Posted onJanuary 14, 2021|Comments Off on Listen to The Incrementalist: Episode 2, Building Good Habits
Whenever we want to make a change, we tend to think in terms of goals and outcomes, hopes and dreams. It’s good to know the results we want. But how do we get there? It starts with building good habits that add up over time to create success as you define it.
A habit starts with a conscious decision and becomes automatic through a 3-step loop (cue, behavior, reward). Building good habits allows you to make changes without relying on willpower and motivation.
In this episode of The Incrementalist podcast, I discuss how motivation, ability and prompts drive behavior, using Professor BJ Fogg’s B=MAP formula. I also cover the ABC (Anchor, Behavior, Celebration) method to create new habits and sustain momentum. Make the new behavior tiny with the starter step and by scaling back.
Excellence comes from the actions you do habitually, consistently, repeatedly – not from once-in-a-while acts. Being the best version of yourself and having self-mastery stem from your habits.
Resources Cited:
Charles Duhigg – The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
BJ Fogg – Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything
David T. Neal, Wendy Wood, and Jeffrey M. Quinn, Duke University, Habits – A Repeat Performance, Current Directions in Psychological Science, Volume 15, Issue 4, August 1, 2006
Magic Weighted Blanket
Music by:
Sebastian Brian Mehr
Happy habit-building,
Dyan Williams
# # #
Dyan Williams is a solo lawyer who practices U.S. immigration law and legal ethics at Dyan Williams Law PLLC. She is also a productivity coach who helps working parents, lawyers, small business owners and other busy people turn their ideas into action, reduce overwhelm, and focus on what truly matters. She is the author of The Incrementalist: A Simple Productivity System to Create Big Results in Small Steps.
Posted onJanuary 5, 2021|Comments Off on Goals are Great. But Systems are Even Better.
January is a popular time to aim for radical changes and major shifts in life. Is your lifestyle, health, relationships, work, business or side project in a sad state? Or have you been on an upward trajectory?
The start of the year is when many of us get a burst of energy to set big, bold and risky goals. Perhaps you have plans to achieve yours by next month, within 90 days, or by the end of this year.
Life though does not always turn out according to plan. The year 2020 was a fierce reminder of this fact. There’s nothing wrong with goals. Specific goals are great when they help you move in the right direction.
But even better is a system to pivot, reset, upgrade, and make consistent progress on the things that really matter. When key goals are scrapped or missed, you can always revisit them when you have a system to get you back on track.
At the start of 2020, I had tentative plans to launch a podcast. As a solo immigration lawyer and a productivity coach, I was conflicted on whether to start one podcast or two. Over time, this project moved to the backburner while COVID-19, civil unrest, school closures, the November Elections, and other changes were at front and center.
During my annual review in December 2020, I reflected on the wins, the successes, the doubts, and the setbacks. Were there goals I had dropped and wanted to pick up again?
One major project I decided to return to was the podcast launch. I had more than enough topics to talk about, on either immigration or productivity. Years of running more than one blog led to a system for idea generation and content creation.
I already had the tools to start a podcast. They included the microphone, headphones, computer, and audio editing software we used to make the last video for my law firm’s YouTube channel.
Still, podcasting was a big leap for me. I thought, “I’m a writer, not a podcaster.” Never mind that you can develop skills through deliberate practice and deep study. Never mind that I had spoken at various events and conferences on productivity, mindfulness, U.S. immigration and legal ethics issues.
There were podcast hosting choices and other technical mumbo jumbo to work through to start a podcast. By the end of December, the audio recording and sound editing of the first episodes — for two different podcasts — were done. Small, daily actions in short bursts made this possible.
Although I met the goals of launching The Incrementalist (a productivity podcast) and The Legal Immigrant (a U.S. immigration podcast) , it took systems to start them. And it will take systems to keep each show going. There’s a content strategy to release new episodes over the coming weeks. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, I invite you to listen to episode 1 (introduction) in The Incrementalist podcast. Click HERE for the show’s website. Or find it on podcast apps like Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Listen Notes and via RSS feed.
