4) When You Do What You Do Is Key

All hours are not created equal. What did Dan’s Timeful research show about our most productive hours?

You have a window of 2-2.5 hours of peak productivity per day, starting a couple hours after waking.

Here’s Dan:

…it turns out that most people are productive in the first two hours of the morning. Not immediately after waking, but if you get up at 7 you’ll be most productive from around from 8-10:30.

2) Control Your Environment Or It Will Control You

We can’t control our environment everywhere we go, of course, but we have more control than we usually choose to exercise.

If you banish distractions and control your calendar you can make sure your environment is ripe for productivity.

Here’s Dan:

One of the big lessons from social science in the last 40 years is that environment matters. If you go to a buffet and the buffet is organized in one way, you will eat one thing. If it’s organized in a different way, you’ll eat different things. We think that we make decisions on our own but the environment influences us to a great degree. Because of that we need to think about how to change our environment.

What does research show the most productive computer programmers have in common?

It’s not experience, salary, or hours spent on a project.

They had employers who created an environment free from distraction.

If it's not a priority in your calendar, it won't be a priority in your life.

You need to guard those hours for important tasks. Designate that part of your day as “protected time.”

And Dan’s findings line up with other research. I’ve posted before that 2.5 to 4 hours after waking is when your brain is sharpest:

Studies show that alertness and memory, the ability to think clearly and to learn, can vary by between 15 and 30 percent over the course of a day. Most of us are sharpest some two and a half to four hours after waking.