Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 48 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: The Hour of Power
— From The Art Of Less Doing: One Entrepreneur’s Formula for a Beautiful Life by Ari Meisel (read 2 chapters for free)
Ari Meisel, is an entrepreneur, author, CEO, real estate developer, green building consultant, and productivity expert according to Wikipedia. But he is much more than that: he is a driven, solution-finder, and goal-achieving entrepreneur extraordinaire who turned his life and his health around, and overcame the insurmountable (here’s his TED Talk). He managed to cure himself from Crohn’s disease—which is deemed incurable—and he turned the lessons he learned, especially in areas of mindset and productivity, into a replicable process that anyone can follow. When he was very sick, there were days in which he could not work for more than one hour, so he had to find a way to get things done in an ultra efficient way.
In The Art of Less Doing, he talks about the hour of power: “every day, each one of us has roughly a ninety-minute period of peak productivity. This peak period is when you are able to produce your best work, but it is also the time frame within which you can most easily get into a work mode. […] If you identify that time, respect it and use it effectively to focus, you should be able to be two hundred times more effective than during any other time of the day.”
The hour of power is different for each one of us. For some may be at 4 am and for others 4 pm; or it may come at 10 am or 8 pm. Regardless of when your hour of power is, schedule it and keep it distraction-free so that you can fully immerse in it and achieve flow. (Flow: definition, TED Talk.)
But what about when it’s not your peak time?
“Just as we all have an hour of power in our days, we also all have a brain-dead part of the day.” Meisel quotes David Allen, the author of the famous productivity book Getting Things Done who has a “brain-dead” list of activities that you can accomplish when you’ve exhausted your mental capacity to function at a high level.” Chores that don’t require too much brainpower, such as doing laundry, folding clothes washing dishes, and a myriad of other personal and professional things can be achieved even when we’re not at our best. The important thing is to acknowledge that none of us are on all the time, but that we can still make the most out of every period of time, whether it’s a peak or a valley.
“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.” – Benjamin Franklin
ACTION
TODAY: Look at the way in which you work today and how your mind and body feel: are you easily distracted or are you in flow? This is a great start for finding out when your hour of power is.
FUTURE: Continue to monitor your mind and body at regular intervals throughout a week. This will help you further pinpoint your hour of power as well as your “brain-dead” times. Schedule your hour of power accordingly and honor it fully. You’ll be glad you did once you start seeing the results of your newly added productivity streaks.
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