If you like the content, please share it with others, leave a 5-star review, and subscribe so you don’t miss new episodes.
And if you’d like to check out my other podcast, The Legal Immigrant, click HERE for the show’s website.
Your downloads, shares and subscriptions mean a lot! To keep you listening, I will aim to add value through these shows. Podcasts give you a convenient way to get insights and information when you’re on the go or want to learn with audio.
Posted onJuly 1, 2020|Comments Off on Presenting Minnesota CLE live webcast, Thursday, July 2 at 12 pm: Finding Your Rhythm – When to Do What
On Thursday, July 2, join me on Zoom for a Minnesota CLE live webcast, Finding Your Rhythm: When to Do Focused Work, Process Emails, Brainstorm Ideas, and Make Decisions.
Attorneys routinely keep too many things on their to-do list, feel overwhelmed with busyness, and prioritize other people’s requests over their truly important tasks. They are often told to manage their time better, multitask more, work smarter, or put in longer hours to get more done. But attempting to keep up with rising demands while neglecting to consider energy peaks and valleys create an unsustainable path to productivity.
In this presentation, you will learn how to:
Work with your natural rhythm or internal body clock instead of burning yourself out or staying stuck
Use your preferred sleep-wake cycle (circadian rhythm) and rest-activity cycle (ultradian rhythm) to plan your day
Choose the best times to perform high cognitive tasks, communicate with clients, spark insights, solve problems, and rest and recharge
Boost your energy level and reduce overwhelm by practicing simple daily habits
Finding your rhythm will help you fulfill your ethical duties of diligence (Rule 1.3), competence (Rule 1.1) and communication (Rule 1.4).
This is a reprise of a webcast CLE that I presented back in December 2019, when most lawyers were commuting to the office instead of working from home or working remotely. In the midst of the pandemic shutdowns and restrictions, it’s especially important to find your rhythm and stay focused on what really matters.
U.S. Immigration & Legal Ethics Attorney Author of The Incrementalist: A Simple Productivity System to Create Big Results in Small Steps, an e-book at http://leanpub.com/incrementalist
Posted onDecember 17, 2019|Comments Off on Finding Your Rhythm: When to Do What – Step 2 (Match Your Chronotype with the Task and Time of Day)
Doing the right kind of task at the right time of day is key to peak performance. At any given hour, your circadian rhythm affects your concentration, energy and mood level. Is your focus sharp or scattered? Are you alert or tired? Do you feel up or down? Your internal body clock largely affects how much sleep you need, your ideal wake up time and bedtime, and your mental acuity and emotional state throughout the day.
In his book, The Power of When, Dr. Michael Breus notes that your sleep chronotype affects the secretion of hormones, which are crucial for specific activities. Cortisol makes you more alert while melatonin makes you sleepy.
Dr. Breus distinguishes the sleep chronotypes into four categories: Lion (morning type), Wolf (nighttime type), Bear (middle of the road type) and Dolphin (difficult sleeper with often erratic sleep schedules). Meanwhile, in his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, author Daniel Pink uses the more familiar-sounding chronotype categories: Early-riser Lark; late-night Owl, and in-between Third Bird.
You achieve peak performance when you know your chronotype and match it with the task at hand and the time of day. In the related article, Finding Your Rhythm: When to Do What – Step 1, you can read more information on the different chronotypes and how to discover yours.
Three
Categories of Tasks
Once you have determined your chronotype, your next step is to organize your tasks into categories. As described in Pink’s book, there are three:
Analytic Tasks
Analytic tasks involve
heads-down work that demands high focus, mental sharpness and vigilance.
Examples include learning and processing new information, doing legal research,
analyzing documents and records, writing a legal brief, solving a difficult
problem, making an important decision, actively participating in a strategic
meeting, and presenting at a trial or hearing.
