When

Timing plays a significant role in our decisions, mood, work and everyday life.

Keeping our life-changing decisions and tasks to parts of our days where we’re not 100% usually results in bad decisions and sloppy work.

Understanding when we perform best can help us lead a happier and more productive life.

Let’s start by understanding:

Why Timing Matters

Research suggests that our waking hours can be divided into 3 parts:

1. Peak: When we’re feeling happy, energetic, and can easily focus on complex tasks at hand
2. Trough: When we’re drained from our work and running low on motivation, focus, and joyfulness
3. Rebound: When we’re feeling energetic and motivated to focus on our work again. Usually, after a rest during our Trough period

And these periods are different for each people.

If you regularly wake up early and find yourself energetic to tackle the day ahead of you, i.e., you’re a morning lark, then your day looks something like this:

• Peak → Early morning to noon
• Trough → Afternoon to early evening
• Rebound → Evening to an early night

Similarly, if you work on the opposite schedule and sleep and wake up later than the general society, i.e., a night owl, it looks like this:

• Peak → Night to early morning
• Trough → Morning to late afternoon
• Rebound → Afternoon to early evening

The key is to organise your schedule so that you can work on challenging and analytical tasks during your Peak and Trough periods.

And leave the creative and open-minded tasks to your Trough periods.