Thanks to time management expert Kate Christie, I’m unlocking my productivity crimes one by one. And I’m never looking back!
I think it was the American author Elizabeth Gilbert who said it best.
Promoting her book Big Magic she urged us to make the most creative time of our day sacrosanct.
Something like ‘You owe yourself that time’ was how she put it.
Like most everybody else, my plate is pretty full right now.
I work and I have two young kids.
I’d do practically anything to find a bit more space in my day.
As I wrote earlier this year, meditation has really helped.
More recently I’ve discovered something I’d like to call magic hour.
Caveat: If you are not a morning person turn the times upside down so this resonates.
For example, replace my 5:30am (don’t fall over) with your 11pm and see how that feels.
Magic time is just one hour of my day. Sixty whole minutes between 5:30am and 6:30am where the house is blissfully quiet, and I work completely uninterrupted.
Lucky for me, it’s also the time of day when my brain works best. A sworn early bird my ideal working day would fit between 5am – 1pm so I could write off the afternoon by going for a swim.
Well, you can dream, right?
Time management expert Kate Christie says being aware of your most productive points in the day is essential.
In her SMART time management course, she not only helps you figure out when this productive (magic) time is for you, she’ll also work out the best tasks to do with it.
Kate says you should prioritise and batch in your best work (your hardest, most strategic and revenue generating tasks) for when you are at your best.
Likewise, use your low energy periods of the day for your process drive work or lower value tasks. She says if we don’t get the time of day right for our most important or creative tasks, they’ll just end up taking longer or will require our rework.
Ain’t nobody got time for that!
My magic hour is spent writing, fleshing out concepts and lining up social media – the parts of my job that requires my best brain and clearest thinking.
Admin tasks and email come later in the day and then every couple of hours till COB. Meetings, and other interruptions you can’t always plan for, get slotted in around the sides.
It works.
Finding my magic hour has made me more efficient.
And because magic hour means I’ve ticked off the biggest items of the day by 10am – I’m also calmer.
Not only is there distinctly less time spent maniacally toggling between calendar and email – there are also bigger chunks of un-interrupted work throughout the day.
Yep, magic hour for the win.