two.
And you can start feeling some forward momentum.
Personally, I try to do this by limiting meetings or interviews or anything like that in the mornings.
If there's no other good time, or it's a truly awesome opportunity, I will do it.
I don't want to be what slows everything else down.
But I've noticed that many times people ask what time is good for you.
If so, you could offer three times at work for you and protect your best, most productive hours for focused things.
If you work in one of those offices where people can see your calendar and just grab whatever they want off of it well, you still might be able to play within these rules.
You can block some of your most productive hours for meetings with a particular colleague, who will then become your accountability partner.
These aren't actually meetings.
They are the two of you checking in to say what you're going to get done during these peak productivity times and then afterwards saying that you've done it.
If the time on your calendar is taken up by a meeting, then it generally won't be available for other things, unless people make a plausible claim that it is an emergency.
And then that is fine.
You are just making it marginally more likely that you use your best hours for what your best hours are best suited for.
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening.
And here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at laura at lauravandercam.com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeart Media.
For more podcasts from iHeart Media, please visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally.
And I'm Hari Kundabolu.
It's a new year and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.
Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be.
I like to sleep in late and sleep early.
Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed?
Health Stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast.
And this January we're going to go on the road to beautiful Las Vegas Nevada, to cover the Consumer Electronics Show, tech's biggest conference.
Better Offline's CES coverage won't be the usual rundown of the hottest gadgets or biggest trends, but an unvarnished look at what the tech industry plans to sell or do to you in 2025.
I'll be joined by David Roth at Defector and the writer Edward Ongueso Jr., with guest appearances from Behind the Bastards' Robert Evans, It Could Happen Here's Gare Davis, and a few surprise guests throughout the show.
Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts from.
This is an iHeart Podcast.
Guaranteed Human.
