It turns out that there is a very good reason that so many people recommend this. Good time management has an arch enemy. It isn’t interruptions or even procrastination. The big foe to good time management is indecision.

Knowing exactly what you need to do next wards off indecision. Even if the order is somewhat arbitrary, there is value in having a plan so you don’t have to sit around and try to decide what to do next. The ordered list lets you focus on performing action, not deciding which action to do next.

Deciding what to do is work. It requires effort on your part. Most people underestimate how much work this actually involves. Even if it doesn’t take a lot of time, your brain still counts it as doing work. Not having a plan means you double the amount of work you have to perform. You have to choose a task and perform the task itself.

There are a lot of areas where you can be much more efficient by making decisions ahead of time. Here are a few:

1. Investment decisions – The amount you invest and the way it is allocated isn’t something you should have to decide on every paycheck.
2. Movies you want to rent – Chances are that making a decision from scratch when you are ready to see a movie will result in you watching something you weren’t as interested in and skipping over one that you wanted to see, but couldn’t think of at the time. At the least you should be picking your movie from a list of ones that you know you already want to see.
3. Buying gifts – Trying to make a decision on Christmas gifts while you are at the store can be very time consuming. While you can’t completely eliminate the decision process at the store, going in with a list of a few options is a whole lot better than just thinking “I’ll know it when I see it. “Also, it is far more likely that you’ll think of the perfect gift for Aunt Bertha sometime between January and November than in the first part of December.  Capturing that information will determine whether thinking of that perfect gift is actually beneficial to you or if you’ll end up sending her a fruitcake again.

You can’t make every decision in advance, and even your ordered to-do list is going to see modifications throughout the day. The point is to try to minimize how much time you spend making decisions. If you catch yourself being indecisive, just go ahead and make a decision. In many cases, indecision is more of a threat than picking the wrong task to work on next or choosing the less optimal of two good choices.

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In this post, I want to talk about optimal parking strategies, because people seem to waste so much time on the activity. But first a story:

I knew someone who would occasionally go to the mall around Christmas. He would walk toward a car in the prime parking spot and invariably be followed by a crazy-eyed parking spot hunter. He’d go stand next to the car for a few moments. The hunter began to drool at the prospect of capturing such a marvelous prize. The cars would start backing up behind the first car–everyone envious of the spot they were about to get, then he would simply walk off to his car parked on the far side of the lot.

Ok, so on to parking strategies:

It isn’t that far of a walk

First of all, in most situations, the time it takes to walk from the empty spots to the spots next to the store is minimal–only a few minutes. If you want a spot that is close to the store, try a reasonable strategy and then just take a spot. You don’t “win” by driving around again and again looking for an even better spot.

Sometimes the most productive thing to do is to pick a spot a reasonable distance from the store and walk. It is good for your health, keeps your car away from where it is likely to get hit and scratched, and often saves time.

Shopping cart returns matter

If you get a close spot, but it requires that you return the cart clear across the lot, you haven’t really gained anything. People don’t think about this because they don’t have a cart when coming to the store, only when leaving. A spot that doesn’t seem as close, but is right next to a cart return, can save you quite a bit of time over a close spot where you have to actually go back into the store with the empty cart and then back to your car.

Start at the store and work out

If you are looking for a spot headed toward the store, it can be hard to see if an empty one is the best available or if there is another one just ahead.  I’m sure everyone has driven just a bit further to discover that the “empty” spot actually had a Geo Metro in it, and the one three spaces back (which was just taken by an SUV) was actually the closest available.

If you start your search at the store side and work out, you can just take the first available slot. And don’t be tempted by a closer slot you see in another lane headed back to the store. If space is at a premium, it will be gone by the time you get there.

Think about the speed of leaving

Not every slot is equal when it comes to exiting the parking lot. Some will dump you out into a flow of pedestrian traffic and can waste considerable time.  This is one of the advantages of picking a side lane and taking the first space you find while moving away from the store. Also, watch out for things like pharmacy pick-up spots that are likely to have a high rate of vehicle changes and thus can make it difficult for you to get out of the parking lot if others are pulling in and out when you need to leave.