Insight Tasks
Insight tasks involve creative work that requires a wider focus, curiosity, imagination, and a good mood. Examples include outlining an article, brainstorming solutions, tackling novel problems with new ideas, asking better questions, and holding meetings to build relationships and rapport.
Administrative Tasks
Administrative tasks involve busy work or routine work that is fairly easy to complete and do not need a lot of brain power or heavy lifting. Examples are processing emails, making and returning telephone calls, responding to inquiries, updating case notes and progress reports, entering expenses, scheduling meetings, tidying up, and organizing files. Generally, these tasks can be automated, delegated or deferred with minor consequences.
Three
Stages of the Day
On any given day, there are three stages where our energy peaks, dips and recovers. They are Peak-Trough-Recovery. Larks and Third Birds (most of us) experience our Peak in the morning, our Trough in the early-to mid-afternoon, and our Recovery in the early evening. Night Owls, however, experience a reverse pattern, i.e. Recovery in the morning, Trough in the early-to-mid-afternoon, and Peak in the late afternoon and into the evening.
When
to Do What
For peak performance, you need to align your chronotype, task and time of day. The table below summarizes the best times of the time day to perform certain tasks, based on your chronotype:
Use your peak period to focus on deep, important work and analytic, cognitively-demanding tasks. When you’re in your recovery period, switch to insight, creativity-driven tasks. Avoid administrative work, like processing emails, and time-wasters like reading online news, at peak hours or recovery stages of the day.
How to Protect Peak Hours
Each day, you need to leverage your peak hours by reserving them for analytic, focused work or insight, creative-thinking work. There are two main things you can do protect your peak hours.
1. Prioritize your most important task (even when it’s not urgent)through time blocking. This involves setting an appointment (with yourself) to do a single, high-cognitive demand task or a batch or stack of similar, low-cognitive demand tasks in a specific time block.
A priority doesn’t always have to be handled first thing in the morning or at at the start of the work day. Just make sure you set an appropriate time to take care of it. Be sure to match the task with your energy level, personal circumstances, and external environment.
For example, do your deep work when your mental clarity and attention span are at its peak, you have the fewest interruptions, and you have access to a quiet workspace (or can at least choose your background noise). Do your administrative tasks when your energy is low (e.g. afternoon or after lunch), you are more distraction-prone, and your workspace is noisier and more chaotic.
High-cognitive tasks
In a time block, focus on a single high-cognitive task, like writing a legal brief. Refrain from multitasking — such as handling questions from your paralegal or responding to emails from clients — during this time block. To encourage focus, you can theme your days or theme the hour.
Theming your day could look like this: Monday – client communications; Tuesday – client work and assignments; Wednesday – internal meetings; Thursday – client work and assignments; Friday – brainstorming or solo thinking session.
Theming your hour could include: 9 to 10 am: client communications; 10 to 12 pm: client work and assignments (e.g. writing a legal brief); 1 to 2 pm: internal meetings; 3 to 4 pm: client work and assignments (e.g. editing a legal brief); 4:30 to 5:30 pm: brainstorming or solo thinking session.
Focusing on just one task is important because the human brain is a sequential processor: It cannot pay attention to more than one thing at a time. Multitasking is not possible when (1) at least one of the tasks requires focus or effort to complete, and (2) the tasks involve similar types of brain processing. Performing two or more tasks at one time can only be done by “switch tasking” (switch back and forth between two or more tasks). This leaves a cognitive residue that takes about 15 to 25 minutes to clear up so you can refocus on the initial task.
Low-cognitive tasks
When it comes to similar, low-level tasks that do not require much mental focus, you can use batch processing. This means performing then sequentially and quickly after each other in one time block. For example, you can return all your telephone calls or respond to email inquiries in one time block.
