Our productivity levels are not the same everyday. They even differ from hour to hour. When we have a slew of tasks and chores to trudge through, we cannot possibly be at our productive peak all the time. There would be energy and creativity slumps, and despite our best efforts and the caffeine intake, we wouldn’t be able to produce our best work or meet all the deadlines.

Yesterday, I was able to write a an article comprising a good thousand words within two hours. It was the middle of the day and I was sitting down after getting a few chores out of the way. Only the conclusion was left and I decided to have a go at it in the evening.

Evening came and it took me another two hours just to finish that small concluding para comprising only 5 lines. By the end of the article, I was exhausted and unhappy with how long it took me to finish those last 5 lines.

This also meant that whatever I had scheduled for the latter half of the day got delayed. Consequently, I had to work late at night to make up for the delay. Such are the ebbs and flows of our creativity. They rise and fall, and we must sync our productivity with them. Thus, figuring out which hours are your most productive one is like finding the linchpin to your creative powerhouse.

Here are some of the factors that would help you determine your best creative hours:

An Early Morning Grinder or Late Night Hustler

One thing I absolutely HATE about productivity gurus is to push the idea that early mornings are your best creative hours. While this might be true for a lot of people, there are some outliers who tend to be at their creative and productive best late at night.

There is no sense waking up all bleary eyed and groggy in the morning and try to do some creative work. Hence, the time when you hit the sack everyday and your sleep quality matter in determining whether you can start early in the morning and can be at your creative best.

So once, you have determined whether you are an early morning grinder or a late night hustler, you can then determine the hours when you are alert, focused and at your creative best.

Find Your Kryptonite

Find the possible reasons or patterns behind the time period when you trudge your way through work and yet have been unable to produce quality work. Some of the possible reasons could be:

• Grogginess.
• Distraction.
• Multi-tasking.
• Having a slew of urgent chores standing in your way.

My Kryptonite, for instance, are grogginess from lack of sleep the night earlier and distractions in the shape of checking my Inbox, phone and social media feed frequently. I also am unable to concentrate when I am grappling with a deadline but have to cook dinner as well. So what I do is to counter these issues is to have some coffee to ward of grogginess (in case the task is very important and urgent and can’t wait another day!).

Likewise, I also try to get chores out of the way before attempting to work. This means cooking the meal and then getting down to work, rather than trying to work and have the pending task weighing on my mind.

Similarly, I find it very hard to concentrate in a noisy house. So, I tend to do my best work when the kid is at school and the partner is at work.

Thus, once we are able to determine why we can’t work in a certain time frame, we would either be able to address and eliminate the issues and gain back more productive hours to our day.

Give a Try to Different Productivity Techniques

If you have a lot of work that needs to be done everyday and have very few productive hours, then try different, proven productivity techniques to add more productive hours to your day. There are lots of productivity techniques people use to be more efficient and able to get more work done in lesser time. Following and implementing Tim Ferriss’ concept of The 4-Hour Workweek is only possible if we make the four days and the hours within it we are working on the most productive. Otherwise, we may end up dragging the same amount of work the entire week (even work on weekends and late nights) and yet accomplish very little.
Some of my favorite productivity techniques are Eat the Frog First work principle, whereby I start working on the most daunting tasks first and focusing on getting them out of the way.

The second productivity concept I find useful is the Pomerado technique, whereby I consistently work for 25 minutes and then take a break.

The third technique is personal whereby I delegate more chores to the family and simplify cooking (through batch cooking and freezing food in ready to serve portions) in order to focus on critical assignments.

To Sum Up

No matter what the productivity expectations and demands are, no one can be 100% productive throughout the day or week. Our energy slumps in a given day and so does our productivity. Thus, identifying our most productive hours in a day can help us leverage our energies. Our productive hours differ from one another. Finding your workstyle, key distractors and utilizing different productivity techniques are some of the ways we can identify our most productive ours and utilize them.