When it comes to being a creative soulpreneur and finding your most productive hourse, you’ll find taht not everyone works their best during a standard 9 to 5 schedule. In fact, for those of us who choose to work at home, it’s not even an option. And I’d venture to guess that if you’re trying to create a time-freedom lifestyle for yourself, one of the main reasons you’ve decided on the solopreneur route to begin with!
The thing is, most people only have about two to three actual productive hours in their day. To get the most done, you should take advantage of them and figure out what time and day you perform the best.
Here are 4 tips for finding your most productive hours:
Tip #1 – Experiment with your sleep schedule
Figure out what your body likes the best. Are you a “night owl” or a “morning lark?” Even if you think you might know, give each type of schedule a try. Don’t just stick to the traditional 9 to 5 unless you have to.
Tip #2 – Journal your productivity
Use a journal to keep track of when you work. Take notes of both periods of inactivity and activity. Write down the times, the project you worked on, your mood, and other important details like obstacles that happened that normally don’t or if you got something done even faster than usual.
Other things you might include are notes on the environment you are working in, how much sleep you got the night before, or other stress factors – the more information you can provide, the better. After a week of building and experimenting with this data, you will determine your best hours to work.
Tip #3 – Take advantage of apps and technology
If keeping track of this information on your own seems tiresome, then take advantage of apps and technology instead. One good app for this is RescueTime. This is an automated time tracker that pools all this data to track where you spend your time the most. They also generate reports and provide other tools that allow you to block distractions and improve your productivity.
Tip #4 – Notices the stages of your work habits
These are the stages you go through as you work. As you track your time and what you’re doing you’ll notice these three stages – peaks, troughs, and recovery.
For most people, the peak where you have most of your energy and motivation. This is where most of your productive hours will be. It might be at the beginning of your day, or it might be somewhere closer to the middle. This is where tracking your data comes in handy.
Then as your energy starts to go down, you enter the trough period. Recovery is at the end of your work time, and best left for mindless or easy tasks.
Once you undertstand where your most productive hours are, you will be able to structure your work periods in order to get the most value from them. The thing to remember is that you don’t always need to work a total of eight hours in a day to be productive. You need to find the time that is best for you and make the most of it.
