Hey Reader

Last week I wrote about how looking busy, feeling busy and operating at 97mph are not the same as having impact.

So this week, I want to go one step further because even when we do make time for the work that matters, we often make a fairly ridiculous assumption:

That every hour of us is worth the same.

It isn’t.

Before we dig in though one of our wonderful readers Sonia sent me an email and I wanted to share because we LOVE it when serendipity happens.

She said she read it with a newsletter from 'The Glucose Goddess' whose goal is help people improve their energy, mood, and long-term metabolic health. She saw this tip and thought it was valuable to share:

So back to your calendar...

Think about your working day, there are probably times when you can sit down with something complicated and your brain just… works.

You make connections and solve challenges with ease. You clearly see the answer that wasn’t obvious yesterday. And there are other times when reading the same paragraph three times feels like an Olympic event.

Yet most of us organise our working lives as though 9.15am Wendy and 3.47pm Wendy are exactly the same employee.

They are not and this is where I think we’ve got productivity a bit wrong.

We spend enormous amounts of time trying to manage time when perhaps we should be getting much better at managing capacity.

Stop asking, “Where can I fit this in?” Start asking, “Which version of me does this work deserve?”

Because your best thinking shouldn’t get whatever scraps of brainpower are left after six meetings, 43 emails and somebody saying, “Have you got five minutes?”

Important work deserves your best brain and your best brain has office hours.

Find your Peak. Create the conditions for Flow.

I’ve been playing with this idea recently and created a little Peak & Flow workbook to help people work out when their best windows actually are.

Your Peak is about capacity.

It’s the part of your day when you tend to have your strongest cognitive resources available. This is when concentration, judgement, problem-solving or creative thinking feel easier for you.

Your Peak won’t necessarily be the same as mine. And it won’t necessarily arrive at 9am simply because that’s when the working day starts.

The useful question is:

And those windows are precious.

If you know that 9.30–11am is when you tend to think most clearly, routinely filling that time with meetings you don’t need to attend might not be the best use of your brain.

But Flow is something different.

Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi used Flow to describe those glorious periods when you become so absorbed in what you’re doing that the rest of the world seems to disappear.

• You’re not watching the clock.
• You’re not fighting yourself to concentrate.
• You’re in it.

And Flow isn’t about doing easy work. It is more likely to happen when the challenge in front of you stretches you, but your skills are strong enough to meet it. You know what you’re trying to achieve, you can see or sense your progress, and you have enough uninterrupted attention to become completely immersed.

You find your Peak and then you create the conditions for Flow.

And when the two come together?

That’s potentially where some of your best work happens.

Which means the question isn’t simply:

“Where can I fit this work in?”

It’s:

“When am I best equipped to do it - and what conditions will help me get properly into it?”

Now honestly, we know there are the windows where the most productive thing you can do might be to stop pretending you’re going to write the strategy document and go and make a cup of tea.

This isn’t about engineering the perfect working day. Most of us don’t have that luxury.

Meetings happen. Customers call. Children need collecting. Derek wants a quick word.

But once you know your pattern, you can start making small moves to protect it.

Move one important piece of work into a better window.

• Protect 60–90 minutes before accepting another meeting.
• Batch the low-brainpower stuff instead of allowing it to colonise your sharpest hours.
• Notice when good thinking seems to come more easily and stop treating it as an accident.

Because here’s the bit we really want you to take away:

Your productivity problem might not be that you don’t have enough time it might be that you're spending your best brain on your least important work.

So here’s your experiment for this week.

Don’t overhaul your diary. Definitely don’t get up at 5am unless you are naturally inclined towards that sort of madness.

Just notice.

When, over the next seven days, do you feel sharpest?

When do ideas come more easily? When are decisions clearer? When do you disappear into a task rather than wrestle with it?

Find that window.

Then next week, instead of filling it with whatever lands first… give your best brain your most important problem.

That might be one of the smallest productivity changes you make.

And one of the biggest career moves.

Big love for your big brain,