We have all been told one time or another that we need to go to bed at a certain time and wake up at a certain time. Get X amount of hours of sleep and we will have a productive day. I think there is more to it than that to have a productive day, all of which I will not talk about in this writing. I do however, want to address the issue on getting to bed at a certain time and waking up at a certain time.

Recently, there has been studies that show that some people work better in the wee hours of the morning, others mid-day, while others late at night. The key is to find out what time is best for you. Once you determine this try to plan your difficult tasks around this high productive time, let’s call this your Power Hour.

Your power hour will be the most productive hour of your day. This could be when you first wake up, mid-day, the evening or late at night. I won’t tell you when you need to have this hour, you will be able to determine this on your own. Once you find it however, you will want to make sure this hour is yours and you have no interruptions and you are able to focus on your given task.

When it comes to planning and scheduling, you should plan everything around this hour. Meaning, you want to make sure you start your high priority task in this hour, since this is where you will have the highest energy level. After this hour is up you will have some options and it will depend on how much energy you exhaust during this hour. The next hour you may want to have a task that is low energy so you could recover, or something that you can work on that will take advantage of the momentum that you have created in your power hour. I usually mix it up depending on the power hour task and the other tasks that need to get down for that day.

Remember to schedule in breaks and to limit that amount of time you spend on specific tasks. There is such thing as task burnout and you don’t want to keep on going and going where you will start to get diminishing returns and possibly negative returns.

Find your hour, be productive, and be successful!