“Protect your morning burst. That’s what psychiatrist Ned Hallowell, M.D., calls the rush of energy and focus most of us have in the early part of the day, and he says we should be ruthless about shielding it from interruptions.” Excerpt from Men’s Health.
Do you have a morning burst? When polled, most people seem to say that they do. I’ve felt this personally. It seems like in the morning without all the distractions and commotion, I can get stuff done. And I mean serious stuff. My most productive hours are before most other programmers even enter the office. I know well, the secret of the morning burst. How can you protect it?
Get in before core hours start! If you work the same type of programmers I do, a lot of them probably get to the office right at the start of core hours or a half hour after that. That’s hours without an interruption if you come in a bit earlier than most. That’s hours of heads down programming where you can really get into the zone and type with fury.
Block out the time with a meeting. If your company uses Outlook or any other calendar type program, try scheduling a meeting in the morning so no one will try to interrupt. This may not always work, but it’s a good first line of defense against those who would try to schedule into a meeting while you’re able to get in the zone.
Let your computer work with you. Don’t let it distract you. Don’t open your browser. Don’t open your email. These are all distractions that will be available later in the day, when you’re not as productive anyway. Not that I condone browsing youtube all day, keeping up on your facebook, and sending pointless emails. I’m just saying, “Don’t distract yourself when you’re at the top of your game.” The morning RSS feed will still be available as the lunch break RSS feed. Check out this article on Lifehacker about eliminating distractions on your computer.
If you don’t feel you have a morning burst, and you’ve given it an earnest try, then perhaps it’s time to use heatmapping to find what hours you need to protect. Regardless, protect it at all costs. As a programmer, you’ve probably realized that an hour in the zone is roughly equivalent to two or even three hours outside of it. When you can train yourself to get into the zone, you have to fight to protect it. If you have any other useful tips for me and others, please leave a comment!
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I've always been a morning person. However — when I worked in big corporate America — I found that when I got in at 7am & wanted to hit the ground running, I was surrounded by a bunch of slackers (seriously). Here's what I mean:
I'd get at 7am & start working. At 715am, Eric would come by, coffee mug in hand, prop his elbow on my cube door wall, and trap me in my cube. "So, how's it goin'? You hear about that new guy that started in the FooBar group? He sounds like a real piece of work." Now the guy's blocking my door, no one is around to rescue me (just a few people in at that time), and my concentration's been broken. Fuck.
A lot of the people who get in early — IN MY EXPERIENCE — want to "be present" at 7am, so they can leave at 4pm. They can fuck around until 9am when everyone else is in & buzzing around. So from 7-9am, they read the paper, drink their coffee, watch YouTube, read Yahoo news, email Aunt Edna, etc…
This was maddening to me. So my life shifted. Now I hit the afterburner in late afternoon, and from about 4-8pm I'm unstoppable. Fortunately most people are in meetings at this time, or they're winding down, anxiously trying to clear out & get ahead of traffic, etc… so they're not so chatty.
These days I'm a consultant anyway, so it doesn't really matter, but I'll never really get over the frustration of having my productive morning time robbed by slackers. Seriously.
P.S. I've found that in small shops, early birds get in, kick ass & aren't disturbed. It's only the slackers who hide in big companies that can pull this off.
That sucks. Where I work people generally come in early to get work done. Perhaps the best way to deal with that is to be forward in telling someone to leave you alone in the morning. I'm usually also too nice to tell someone to leave me alone, but sometimes you just have to keep reminding someone that you're busy and do not have time to listen to their rant.
How did you get yourself transitioned to the afternoon/evening?
I find it incredible that anybody can get a "morning burst." I'm absolutely dead good-for-nothing before about 2 PM — unless I drink 20 oz of Mountain Dew by 9:30, but that's making me fat. IF I get a 'burst," it happens sometime between 6 PM and midnight. One reason seems to be that there are to many other people around during the day; not that they're doing anything particularly distracting, but just their mere presence, mere existence, seems to drain my productivity. Soon as they leave, magic ramp-up.
Maybe you're going to bed too late or rely too much on caffeine! I used wake up a bit groggy and slow until I actually gave up coffee for a while. It didn't work at first, it took a few weeks, but after that I was generally more alert after cutting my dependence.
But hey, if you find your time is the evening, protect it just the same.
Undesktop for the win. Chad, I keep coming back here for great advice, and you have yet to disappoint me. I have also found that showing up to work with goals is key to my morning-focus. Otherwise, having a way to quickly assess work that can be done in the morning is good. But this self-training part of this is… in order to be able to quickly assess your situation… you need to have left your workspace in a clean condition the day before. This means… productive end-of-day leads to productive start-of-day.
I started biking to work about 3 weeks ago. At first I got in and was kinda beat (I'm super out of shape). But now I actually get in and feel amazing and I've actually seen an upturn in my usual morning burst. So I think some physical activity can actually affect ones burst.
I bike one day of the week as well and I agree, it’s exhilarating. Ange thinks I’m crazy for wanting to do it more often.