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I love jet lag.
I'm writing this at 4.30 in the morning; I've already been up and hour and a half. The house has a deep quiet like no other time of day. The silence and darkness are empty in a way you rarely seen except in the countryside. I feel myself luxuriating in the vast expanse of morning that lies before me. A sunrise in a few hours, perhaps a walk to appreciate it. Writing, and more writing. Maybe a break to read, or think about reorganizing the kitchen. I’m not sure why evenings don’t offer this same luxury. Weekday evenings are hopeless of course; you are battered down by the days events and willing to hide in the TV set or a book with a glass of wine. Weekend evenings seem stuffed full of people to see and fete. But mornings….
When I was young I would have never imagined I would become a morning person. I used to be dragged kicking and screaming from bed to the school bus, on weekends noon was the earliest I would emerge. But now I’ve come to appreciate the morning. Both Lou Rosenfeld and Jeff Veen frightened me when they said they got up at 5 a.m. each morning to write, but now that sounds lovely. Oddly coding doesn’t strike me as an early morning activity. I have no desire to leap up one morning and say, learn SQL. Late night, as you stave off sleepies with caffeine and kiss goodbye to any alertness in morning meetings, that seems the time to daringly try a new line of JavaScript.
My tragedy is afternoons are quite useless for me. I try to stuff all my meetings into the afternoon; not a spark of the creative instinct inhabits my body from lunch to 4 p.m. I’m alert, conscious (except the 3 p.m. sleepies) but uncreative. Personally I would love a European work style, with a long lunch to be followed by working a bit later. 9 to 5 could not be more arbitrary.
It occurs to me that if we all attend to and map our body’s creative and productive cycles, we can then schedule our daily events to coincide to the time in which we are best suited to accomplish them. Useless from 11-1? Eat and nap! Useless from 2-3? Work out! Creative spark at 7 each night? Why not have an early light dinner and work after? Or a late one at 9, if you think you can catch a second wave late at night. Most articulate at 10 am? Schedule meetings for then. Inarticulate at 9? (as I am—the fingers are awake, but the mouth seems to lag behind about two hours.) Avoid meetings like the plague, or plan to spend a lot of time nodding sagely. To be self-aware is to have an opportunity to be effective. Now if I can just figure out how to convince corporate America that I need a two hour nap each afternoon….
I'm the same: my best work is done from 8am to 12am, after that I only do things that don't require too much creativity...
Ayurveda has been telling all this for ages. See, e.g., http://health.indiamart.com/ayurveda/dinacharya.html
There is time for each of the activities, as well as there's place (that is Vastu, or Vedic architecture). Amazing stuff.
I just want to chime in as another former night owl (musician), current morning person (writer/developer). Just about everything you mention is right on the money for me, including the coding bit and the afternoon trough. I'm usually working by 4:30 or 5:00 every morning. By the time phone calls start coming in at 9:00 or so, I've accomplished a ton. Then there's much less anxiety about losing time to phone interruptions or meetings during the normal work day. Discovering my own little cycle has been a bonanza for me.
I seem to work more creatively last thing at night, when the whole day is behind me. But I'm not a morning person - especially when I've been up all night being creative...
OH MY GOSH...Can I just tell you that my one week in Hong Kong took me more than one week of recovery. Jeff and I would be up at around 3:30am and then sort of take it easy but we'd just go ahead and get to work by 6:15am. Gosh that first week was definite hell, but also kind of nice because of the stillness of the morning. Also I agree on the different hours of the day having special needs ;)
Welcome back!
OH MY GOSH...Can I just tell you that my one week in Hong Kong took me more than one week of recovery. Jeff and I would be up at around 3:30am and then sort of take it easy but we'd just go ahead and get to work by 6:15am. Gosh that first week was definite hell, but also kind of nice because of the stillness of the morning. Also I agree on the different hours of the day having special needs ;)
Welcome back!
I had a job once where, because I was sharing childcare duties with my wife, I needed to be home by 1pm.
So, I would work, in the office, from 3am until about 8:30am without interruption. (My normal 40 minute commute was reduced to 13 minutes.) Then from 8:30 until noon, I'd pack in meetings.
It was one of the most productive times in my life. You can get a boatload of work done between 3 and 8.
Jared
=v= Most time management gurus suggest getting attentive work done in the morning, and meetings and such in the afternoons. As for corporate approval of afternoon naps, may I suggest a movement known as Critical Nap?