In his book “Creativity,” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi advises readers who want to find flow to take charge of their own schedules.
It is also possible the schedule you are following is not the best for your purposes. The best time for using your creative energies could be early in the morning or late at night. Can you carve out some time for yourself when your energy is most efficient? Can you fit sleep to your purpose, instead of the other way around?
The times when most people eat may not be the best for you. You might get hungry earlier than lunchtime and lose concentration because you feel jittery; or to perform at the top of your potential it may be best to skip lunch and have a midafternoon snack instead. There are probably best times to shop, to visit, to work, to relax for each one of us; the more we do things at the most suitable times, the more creative energy we can free up.
Most of us have never had the chance to discover which parts of the day or night are most suited to our rhythms. To regain this knowledge we have to pay attention to how well the schedule we follow fits our inner states—when we feel best eating, sleeping, working, and so forth. Once we have identified the ideal patterns, we can begin the task of changing things around so that we can do things when it is most suitable…Time is more flexible than most of us think.
Another advantage to flex scheduling: It lets you get away from the nonstop communication flow that occurs during “mainstream” hours. It’s a lot easier to get things done when you’re not constantly being pinged by others.
Ray Morgan
on 08 Oct 07I totally agree with this. I have always felt this way. I am very much not a morning person, and I get quite a lot of slack for it. I think most morning people don’t like night people do to the fact we are slow in the morning. But give me a task to do at night, and I will go at! Its when my wheels turn.
Dale Cruse
on 08 Oct 07His book on Flow has been transformative in my life. I have to check out this new one now!
Danny de Wit
on 08 Oct 07Nice one Matt!
This is a recurring issue in my life.
Having the freedom to experiment at will, which f.i. these days includes diner at around 11:00 AM (yes really, also the only meal in my day), I still can’t find an optimal schedule that allows for longer stretches of flow.
Guess I’ll keep trying. ;)
How is the rest of the book? Are there approaches to try?
Brad Maier
on 08 Oct 07From a corporate standpoint… 9 to 5 is the one convention that should completely disappear. Does anyone even truly work 9 to 5 anymore other than people who are paid by the hour?
Almost nothing we do in life is as uniform and rigid as the 9-5 work week. College class schedules have us working different lengths of time on different days. We have different commitments on different nights of the week. Even our energy levels ebb and flow through out the day and week. The only part about our schedules that’s not in flux is when we go to work.
Taking this into account, we have to ask ourselves why we continue to shove our changing schedules into the rigid 9 to 5 framework every week. Even further, why are companies willing to use any metric possible to improve employee performance yet continue to refuse to look at the work week just because that’s the way it has always been?
**Of note, Best Buy’s new policies (work is only judged on the deliverables not on the hours worked) is probably the most progressive move from a major corporation so far.
Chad Burt
on 08 Oct 07Just to play devil’s advocate.
As software developers we constantly remind managers of the mythical man month, the difficulty in meeting deadlines and setting milestones, agile methodologies, etc. In the face of such difficulty in measuring productivity what other options do managers have?
For truly self motivated people (probably the majority of readers here), flexible hours makes sense. But how many truly motivated individuals make up most organizations?
Matt J.
on 08 Oct 07I apologize if this is a troll, but:
“Most of us have never had the chance to discover which parts of the day or night are most suited to our rhythms.”
Yes, and if you are the parent of toddlers, you aren’t going to anytime soon. I’m afraid this advice is largely irrelevant to non-bachelors.
Ghetto Gates
on 08 Oct 07THIS IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF BLOG POSTS AND INSPIRATION THE TECH COMMUNITY NEEDS MORE OF. 1000s THANK YOUs.
Ryan
on 09 Oct 07I get a ton more done while everyone else is sleeping. It’s relaxing. But it’s also not feasible since I have to be at work at 7:30—staying up until 2-3:00 am makes for a drag the next day, which cascades into the next night, and so on. Blah.
dilip
on 09 Oct 07my comments are no different from good article. I would like to point you to this audio http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail188.html
Yossef
on 10 Oct 07Another devil’s advocate stance:
What about team communication? If every member is off in their own world, doing things on their own schedule, how do you contact others for necessary information? For opinions? To bounce ideas off of? For consensus?
It’s a lot easier to get things done if you’re not being interrupted by others, but it’s also easier to: a) get stuck and not do anything because you can’t reach colleagues, or b) go off on the wrong path for too long because nobody could reach you.
Jason
on 10 Oct 07I wholeheartedly agree with Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas. I’m a night person and can get a lot of work done during various godforsaken hours. My wife, on the other hand, is a morning person and is most efficient between the hours of 6am and noon.
That being said, as folks who are about to become parents, Csikszentmihalyi’s otherwise sound ideas are about to become fairly irrelevant for us. Soon, it’s not going to be our rhythms that dominate our days but the little bean’s.
Notice I said “fairly irrelevant.” I still think it’ll be important to apply some of his ideas to our lives, but they’ll necessarily be fairly low on the totem pole—at least for the next 18 years or so. :)
Paul
on 14 Oct 07I find the opposite of the night person above (Ray) – I am a morning person and have spend decades fending off people who want to see me out late at night. NO! Leave me alone.
I’m also more productive from the time I wake up until about lunch time. It’s easy to spend those hours doing easy, fun things like following blogs and monitoring emails, but that is mostly a waste of the time on things I can do when I’m less inspired later in the day.
Also, I find that if I give all those “best hours” to my job, it leaves me with little high-value time to invest in projects of my own that I find meaningful… so I try to carve out morning hours away from my job sometimes as well.
This discussion is closed.