The Ability Rhythm…
Peter de Jager is a provocative Speaker, Writer and Consultant. His primary focus in on how we manage change, technology and the future.
In addition to speaking at conferences worldwide, he's also written monthly columns for Municipal World and Computing Canada.
His goal is always to question what we think is so, and in so doing perhaps open up new opportunities.
If you'd like permission to reprint any of Peter's articles, please contact him directly.
You can contact him at
pdejager@technobility.com
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We don’t operate at the same level of effectiveness all the time. That’s one of those statements that’s obviously true. Teenagers aren’t even socially conscious until about 7:00 or 8:00pm in the evening, and many adults are incapable of handling heavy machinery until they’ve been medicated with liberal doses of caffeine. Our effectiveness from one task or other, varies throughout the day and if we’re not conscious of our high and low points then we’re working at a sub-optimal performance.
The problem is, our daily rhythm of ability is personal, unique and not exactly carved in stone. It can, and does, change from day to day – but not all that much. Just for fun, there’s an additional complexity in the mix, it’s difficult to determine when you’re best suited to perform different tasks if you work in an environment where you must do certain things according to a predetermined schedule. Nothing is more effective at masking your ‘hour of creativity’ than having to attend a meeting when it occurs. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to chart your daily rhythm of ability, it’s just more difficult.
Why take the time to chart all of this? Because doing administrivia when you’re more suited to acts of creativity is a waste of a limited and valuable resource. Likewise, trying to be creative (writing for example) when you’re more in tune with proofreading the annual report, is likely to generate less than optimal results. (Hopefully I’m writing this article at the right time of the day!)
So? How do you start tracking all of this, assuming you don’t already have a sense of when you’re better at doing one task or another? The first step is easy, start with your to-do list for the week. (Huge assumption on my part. You do have such a list… right?) The next step is either difficult, or nearly impossible depending on your work environment. Identify a week in which you have a great deal of control of what you do at any time of the day. The more control the better, but even if you don’t have total control, you’ll still be able to extract some value from the exercise.
During that week, with your to-do list of tasks with you from Sun up, to Sun down, just do what you feel most like doing when you feel like doing it - and keep note down when you did it. There isn’t anything complicated or mysterious about this, all you’re attempting to do is identify your personal preferences for certain types of tasks. Of course, there is a downside here, actually for some of us it’s huge risk. When I first performed this self-evaluation – at the end of the week… none of the ‘administrivial tasks’ got done. Not a one. That only told me something I already knew. I hate that type of work.
Finding out that there’s a class of work that I hate dealing with doesn’t mean I won’t find time to do it. It needs doing, The important thing is I’m not going to try and do that type of work at a time when I should be using my creative juices to write a dynamite article.
Even if you’ll never a find a week where you have a large degree of control over what you do and when you do it, you’ll still be able to note down what you’d prefer to be doing while you’re stuck in that meeting all afternoon. Perhaps with that information under your hat you’ll at least try to schedule things so that they coincide with your preferences.
One thing you might find, because you’re paying attention to your preferences throughout the whole day, and not just that traditional 9-5 slice of daylight, is that your best hours are those found before you head to work, or after you arrive home. Those of us who work at home have an unfair advantage, our business day starts when the dog wants out, or when the cat throws up under the bed (don’t ask). If you’re most creative at 6:30am, then why waste that time? Put it to use. On the other hand, if your best primed to do the accounting that need doing just after lunch, then don’t schedule meetings at that time, or the accounting will never get done.
Time management is more than just managing what you do, it’s also about doing what you need to do at a time when you’re most mentally capable of doing it.
To add one more thought to make this even more ‘interesting’, is that sometimes what motivates us to do our best are the deadlines hanging over the task. Sometimes being pushed to the wall, is exactly what need to help us get over it. (but don’t let my editor know any of this, she thinks I’m organized and have everything under control.)
© 2008, Peter de Jager – Peter is most creative after he’s just gotten up from, or just going to bed. Thankfully most keynotes are in the morning. You can read more of his early morning scribblings at:
http://blog.technobility.com
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