As human beings we have a finite capacity to get things done. This is limited by time, attention span, motivation, priorities, and a whole heap of less nagging, but equally as disruptive things. Our limited capacity varies through the day – the graph below is utterly fictitious from a numerical point of view, but the trend reflect my own capacity on an average day:
Very productive in the mornings and evenings, with a small window of usefulness mid-afternoon. Usually after some chocolate. This is a nice to know until you overlay the timing of work and tasks arriving for me to do:
Still looks roughly right until you think carefully – from about midday until 9pm my work load is in excess of my capacity. ie. I just don’t have the time to handle it all and end up sulking, complaining to people at the water cooler, and searching Monster.com. Worst of all, from 7pm until midday I am revved up and ready to go, but there is little going on so am mainly chatting, disrupting others, and reading productivity blogs.
The way to stop this bored-panic seasaw is to first of all spot it is going on, and seocnd of all, see if you are able to shift the timing of work.
All those e-mails that come in at 8pm causing that spike of green pain above, I ignore and look at/action at 7am then next morning. Rather than my wait for my boss to come and find me at lunchtime with his latest problems, I go and see him around 10am and get them out them. The effect? Shifting the last peak of the day into the next, and pulling the first one forward. Graphically:
The same amount of work, but moved to fit with when I can get it done. Genius. And you know what the bonus is? That peak in the evening - completely surplus capacity. I can treat this as overflow, new projects, or heaven-forbid – relaxing…
So your action points are:
- Plot a graph of a ‘normal’ day or week of capacity for yourself. How productive do you feel at different times? When are you always blocked out and can get nothing done? When do you feel invincible?
- Plot how your workload falls during this period.
- Work out how you can shift bits of work into times you have capacity.
