Peanut Buttering

Which hours are you giving?

In a typical day you have about 16 waking hours to do with as you please. But not each of those hours is created equal!

If you were to spend one hour each day learning a language, do you think you'd learn faster by spending an hour in the morning, or an hour in the evening? It probably depends on how much of a morning or night person you are, but I bet you have a strong feeling toward one or the other.

And if you said an hour in the morning—is that before or after your coffee? If you said an hour in the evening—is it the first hour immediately after you get off work, or the last hour of the day immediately before you fall asleep? It's probably even quite different if you pick the same hour of the day on a Monday vs. on a Friday.

The quality of an hour can vary a lot. For me personally, I find that the quality of my energy and focus wanes over the course of a day to the extent that I am making intensive use of my brain. So on a workday, I tend to peak in the morning and become progressively more braindead until the end of the day when I am zapped.

From this perspective, I find it useful to ask: which of your hours are you giving to different things in your life? I work about 40 hours per week, but it feels different to realize that I'm giving 40 of my best hours per week to work, and only leaving lower quality hours for everything else.

You have some control over what you give your best hours to. In the extreme, I could shift my waking schedule and wake up at 2am so that I spend the first (and best) eight hours of the day intensely focusing on personal endeavors, then spend eight hours phoning it in, half-asleep, at work. There might be consequences for doing so, but I have the option!

Maybe you work a socially draining job and find that your quality time with family tends to be after work, when your battery is empty and you just want to be alone. Could you find a way to spend time with your family before work instead?

Who deserves your best hours?