Morning productivity
You might have heard this idea already. It’s often mentioned during discussions of productivity, focus and multitasking. It sounds something like this: “Try to do your most important work first thing in the morning, while your mind is still fresh”. It’s also usually accompanied by “Don’t browse the Internet, and avoid email as much as possible during that time”.
For those of us that don’t seem to function well early in the day, the rule could probably be modified to replace the word “morning” with “whenever your productivity usually peaks”, but it might not work as well, because you don’t get all of the benefits of having an uncluttered brain later in the day.
I tried it and it seems to work pretty well: instead of checking email and reading news online in the morning (patient is exhibiting mild symptoms of addiction to Techmeme and Google News), I try to do something important that requires focus and concentration. I also stopped checking my daily to-do list and calendar first thing after I get up. It seems much easier to concentrate that way, which can be especially helpful with a task or project that has been a victim of procrastination recently.
Why does this idea seem to work? My theory: After sleep, the brain behaves more like a Windows computer that has been rebooted - less processes running, more memory is available. So, if you have an important task to work on, more mental resources can be made available to it. As soon as you start reading email or news, hundreds of new threads get launched and the multitasking hell begins. One more benefit: doing something productive early on sets the tone for the whole day. Even if the rest of it goes down in flames due to interruptions, at least you have accomplished something. So, how do you get the most out of this deal?
1. Think of the task to work on beforehand I try to think about what to do in the morning the night before. That way, if I need to look stuff up, check to-do lists or read email, it can be done without muddling the precious still-has-that-fresh-smell state of mind that I’m trying to capture earlier in the day. Then, get to work, grab some caffeine and start on the important project right away. This might require some getting used to, especially if your colleagues tend to socialize in the morning.
2. Block distractions (email, IM, web, facebook, twitter) All of those mean more mental processes that will be running on the background and suck the creative juices out. Avoid it like the plague. Let’s face it: multitasking is a myth. Don’t believe me? Try focusing on just one thing for just 30 minutes a day (again, I recommend mornings), and you’ll see that single-minded devotion to one thing at a time works much much better than splintering your attention into dozens little threads.
Let me know how this works out for you.
— Petro