For routine or habitual, low-level tasks, you can use stacking. This means performing one task while the other operates in the background. Examples include walking with a colleague while you discuss a work issue during your lunch break; listening to an educational podcast while you commute to work; or playing classical music or ambient sounds of a cafe (like on Coffitivity or Hipstersound) while you update your case notes. Stacking is a great way to boost your mood when you’re dealing with mundane work. (SIDE NOTE: Stacking can also work very well with insight work.)
2.Schedule and take real breaks that allow you to fully detach from your work. Breaks may be solo (e.g. meditation, reading a calming book) or social (e.g. chatting with a colleague about the upcoming weekend; having lunch with a good friend). Getting outside is better than staying inside. Movement (e.g. walking, stretching, going to the gym) is also preferred to being stationary, especially if you have been working at your desk for hours.
In chronobiology, our ultradian rhythm is the wake-rest-activity cycle that repeats throughout a 24-hour day. This involves alternating periods of high-frequency brain activity (roughly 90 minutes) followed by lower-frequency brain activity (approximately 20 minutes). Take a 20-minute break for every 90 minutes of work to take advantage of the daily ultradian rhythm cycle.
The Pomodoro Technique is one way to concentrate on a task for a set period and take necessary breaks. First, you identify the task to do. Second, you set a timer (typically 25 minutes). Third, you work on the task only until the timer goes off. After the timer rings, you check off your task. And if you give in to interruptions and distractions (e.g. checking emails, getting a snack), you reset the timer.
If you have fewer than four check marks, take a short break (5 minutes), then go to step 2. If you have at least four check marks, take a longer break (20 to 30 minutes), reset your checkmark count to zero, and do the steps all over again.
Another way to take a good break is to have a Nappuccino or Nap a Latte, when you’re in the Trough. The steps are (a) Close your door, turn off your phone, and wear eye mask and ear plugs to help block light and sound; (b) Drink a cup of coffee or tea (100 to 110 mg of caffeine); (c) Nap for 10 to 20 minutes (set timer for 25 minutes).
Caffeine takes about 25 minutes to kick into the receptor sites of your brain, so by the time you wake up from your nap, you will not only feel refreshed but also energized. Be sure to wake up within 25 minutes because you want to avoid getting into deeper stages of sleep – unless you go for a full 90-minute sleep cycle.
Naps, however, are not ideal for everyone or for all chronotypes. If you suffer from insomnia or have trouble sleeping at night, you could make the problem worse with daytime naps.
How to Maximize Peak Hours
Maximizing your peak hours involves practicing habits that will help raise and sustain your energy levels. They include:
1. Limit your to-do list. Set boundaries and clarify expectations to reduce the interruptions and distractions. For example, inform your clients at the outset as to when they may expect to hear back from you in response to an inquiry. Is it within an hour, within 24 hours, or by end of business day? Do not give them your cell phone number if you do not want to be contacted whenever and however they please. If your boss or manager assigns you more work while you’re focusing on a major project, remind them of timelines and deadlines and discuss what actually takes priority.
2. Keep a consistent sleep schedule that aligns with your circadian rhythm. Dr. Breus notes that having the same wake up time and bedtime every day, including on weekends, is the single most important thing you can do for your circadian rhythm.
Here is his Bedtime Sleep Calculator to maximize sleep quality:
a. The average sleep cycle is 90 minutes long.
For Lions and Bears, a typical night of sleep includes 5 full sleep cycles, i.e. 90 x 5 = 450 minutes, or 7.5 hours. Dolphins and Wolves tend to get 4 full sleep cycles, i.e. 90 x 4 = 360 minutes, or 6 hours. Add an extra 20 minutes for Lions and Bears, and 40 minutes for Dolphins and Wolves to fall asleep.
b. Starting at your wake time, work back 7.5 hours to find your bedtime.