And there you have it. Some great strategies for getting in and out of parking lots. As I said, I feel a bit silly even writing about this, but little things matter, and from what I saw going on at the grocery store today, there are a lot of people spending a significant portion of their lives looking for a parking spot.

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Even if it doesn’t translate into more time away from work, these tips can help you use your time more effectively so you can get more done and out-perform your peers as you advance your career.

1. If you have some leeway in your arrival and departure time, use it to minimize your commute. In a lot of big cities, shifting your workday by 30 or even 15 minutes can cut your commute time in half.
2. Know which is faster–stairs or elevator. If you have less than 5 floors to climb, the stairs may be significantly faster than the elevator.  You may need to do some experimenting, but saving an extra minute or two each day (on average) can really add up over the course of a year.
3. Don’t skip lunch. It might seem counter-intuitive, but skipping lunch is unlikely to save you any time. You need the break to get away from things for a little while.  You aren’t designed to simply plow through 8 hours of straight work–at least not in a way that is productive.  Even just thirty minutes away from your work can help you refocus and make the rest of the day much more productive.
4. Don’t wait on things. If your computer takes four minutes to boot, find something else that regularly needs done and do it every time you boot your computer.  For example, four minutes may be just about the amount of time it takes to check your mailbox. You could also use that time to straighten your desk, review your plan, etc.  The point is that you shouldn’t just sit there waiting for something. Use that time for something you are going to have to do anyway.
5. Prepare for tomorrow. When you leave for the day, spend just a few minutes getting ready for the next day. Basically you want to ask yourself, “What is on my mind right now, that will save me time tomorrow?” It may be a matter of writing yourself a few short notes, leaving a file where you can quickly find it or sending an email requesting information from a colleague.
6. Turn off email notifications. If you are like most people, you get emails throughout the day. You don’t want your computer beeping or putting up a sign every time a new email comes in. If your job requires you to check email every 15 minutes, you can do that, but make sure you do it between other tasks instead of being interrupted every time a new message comes in. Getting interrupted takes a lot longer to recover from than you realize.  You are far better off spending 15 minutes to complete a task than 30 minutes because your concentration is being broken by email notifications going off. If something can’t wait 15 minutes, the sender should be using the phone–not email.
7. Don’t stay sitting down. Simply sitting at your desk all day isn’t the best thing for your productivity.  Getting up and walking around–even just a little–will make it much easier for you to get stuff done and think clearly.  If you have tasks that require getting up from your desk every day, use them strategically to help give you a break from sitting down.  Even just standing up at your desk for a few minutes while you read some email or look over a spreadsheet will help.
8. Batch tasks. Put tasks together that require the same resources or level of concentration.  For example, if you have 4 tasks that require a great deal of concentration, do them when you are least likely to be interrupted.  If forwarding your phone will help, go ahead and do it while you knock them all out together. If you need to ask your boss a question that isn’t urgent, wait until you have several questions to ask.
9. Identify and eliminate bottlenecks. Try to remove obstacles that slow you down.  For example, if you find that typing is slowing you down, get a copy of Mavis Beacon and practice at home for 10 or 15 minutes per day.  You will probably be typing for the rest of your life, so a month of improving your skill is going to be well worth the investment.  If you find you are constantly needing to stop and ask your boss how to handle situations, make a chart that shows how he or she has told you to handle them in the past and ask if you can use that chart for the routine issues. If your computer seems to be running very very slowly, you might be able to ask IT to re-image it so it goes back to the settings and speed it had when you first got it.
10. Understand your tools. Most of the applications you use on a daily basis have many more features than you’ll ever completely learn.  However, it is well worth your time to try to understand what they are capable of so you can learn how to use new features when they are appropriate. Tools like Microsoft Office come with significant collaboration functionality built in, but many people simply don’t know about it.  For example, Word will let you send a document to multiple people, allow them to add comments and make changes, then merge everything back into one document and let you select the changes you want to keep. For some people, this can be a huge time saver and it is just one of many similar features that can save significant time.

