Month: February 2021

The last few weeks didn’t offer any groundbreaking ideas, but I feel as though I now have some evidence on prior assumptions. Tracking my energy levels throughout the day showed me my biological prime time. There were a few more takeaways than just the time of day I’m at my best, particularly around the impact of caffeine and movement.

My BPT

The results of my tracking weren’t anything surprising. I’d be shocked to learn the energy fluctuations I go through were anything but common for those working a standard day job.

For a long time I’ve not been a great morning person, but I was glad to see that not all mornings are terrible. Days in which I got into bed at a standard time, around 11:30 PM, and was able to wake up naturally, I was feeling great. Unfortunately, those days became more and more rare as I began to make bad evening decisions as the trial went on.

At around 2 PM I hit my first peak, which makes some sense as it is after my typical lunch break. The afternoon decline hit pretty hard until about 5 PM. I may have been a bit early on declaring my post-work crash a thing of the past in my first post.

After 5 PM, I steadily climb back up until 7 PM, take an energy dip after dinner, and hit one last peak at 9 PM. Finally, I slowly decline until it’s time for bed.

Caffeine’s Back on the Menu

With a few weeks worth of data on my energy without any caffeine, I wanted to see what caffeine did over the last few days of the trial.

The first day back on coffee was wild. That Monday felt like it was Friday evening the whole time. I was riding an all time energy high, even more than the previous time I had coffee early in the trial.

While not experiencing a harsh crash, I did suffer from an inability to sleep. At midnight, I jotted down a 9/10 for my energy.

This is something I want to explore more with caffeine and alcohol back in regular consumption. What do my energy levels look like throughout the day when not restricting myself?

Better Alternative

Something I knew intuitively, but tracking provided me a more confident stance, is the impact movement has on energy.

Going for a walk or run can have huge returns on energy. It may seem counter intuitive. Shouldn’t exercise make you tired?

I really noticed it this week when I got back in my morning stretch routine again, as it took a bit of a hit when I no longer had my coffee brewing as a linked habit to do it. Right around 9 AM I recorded a 3/10 for my energy. I started my coffee and did my stretches. Before taking a sip of my fresh cup, I felt like I was already at a 6.

The same can be said for running, typically done after work. Some friends and I started running together a few times a week. Having others to pull me into getting out the door right around 5 has me feeling far better the entire evening.

What’s Next

The inspiration for this trial was Chris Bailey’s book The Productivity Project. The book has been the catalyst for my efforts to be more effective this year.

When I worked in an office, I had two monitors to work on. With working from home for some time, I’ve only worked from a single laptop screen. I’m curious to see what adding a second monitor does for my work habits. Will I begin to fall down traps of false “multitasking?” Will I find the windows I need faster? Stay tuned to find out!

Last week, I explored the idea of time as a resource, but the true goal of this trial is the best way to manage energy. Over the past few weeks, continuous questions arise in my head, such as how to spend it? When to spend it? How to get it back? With the observations I’ve made thus far, I feel a bit more familiar with energy as a concept.

Spending Energy

Just about every task we perform will cost energy in some way.

From constructing a building to walking to the fridge, actions take energy to complete. The full scope of the biological process by which our bodies generate and consume energy is well beyond the scope of this post. Ultimately, we spend energy on everything we do.

It may seem that only physical tasks like pushing or pulling things around need energy, but it’s far from the case. Chess players are reported to burn thousands of calories, upwards of 6,000, during a tournament. The high stress of the event causes various physiological symptoms from breath rate, heart rate, and muscle contractions that add up throughout the competition.

While many of us aren’t battling master strategists on the daily, I would guess that many have felt exhausted after a day of office or administration work, even if most or all of it was spent relatively calm and stationary.

Even leisure activities can be energy drains. As someone who probably plays too much Destiny 2, I’ve spent nights in group activities called “raids” that have left me exhausted. The raids consist of a number of challenging encounters, many of which have multiple elements to keep track of and manage throughout. All the while playing the first person shooter and keeping yourself from dying.

Getting It Back

If we’re burning energy all day, even on leisure activities, how do we get it back? Without any repercussions of course.

In measuring my energy throughout the day, I’ve found three things to provide me with energy: food, sleep, and disconnecting.

Food and sleep are somewhat straight forward; they are needed in the biological processes that keep our bodies functioning. Food, specifically, is the basis of energy creation.

These two are foundational to having energy throughout the day. To have a good amount of energy throughout the day, regardless of the tasks ahead, a good diet and sleep schedule are critical.

Caffeine, while effective in providing that kick of energy, isn’t always the best solution. The brief explanation is that caffeine works by mimicking a chemical our brain uses to convey tiredness, adenosine, and blocking the receptor for that chemical. This feels great because our brain no longer thinks it’s tired, but that adenosine is still there. Once the caffeine wears off, all that adenosine is ready to remind us how tired we really are.

The source of this trial, The Productivity Project, discusses using caffeine strategically. By getting to know your body’s tolerance and rate of metabolizing, how long it’s in the body, a cup of coffee can be the “pick me up” at the right time while also causing a crash as close to bedtime as possible.