Ideal bedtime for Lions
and Bears is calculated as follows:
90 minute sleep cycle x 5 cycles + 20 minutes to fall asleep = 470 minutes or 7.8 hours
Lions: up at 6:00 am – 470 minutes = 10:10 pm
Bears: up at 7:00 am – 470 minutes = 11:10 pm
Ideal bedtime for Wolves
and Dolphins is calculated as follows:
90 minute sleep cycle x 4 cycles + 40 minutes to fall asleep = 400 minutes or 6.7 hours
Wolves: up at 7:00am – 400 minutes = 12:00 am
Dolphins: up at 6:30am – 400 minutes = 11:50 pm
3. Practice an energizing morning routine
Design a morning routine that works with your personal preferences and internal rhythm. Key ingredients you may incorporate into your morning rituals are:
Hydrate with water. When you wake up, drink 8 to 12 ounces of room temperature or lukewarm water.
Soak in bright light early in the morning, within first half hour of waking up. This lowers your melatonin level and provides vitamin D, which helps you sleep at night. Go outside and walk around the block or sit by a window to get direct sunlight in your face. Aim for at least 5 to 15 minutes and preferably 20 to 30 minute of sun exposure.
If you wake before sunrise or live in a place where there is little sunlight in certain seasons of the year, try using a bright light therapy lamp.
Have a high-protein rich and good-fats breakfast, such as a fruit smoothie, Greek yogurt, protein shake, or eggs/omelet with avocado. Avoid carbohydrate-rich foods, which help produce serotonin and make you drowsy.
Get moving. Stretch, walk, run, dance, jump on the trampoline, or do a quick workout to wake up your body and boost your mental energy.
Take a cool shower. This stimulates blood flow, releases endorphins and triggers wakefulness. You could start with warm water and gradually turn down the water temperature. Still too much? Wash your face with cold water for similar effects.
4.Stick to a relaxing bedtime routine
Create a bedtime routine that allows you to wind down, relax and prime your mind and body for sleep. Key tips for nighttime rituals include:
Do not drink alcohol within 3 hours of bedtime. One alcohol beverage takes 1 hour to process, so give your body time to process it well before your bedtime. While alcohol might help you fall asleep more quickly, it prevents you from moving into deep sleep and reduces Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, which are stages 3 and 4 of the sleep cycle.
Fast for at least 3 hours before bed, and preferably 4. Food tells your circadian rhythm to wake up and be alert. Have space between dinner and your bedtime for optimal functioning.
Practice relaxation methods, including meditation, gentle/restorative yoga, tai chi, stretching, or foam rolling (self massage).
Do light reading (few pages) or journaling (up to 2 to 5 minutes), but not on your computer or other electronic devices. Avoid blue light from screens at least 1 hour before bedtime because it hinders production of melatonin, the hormone needed for good sleep.
Get warm. Drink warm bedtime tea or water with lemon + honey. Take a lukewarm shower or bath, preferably 60 to 90 minutes before bedtime .
These self-care habits will help boost your energy levels, heighten alertness, and improve your mood. Peak performance results when you match your chronotype with the task and time of day and synch with your natural rhythm.
This article provides general information only. Do not consider it as specific advice for any individual case or situation.
Dyan Williams is a solo lawyer who practices U.S. Immigration Law and Legal Ethics. She is also a productivity coach for lawyers, consultants and other professionals who seek to reduce overwhelm and make time for what truly matters. She is the author of The Incrementalist: A Simple Productivity System to Create Big Results in Small Steps, an e-book at http://leanpub.com/incrementalist.
Posted onDecember 17, 2019|Comments Off on Finding your Rhythm: When to Do What – Step 1 (Know Your Chronotype)
To do focused work, generate ideas, respond to inquiries, and make decisions, you need to consider that not all times of the day are created equal. Biologically speaking, your concentration, energy and mood levels vary by the hour. Thus, the question of when you will work on a specific project is just as important as what steps you will take and how you will execute them to produce the desired results.
