I’ve been discovering some things about myself and timing of tasks lately, and I thought I’d share.

I thought it didn’t matter what time of the day I wrote. Turns out I was wrong. I’ve been struggling a bit with the rework of Face to Facebook. I’ve been doing other tasks in the morning and saving work on the book until later in the afternoon. Mistake!

Yesterday, I switched my scheduling and worked on the book in the morning. Wow! What a difference that made. What had been hard in the afternoon was almost effortless in the morning. Lesson learned. No more writing in the afternoon. Well, except for fiction. So far that works any time of day.

Checking social media used to be something I did in the morning. I still do, but less now. It’s a perfect late afternoon task. I can read and absorb blog posts just fine late in the day when I’m not up for creative tasks.

Same with catching up on email. It seems I can focus better on that when I’m feeling less creative. Although yesterday I needed to write a fun and creative email introduction. I made sure to do that earlier in the day.

What about networking? I’m still blessed in that I can be productive at networking meetings any time of day. But I know people who can’t do mornings or are just much better in the evening. If there’s a time of day you’re more effective networking, go for it. Spend more of your time interacting when you’re at your best. There may occasionally be a great event at your less effective time of day, and you’ll probably want to go to it. But try to schedule thing when you’ll be more sharp.

Finally, client and one to one meetings? I’m okay with those morning and afternoon. Much after 4:00, though, and I start to lose focus one on one. Good thing I don’t have many people wanting to meet at those times.

I challenge you to look at your regular tasks and events. Is something giving you trouble? Try it at a different time of day and see if it makes a difference.

Wouldn’t it be great to get more done in the same amount of time? You can if you schedule things appropriately.

Anyone else have a good story to share about switching around the timing of a task?

Tags: task management, time management

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 10:00 am and is filed under Time and Task Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.