Disconnecting for Recovery

Disconnecting is the thing I knew intuitively but didn’t really recognize until tracking my energy. My definition for disconnecting is partaking in an activity that you can detach yourself from almost entirely. This can be watching TV, listening to music, going for a walk, meditating, or so much more.

This can be hard to do in our modern environments. With devices that allow us to do practically anything at any time at arms reach, it’s hard to step away. You can reach out to a friend or family member, catch up on the news, start that new show everyone is talking about, learn a new skill, read any written work throughout history, and the list goes on.

“Shower thoughts,” are a popular concept because it’s one of the few places we are somewhat forced out of the usual scramble of distractions. In the shower, the mind can disconnect and relax. This does make showering a critical habit, not just for hygiene, but for energy management as well.

For years now, I’ve referred to Family Guy as my favorite show to watch at a hotel. It’s almost always on one of the available channels and doesn’t require much thinking or attention to find mild entertainment. After a long day of traveling, it’s nice to wind down with some mindless indulgence.

In the end, the goal is to give the body and mind a break from stress in it’s different forms.

For a few years now, I’ve tried to avoid using the phrase “find the time” because it implies that the desired time will come passively. “Make the time,” is the saying I find more accurate. If we want to get something done, we have to actively set the time to do it.

Time is a Resource

You may have heard a quote that goes something along the lines of “You and Bill Gates have the same 24 hours in a day.” Feel free to replace Bill Gates with any individual that seems admirable. Time is the one resource that is truly finite. Once it’s gone, we can never get it back.

Every day, we all spend our time resource, whether we decide to or not. It can be spent optimally or poorly, just as any other resource. This optimization is mostly subjective, with some arguments for objectively bad time wasters.

For example, a common demon of the productivity world is TV or other media. I don’t think this is necessarily the case. A relaxing hour watching a show you enjoy can be the right way to wind down after a challenging day. The trouble, of course, comes in when that one hour becomes three, and has eaten into time allocated for other activities..

Following this idea, I think that time spent on “productive tasks” can also be spent non-optimally. Slamming into a problem over and over can lead to a variety of negative emotions around the task. If exhausted or stuck, the best thing at that time might be to step back and look to something else.

Due to its preciousness, time should be spent the best it can be. In order to do so, I believe it’s best to understand oneself.

Why Find Prime Time

As a person with a lot of ambition to complete a variety of projects, it’s critical that I can work on challenging tasks when I’m at my best.

I often find myself arbitrarily scheduling things or putting them off until the last minute when I have to push through a tiresome slog to get anything done. When trying this, it becomes much easier to look at my to-do list for an easier task to mark off for the day in order to get some feeling of accomplishment.

With a biological prime time (BPT) known, I can better plan my days to tackle the tough work at my best and save the easier stuff for when I’m dwindling. On top of that, I can plan breaks more effectively to come back recharged for whatever lies ahead in the day.

Trial Takeaways

So far, I’m finding that I’m pretty consistent most days in how I feel hour to hour. My morning has a steady rise with a plateau from about 11 AM to 1 PM. Unfortunately, I spoke too soon last week about my 5 PM crash, as I consistently have dwindling energy from 2 PM, after lunch, until around 6 PM.

With the previous benefits of going caffeine free debunked, last Sunday, I experimented with a cup of coffee in the morning. It was a nice treat after several days without one. I was surprised at the results. My energy levels were the best I’ve tracked thus far and I didn’t experience a caffeine crash at all. As of now, I’m unsure if the effect was the caffeine or the result of a long restful weekend. Due to this, I’m excluding that day from my final tracking of my BPT.

A major contributor to the lessons of my last trial was the book The Productivity Project; it offered a number of helpful practices to increase productivity. An early idea in the book is a process of tracking energy levels throughout the day. Through this, one can determine a “biological prime time,” the time of day with the most energy.

Time and Energy

A major idea of the book is that there are three resources used in every task throughout the day: time, energy, and focus. We don’t have real control over those resources, but we can determine the best ways to use them.

Through understanding what times throughout the day I have the most energy, I can plan to work on bigger, more challenging tasks that need me at my best. Chris Bailey calls this the biological prime time. Understanding the prime time is just half of the benefit. It also provides the times I’m at my lowest energy and should schedule simpler tasks.

The way to understand this is by tracking my energy levels every hour over the course of a few weeks; from a large sample size of days, a clearer picture is created. One caveat with this practice is the elimination of energy manipulating sources like caffeine and alcohol.

Challenges

I’ve done trials to give up alcohol and caffeine in the past but not for this reason. Previously, my goal was to determine if I was able to give up the substances. This trial, however, is focused on their impact on energy. Both of these have a cost on energy in the future for some short term benefits. By not indulging in them, I can better track my prime time.

In just these first few days, the sacrifices were easier than I expected. I’ve been considering giving myself a cheat day in which I can have a cup of coffee on Sunday mornings as a small treat, as I do enjoy a warm drink on these cold days. I’m still debating as the days pass. Cutting this out, however, has already shown one positive result – no more 5 PM crash that had become a regular experience during the week.

The toughest part I’ve experienced in implementation, so far, is the habit of checking in every hour to jot down my energy. As time passes, I expect this should become easier to do with regularity.