It is counter-productive to use your peak hours to deal with busy work instead of matters that require high-cognitive abilities or creative thinking. Yet like many other overwhelmed professionals, lawyers often fall into this trap. Despite putting in more time and neglecting to take restorative breaks, they often end their day with minor tasks done, but with no significant progress toward reaching their critical goals. While they might have replied to many emails and attended multiple meetings, the time-sensitive client matter is left untouched and the brilliant marketing idea is stuck on the some-day list.
Working out of synch with
your natural rhythm often leads to emotional overwhelm, mental depletion, physical
exhaustion and increased distractibility. These factors impair your acquisition of
knowledge and skills, fuel procrastination, and make it more difficult to
convey bad news or timely communicate with clients. Ethical missteps are more
likely to occur when you do not take your internal body clock into account.
What
is Your Circadian Rhythm?
Your circadian rhythm is an internal timing device that controls when you are most alert and when you are most tired. It is your brain’s sleep-wake cycle in a 24-hour period that determines your natural wake up time and bedtime. A group of about 20,000 nerve cells (neurons) – referred to as the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus part of the brain (behind your eyes) – affects the secretion of hormones, like cortisol (which triggers your body to wake up) and melatonin (which tells your body to go to sleep), as well as your body temperature and blood pressure.
What
is Your Sleep Chronotype?
Your sleep chronotype is the behavioral manifestation of your circadian rhythm. It is genetically set and is linked to your Period 3 (PER3) or “clock” gene. In the field of chronobiology, Early Birds tend to have a longer version of the PER3 gene than Night Owls. They need more sleep and wake up and go to bed earlier.
4 Chronotype Classifications (Animals)
Dr. Michael J. Breus — a clinical psychologist with a specialty in sleep disorders – notes there are four chronotype categories of sleep patterns and circadian rhythms. In his book, The Power of When, he distinguishes the chronotypes based on morning and evening preferences, and classifies them according to different animals whose sleep habits best reflect the characteristics.
Chronotypes are general guidelines for large populations; there are individual variations within each chronotype. Although you are genetically predisposed to a certain chronotype in adulthood (age 21 to 65), this may change as you age, especially at 65 or older. In addition, workplace demands, social obligations, cultural norms and other external factors may require you to shift or reset your circadian rhythm.
The four chronotypes, as
defined by Dr. Breus, are:
Lion
(morning type, like the Early Bird)
15% to 20% of population
Medium sleep drive (7 hours), naturally wake up before dawn
Wake up with lots of energy, with their peak energy in the early morning and morning, and little energy to spare in the evening
Adapt best to a 6 am wake up time & 10:10 pm bedtime for traditional office hours
Tend to be optimists, overactive achievers and go-getters, and leaders, managers and CEOs
Have leadership qualities with introversion preference
Wolf (nighttime type, like the Night Owl)
15% to 20% of population
Medium sleep drive (7 hours), naturally wake up late after mid-morning
Wake up with serious morning grogginess, with their peak energy in the middle of the day and evening
Adapt best to 7 am wake up time and 12 am bedtime for traditional office hours
Tend to be creative, pessimistic, risk-seeking and moody; often seen as lazy due to their being out of sych with society’s schedule
Are comfortable being alone or often socially introverted, but love a good party
Bear
(middle of the road type)
50%
to 55% of population (often hybrids who lean toward being a Lion or a Wolf)
High
sleep drive (8 hours), often hit the snooze button and wish they could stay in
bed longer
Deep
sleepers who like to rise with the sun and keep a solar schedule
Wake up in a haze, with their peak
energy in the morning to mid-morning
Adapt best to a 7 am wake up time &
11:10 pm bedtime for traditional office hours
Tend
to be fun, friendly and easy to talk to and have good people skills
Are
team players and worker bees
Dolphin
(difficult sleeper)
10% of the population
Low sleep drive (6 hours), even though
they often crave longer bouts of sleep
Light sleepers (often diagnosed or
self-diagnosed as insomniacs who keep erratic sleep schedules and have trouble
falling asleep and staying asleep)
Wake up feeling unrefreshed, with their peak
energy in the mid-morning to early afternoon
Adapt best to a 6:30 am wake up time
& 11:50 pm bedtime for traditional office hours
Tend to be anxious, irritable, and highly
intelligent with Type A personality, including detail-oriented and perfectionistic
Prefer to work solo than in groups
Three Chronotype Classifications (Birds)
In his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, author Daniel Pink points out there is a strong biological underpinning for whether you are sharpest in the morning or in the evening. He describes the three chronotypes as:
Lark
(morning person)
15% to 20% of the population
Naturally wake up very early and go to bed very early
Wear out by the evening
Peak energy in the early morning
Owl
(evening person)
15% to 20% of the population
Naturally wake up late and go to bed late
Sluggish in the morning
Peak energy in the late afternoon and early evening
Third
Bird (intermediate person)
66% or 2/3 of population
Naturally wake up early and go to bed
early
Peak in the early to mid-morning
Larks and owls are at two ends of the spectrum. Their melatonin and cortisol levels rise and fall at different times in the 24-hour cycle. For example, melatonin is still high for night owls if they wake at 6 to 7 am, while it dips for larks before that time.
