Hi – I had a rather productive week this week after my ups and downs of the week before.

I really powered through creating a new webinar and you should see me talking about the ideas more in the next few weeks.

One thing that worked well for me this week was being smarter about when and where I try to do my work.

Over the years I've noticed I have two times I'm most productive. First thing in the morning and late at night.

Now I'm not an early riser, so timewise “first thing in the morning” for me is late morning for most. But the point is that usually you're at your freshest about an hour or so after you first get up.

That's prime time for doing hard thinking work.

Instead, we usually burn our brain energy reading emails and checking social media. 

So this week I was strict with myself, avoided the emails/social early on and it paid off. I found that doing planning and analytical type activities first thing in the morning worked particularly well.

By the middle of the day my brain tends to be a bit worn out so I did things that weren't so cognitively taxing. Reading and replying to email, doing some research for data I needed for my webinar, general reading.

In the afternoons I found going for a walk, grabbing a coffee or spending some time chatting to Kathy was a great use of my time.

Then, as usual, I got a burst of energy in the late evenings. I found that sitting quietly by myself from about 8pm onwards I could make great progress on things that needed a bit of creativity: writing my content emails for example, or working on my webinar presentation.

Location made a big difference too.

I don't know about you, but sitting at my desk just doesn't work well for me when I'm trying to be creative.

By the way, I don't mean creative in the Michaelangelo sense. I just mean thinking up ideas for slides or coming up with the content for an article. The kind of thing most of us need to do on a regular basis and that's actually pretty important. The better our presentations, articles, videos, and emails, the more impact we make.

Creating content usually has two phases: coming up with the ideas and structuring them, and then getting them down in electronic ink.

Obviously, you have to do the latter on a computer. But for the former I find I make much faster progress with better quality outputs if I go and sit somewhere quiet. Usually either in our conservatory or I take myself off to a coffee shop and sit wearing headphones. 

Physically I find it better for creativity to sit relaxed in a comfy seat using pen and paper (or iPad and pencil) than being sat upright at a desk. Even when I had a “proper” job I would forever be popping out of the office to get work done :)

What works for you might be completely different to what works for me, of course. The important thing is to find out your own preferences and then use them to your advantage. 

When was the last time you consciously thought about your work environment and about changing it to optimise your productivity?

Maybe a background task for the weekend?