Not all hours are equal.

Learning to protect your time means learning which parts of it need protecting.

There’s an interesting concept in sleep research called a chronotype — the idea that people are naturally more awake and alert at different times of the day. This is probably most commonly understood as being a morning person or a night owl.

But I’ve also found that different people tend to hit different creative peaks at different times of the day. What I think of as a creative chronotype.

One unexpected upside of the past 18 months is that I’ve had a chance to observe exactly when my brain gets into a higher gear. It turns out my best, deep thinking happens between 10 am and 2 pm. And that I get another wave between 7 pm and 10 pm. That’s when I find it easiest to get into flow. Where I don’t have to push to make the work happen.

These times are going to be different for everyone. But it’s important to recognize and be aware of when they hit for you. Because that’s the time you need to protect the most carefully.

A half-hour meeting might not feel like much of an interruption in the stretch of an entire day. But when your peak thinking time might only be three or four hours long, that half-hour meeting suddenly represents a significant chunk.

And it’s never just one meeting, is it?

Realizing the scarcity of the most creative hours you have in a day is the first step to protecting them.

And the other hours? The ones where you’re at a lower ebb? That’s the perfect time for all the other kinds of work. Where you follow through on the sparks generated by that deep thinking. Or when you can tackle the things that need to get done but don’t need the most valuable parts of your creative brain. Admin. Timesheets.

Thing is, it’s easier to do this kind of work in your peak hours, too. And it can be tempting to use this time to just get some mundane tasks off your plate. But pushing through this kind of work when you’re feeling more sluggish is another way you can protect your brain’s golden hours.

Lastly, if you’re part of a creative team, or working in a group, it’s worth remembering that your peak hours may be different from someone else’s. Working that out can make a big difference to how you work together.

It’s easy for any of us to overestimate the number of useful hours we have in a day. I just need to keep reminding myself that some of those hours are more valuable than others.