Finding your peak working hours

Your peak hours are the times of the day when you are most creative and focused.  During these hours, you get more work done compared to the rest of the day.  Many writers recognize their own need to work during these hours, implementing a schedule that works around them.

I recently read an article on James Bond author Ian Fleming, with the following picturesque description of his writing schedule:

“Rising early for a swim in the aquamarine waters in the cove below his idyllic Jamaican retreat, Goldeneye, Fleming tapped away at his Remington portable typewriter with six fingers for three hours in the morning and an hour in the afternoon — 2,000 words a day, a completed novel in two months…”

Source: “Remembering Fleming, Ian Fleming” by John F. Burns, from The New York Times

Victorian Novelist Anthony Trollope had a more rigorous writing schedule of “250 words per quarter of an hour between 5:30 and 8:30 in the morning” (source here).  Other notable morning writers were Tolstoy ad Rousseau.  Sylvia Plath, who was a mother, would write from 4:00 to 8:00 in the morning – before her children would wake up.  Dostoevsky, on the other hand, wrote from around 11:00 in the evening to 6:00 the following morning (source here, and here).

As for me, I prefer starting my work at 3:00 am, and I stop at around 3 to 5 hours later.  Getting up early allows me to get more done in less time.

There could be several reasons why this is so.  In the early morning, the air is still cool and I avoid the sticky, uncomfortable tropical noon temperature.  Also, during this time, both the pets and the people in my house are still asleep, giving me less distractions to deal with. If I don’t get up early enough to work during my peak hours, it’s likely that I’ll have to spend the entire day working on something that would’ve taken only 3 hours to do if I woke up on time.

This brings me to the next point - you must guard your peak hours with your life.  This means closing instant messaging programs, shutting the door at your office, and turning off the ringer of your phone.  Even “minor” work tasks should be prohibited, such as checking email, going through your feed reader,  sending out invoices, or playing around with Facebook.  This is your time to create, and this time is precious.

21 October 2008

Posted in Creative Work.