Episode 133: Optimize Your Productivity: Planning With Your Circadian Rhythms

We've all experienced it: that dreaded energy slump when you're trying to get something done. It's not just related to the burger and fries you had for lunch. It's natural to have energy peaks and valleys during the day. Planning your day to take advantage of your circadian rhythm can give your productivity an immediate boost. Learn how in this episode, part 3 in the series Your Day->Your Life.

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The information contained and documents referenced in the podcast “Your Priority Centered Life” are for entertainment, educational and informational purposes only, and are not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, professional medical or health treatment, diagnosis, or advice. We strongly encourage listeners to consult with medical providers or qualified mental health providers with issues and questions regarding any physical and/or mental health symptoms or concerns that they may have. Furthermore, the opinions and views expressed by podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates are not necessarily those of the podcast host. Dr. Alise Murray’s opinions and views are expressed in her individual capacity and are not to be construed as those of any of her podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates.

Transcript

(Transcript is auto-generated and may contain minor errors.) 

Hi. Today we are talking about using your circadian rhythms to help you to be able to plan a great day. So let me ask you, are you a morning person or are you an evening person?  I did have one person where I asked her this question and she just acted perplexed, a colleague, and she said, well, it just depends on what I have going on at the time. But the research would say that there is a genetic basis to this.  

It's important to be able to know when you have peaks and dips in your energy, because we all have them. When you get good refreshing sleep, then you're going to have less of a pronounced dip, but you'll still probably have a little bit of a difference there.

So. Some things to do to try to figure this out. First of all, know how much sleep you really need and be honest with yourself if you're not sure, because honestly, for many of us, we're just so accustomed to hitting snooze over and over on the alarm clock, we're not quite sure how much sleep we need. And sometimes our sleep can just really bounce back and forth between the workday and the weekend. If you are able to take several days  and just go to bed when you feel tired, when you feel like, you know, your eyelids are starting to feel heavy, you're starting to feel yourself nod off a little bit, then you go to bed. When you wake up, you're waking up without an alarm, and then just making a little note in your calendar about an hour and a half after you wake up of how much energy you have. That will give you an idea. You can get an average of what helps you to feel your best.

Once you know how much sleep you need to feel your best, then you can start to take a look at when your high and low energy times are likely to be. Some ways to get this information are, I've mentioned the RISE app before. This can be a really useful way of estimating it because,  it's an app on your phone. You can hook it up with a fitness tracker if you choose, and it will give you valuable information about how much sleep you probably need. It'll tell you your estimated schedule for the day of high and low energy times, and you'll also get notifications if you choose.

Another thing that can be helpful is to take the MEQ, The Morningness Eveningness Questionnaire, and I will provide a link in the show notes to that. 
  It asks you some questions about when you believe you would have higher and lower energy. And then it will tell you whether you are a morning person or an evening person. It won't tell you what your peaks and valleys are in terms of your energy specifically, but it will give you some helpful information about when you should be winding down to get ready for bed, when would be good for you to wake up. And if you have seasonal depression, for example, it can give you some information about  what might help you to use light therapy most effectively. 
So that can be useful too. 

If you don't want to do either one of those options, the MEQ or the Rise app, you can just grab a notebook and you can log this information yourself. You can just  do a rating of how much energy you have at that particular time. So eight o'clock, nine o'clock, 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, and so forth. You can just give yourself a rating of one to five, five being like, I am just raring to go. I've got lots of energy, feel great. One being like, I am barely staying awake. You can rate your energy and then you can start to get an idea.

After a few days, you can start to see, "oh, okay, the, these are probably the times when I have more and less energy". Once you know that, once you have an idea of your circadian rhythms and how much sleep you need, then of course you want to try to do whatever you can to get enough sleep so that you don't have such a dip in your energy. And of course, all the other benefits of getting enough sleep. 

Again, we've talked about this before. It's super duper important and take it from somebody who, when I was a student, got absolutely atrocious sleep. I know how awful it can be when you don't get good sleep and how much better it can be when you do get good sleep. So don't take that for granted. If you do have trouble with your sleep,  consider seeing a healthcare professional. 

Assuming you've got that sleep schedule in place, then you want to look at your high energy times and look at what you have to do each day and consider scheduling your high priority tasks at your high energy times, particularly the ones that require more mental energy. So when we think about your executive functions, the higher functions of your brain, we're talking about planning, we're talking about getting started with things, being able to take a step back and look at how things are going and monitor, like "maybe I need to change things up a little bit." Being able to control your impulses.  If you don't have enough energy, then your brain is going to struggle with this a lot more. So planning your day, you want to do that at a time when you've got a decent amount of energy.  Or if you know that there are certain conversations that you're going to have to have that are going to really require you to be able to listen carefully and to be able to respond appropriately... Maybe challenging customers, challenging meetings...Then these again would be  good tasks to schedule when you have more energy. So thinking about your high priority, high energy tasks and scheduling those at your higher energy times.

Now certain tasks  are not going to require as much energy. Things that are very, very familiar to you, where you can do it without a whole lot of thought. Or maybe these are physical tasks. A lower energy physical task might be folding laundry, you know, something like that. A lot of times these are just routines. Those might be good things to do during your lower energy times.  

You're not going to usually have complete freedom. You're going to have other people's needs and preferences coming into play. Sometimes you might want to talk to your manager or talk to your family about how you might be able to move some things around so that you can line them up with when you have more energy. And a lot of times if this other person really wants you to be at your best, they will be supportive. They'll figure out a way to make it happen.

 You might also think about with some of your tasks, maybe you can move things around a little bit so that you're not continually needing to try to do something when it might just take you longer to do because you don't have as much energy. When I was in graduate school, I cooked for myself basically once a week, and I enjoy cooking. I even made my own bread when I was in grad school because I enjoyed baking too. So I would just think about what I wanted to make for the week. I would make up a big batch of soup or  make a casserole. I'd make a couple of things that I could eat for several days during the week and just heat up. 
And it was easy so that that way I didn't have to come home from a long day of school and work and then think about "what am I gonna make for dinner?" And just feeling like I have no energy to try to figure this out, let alone cook it. So that was great and I enjoyed the routine. I did my cooking and baking on Sundays when I could also listen to my favorite shows.  So it was something that I actually looked forward to, made a big, big difference. So you might think about, is there a way that I can move some of these tasks around so that I can take better advantage of my higher energy times?

So with that in mind. I hope that when you are planning your day, you can identify some of those tasks,  think about the things that keep coming up and what requires more or less of your energy. Think about how you can line up your energy with your higher priority tasks. I'll see you next time.