How to Find Out Your Chronotype
Paying attention to
your own natural rhythm is important to know when you are at your peak each day.
The ideal time to wake up, go to bed, and perform certain activities depends on
your chronotype, i.e. whether you are a morning person, an evening person, or
in between.
Here are four ways to find out your chronotype:
Take Power of When Quiz, created by Dr. Breus. Currently available at powerofwhenquiz.com, this is a short questionnaire that takes about two minutes to complete and provides a personalized choronotype. By answering questions on your sleep drive, sleep timing and preference, you will learn whether you are a Lion, Dolphin, Bear or Wolf and how your chronotype impacts your daily life.
Calculate Midpoint of Sleep, as outlined in Pink’s book.On a free day, when you have no appointments, meetings or time-sensitive obligations (and are not sleep-deprived), when do you naturally go to sleep and wake up? What is the midpoint of your sleep cycle? For example, if you go to bed at 12 am and wake at 8 am, your midpoint is 4 am. If your midpoint is 3:30 am or earlier, you are a Lark. If it is 5:30 am or later, you are an Owl. If you midpoint is somewhere in the middle, you are a Third Bird.
Track your energy level every hour and note how you feel on a scale of 1 to 10. Also note the task or activity and the time of day. A 10 is when you are at your sharpest, fully present, and can more easily get into a flow state. The lower the score, the more you feel drained, scattered, and open to distractions. Chart your scores over time for a week or two. Look for patterns related to when you are hitting 10s, 1s and in between.
Complete scientifically verified survey, such as theHorne Östberg questionnaire, and Munich Chronotype questionnaire, which contains Likert-scale questions to assess your preferences in sleep and waking times, and the degree to which you are active and alert at certain times of the day.
Match
Your Chronotype with the Task and Time of Day
The rises and dips in your circadian rhythm trigger changes in your mental alertness, emotional states and behaviors throughout the day. In addition to knowing your chronotype, you also need to sort your work into three types of categories: (1) analytic work that requires heads-down focus, (2) insight work that is open to possibilities, and (3) administrative work that is more routine.
You will produce the best results with the most ease if you do cognitively demanding tasks when you are at your peak (mornings for most people) and creative tasks when your mood boosts back up (early evening for most people). Save your busy work for when you are least productive, which is usually after lunch in the early afternoon, for most people.
This article provides general information only. Do not consider it as specific advice for any individual case or situation.
Dyan Williams is a solo lawyer who practices U.S. Immigration Law and Legal Ethics. She is also a productivity coach for lawyers, consultants and other professionals who seek to reduce overwhelm and make time for what truly matters. She is the author of The Incrementalist: A Simple Productivity System to Create Big Results in Small Steps, an e-book at http://leanpub.com/incrementalist.
