PEEC Times
When are you the most productive? Do you know? No, I’m not asking about when most people are the most productive. I’m asking whether you know when you are the most productive. Are you a morning person that happens to be the most productive at night? Are you a night owl that happens to be the most productive in the mornings? Do you fall along party lines? Or do you have your own rhythm?
Knowing the answer to this simple question can help you increase your productivity, be more creative, and leverage your flow state. Think about these three questions:
1. When is your mind the “most fresh”?
2. When are you able to focus for the longest amount of time without interruption and without needing a mental break?
3. When is your attention not required elsewhere (e.g., making dinner for your family, picking your kids up from school, walking your dog, driving to and from work)?
I refer to these timeframes as Productivity, Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Creativity Times (“PEEC Times”). Once you identify your PEEC Times, you can work to structure your day to maximize your mental peaks while minimizing your mental troughs. By scheduling your most complex and mentally taxing tasks for your PEEC Times, you can complete these tasks more efficiently, produce a higher quality work product, and develop more creative solutions. If you schedule these same tasks for a period when your mind is fatigued, you won’t be able to concentrate as effectively and you may never reach your flow state.
When you align your mind with your work, you align your potential with your product.
And, to note, your PEEC Times themselves may change over time (e.g., your work schedule changes, your job changes, a pandemic causes you to work from home and eliminates 1.5 hours of commute time). Be sure to re-evaluate your PEEC Times after material changes to your schedule to ensure that you are maximizing your time.
How to Schedule Around Your PEEC Times
First, let’s set the stage by identifying your PEEC Times. Identify at least three different timeframes. Don’t worry about how long each individual PEEC Time is, as that’s not where the value comes into play. For me, my PEEC Times are:
- 9:30am — 12:00pm
2. 7:00pm — 9:00pm
3. 10:00pm — 12:00am
Second, rank them in order of when you are the most productive, second most productive, and third most productive. My ranking is:
1. Most productive PEEC Time: 9:30am — 12:00pm
2. Second most productive PEEC Time: 10:00pm — 12:00am
3. Third most productive PEEC Time: 7:00pm — 9:00pm.
And third, begin to schedule your time with a waterfall approach. Reserve your most complex tasks for your most productive PEEC Time. If that time slot doesn’t work, try your second most productive PEEC Time. If that also doesn’t work, try your third most productive PEEC Time. This waterfall approach helps prioritize your most complex tasks to periods when your mental acuity is sharpest. For example, let’s imagine that I’m trying to help a client with a particularly sticky issue that requires me to thoroughly diligence the client’s materials. My scheduling process for completing this task would look something like this:
1. 9:30am — 12:00pm: Time reserved for a conference call and an internal meeting. Can’t schedule client diligence.
2. 10:00pm — 12:00am: Call scheduled with another client on the west coast. Can’t schedule client diligence.
3. 7:00pm — 9:00pm: Available to schedule the diligence.
And once you schedule in your most complex tasks, you can work your way through your to-do list by repeating the above steps. Maximizing your productivity with PEEC Times is about prioritization. At a certain point, you won’t be able to schedule everything into these timeframes. Thus, focus on what matters the most when you are most apt to handle those issues.
When Life Doesn’t Cooperate
In a perfect world, we would have perfect control over our schedules. But life happens, meetings are scheduled, and our dogs need to be walked. There will be days or even weeks where we can’t schedule our tasks according to our PEEC Times. What should we do?
When our jobs require us to burn the midnight oil, burn the candle at both ends, or burn out (just kidding — I couldn’t think of a third outdated and pre-Edison metaphor that requires physically burning anything), we simply need to get the job done when it’s asked of us. This happens to everyone and we can’t always schedule our time according to our preferences. But there are certain things that we can do if we aren’t able to prioritize our PEEC Times.
Prioritize your heath. Get as much sleep as you reasonably can, eat well, hydrate, and take short breaks (this could simply be walking to the coffee machine or a short nap). Your mind is a machine that needs to be maintained, calibrated, and refreshed. If you overwork it, your machine will overheat and you’ll find yourself making mistakes or crashing. By taking care of your mind (and body), you are preparing it to perform as best as it can under the circumstances. But if you aren’t getting sleep and are binging energy drinks or coffee, you will reach a breaking point. And that’s when everyone loses.
Your mind is a powerful tool. When you are lost in something interesting like a new Netflix series, you can watch shows for hours on end without taking a break. (If you’ve finished watching Netflix and are looking for somewhere else to focus your attention, check out my article “Done With Netflix? Try Philosophy.”) When you are having an interesting conversation, you can talk for hours on end. And when you are playing an interesting game, you can get lost it in for hours. So, what happens when you “trick” your mind into being interested in what you are working on? Even if you are working on a subject area that you love, no one loves a grueling schedule that is all consuming. But if you tell yourself that your current task is interesting, you can actually get yourself in the right mindset to grind out the task efficiently and effectively while lowering your stress levels.
Get physical. When I was working “biglaw” hours, I would frequently take walks. This would give me a breath of fresh air, increase blood flow to my brain, and give me a change of pace. Depending on the deal that I was working on and the timeline, these walks could range anywhere from fifteen minutes to a two-minute walk around the block. I found that this always helped me reset and refocus, regardless of what time it was or what happened a few minutes prior.
Get social. Finding colleagues and friends that you can talk to when the pressure is on is invaluable. Pre-COVID, this would’ve included swinging by someone’s desk or office for a quick chat, going on a walk together, or going to pick up takeout together. During this pandemic, this can include using your work messenger app, texting friends, or hopping on a quick call (not Zoom, as everyone is facing video chat fatigue these days). By having colleagues and friends by your side, whether they are on your particular project or not, you can create the feeling that you are part of a team. This does wonders for morale and can help you refocus and regain your productivity.
Conclusion
PEEC Times can help you define your productivity schedule based on your specific situations and natural states. When you align your mind with your work, you can achieve wonders.
Think well my friends,
Adam
This article is part of a series focused on expanding your thinking. If you would like to learn more, feel free to connect with me on social media or subscribe to my “Weekend Thoughts” newsletter here.
Adam advises businesses and individuals on business strategy, develops thought leadership content, and keynotes. As a business philosopher, he draws on his experiences in corporate law, sales, nonprofits, and philosophy to develop practical frameworks to shift business and individual mindsets and skillsets. He is the founder of At Philosophy and the president of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association Educational Fund. See www.adamtsao.com.