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The Order of Tasks

There is a survival simulation where you are trapped in a cave.  There is a single ladder going to the surface that can only hold one person at a time.  There are two other individuals with you.  One is younger than you and can climb faster.  The other is older than you and can climb slower.  Your job is to  decide the order that people should leave the cave–oh I forgot to mention there is water rising and if you don’t do it in the correct order, someone will drown.

The trick is to send the older person last because they can  still be on the ladder climbing as the water covers the area where you are currently standing.  If you try to send the older (slower) person first or second, someone is going to drown.  With the first two people, it doesn’t matter what order you use.

The point is that certain things work better when done in a particular order or at a particular time of day.  If I sit and watch television for 4 hours in the morning, and then try to write late in the evening, I am not being my most productive.  It is far better for me to write in the morning and then (if I have time), watch some television before going to bed.

Some of this comes down to understanding how your body mind works.  For me, I’m better off doing any writing before noon or a few hours after lunch.  I do better programming, when I know I will have no interruptions so I often am at my best when everyone else has gone to bed for the day.  If I’m meeting with a client to discuss their business processes, I am at my peak mid morning around 10 am. It is personal and can be different for each person, but you have to make a conscious effort to understand yourself and put tasks where the work the best.

A task out of place (like trying to read a dense report when you are exhausted) can easily take twice as long as a task placed optimally in your day. By giving a little thought to the order in which you do your tasks, you can easily get more done with less effort.

Originally published March 1, 2007.

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It is very easy to become enamored with high-tech devices that promise to save hours of time when we are in the purchasing stage, but fail to execute when it comes to really implementing them. This isn’t just a problem for individuals.  I routinely see businesses spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on software designed to make them more efficient, only to lose most of the advantages because they don’t have the discipline to follow through in the implementation stage.

When you are looking at buying a new device or new piece of software, be sure to consider the expense of really learning how it works and using it. Here are a couple things I do to lower the amount of time I need to spend learning new technology:

• Upgrade my primary computer every 3 to 4 years. I tend to buy at the very top end, but keep it a long time. Switching computers can be a big time drain.
• Skip versions of software. On one hand, I need to stay up-to-date in order to get support, but on the other, if everything is working, I don’t want to take the risk of running into a bug by trying to follow the manufacturer’s update cycle.
• Don’t be the first.  I usually try to wait a while before upgrading software or hardware.  There are plenty of people who simply must have the latest and greatest and I’d rather learn from their experiences than join them.
• Standardize.  When my family was switching cell phone providers, I got everyone to go with the same Blackberry that I use.  One reason is so I don’t have to spend a lot of time figuring out a new phone if they need help.  The other reason is so they can help each other.
• Learn from other people’s experiences. Amazon reviews are a great way to find out what people don’t like about something.  Also, a search for “product name review” will find a lot of other reviews that are helpful.

Regardless of where you fall on the technology adopter spectrum, keeping a focus on the true productivity benefit of every new device will help you save time and money.

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Time is an Investment

Speaking of your return on investment–just thinking of time as an investment can help you become more productive. Changing your mindset about time and seeing it as a currency that you can spend as you choose helps put you in a frame of reference to value time appropriately. When you spend your time, you can spend it in areas where there is a high rate of return or in areas where there is a low or negative rate of return.

Time I spend building my client list or learning a new marketable skill has a positive return.  If my new skill allows me to do something in 1 hour that previously took 4 hours, that is a pretty good investment.  If finding new clients eventually allows me to raise my billing rate, that is a good investment.  Some things have a negative return.  Filling your car with water instead of oil will cost you time in the future.

Okay, so it is unlikely that anyone is going to do that.  But what about signing up for a magazine that you don’t really need or paying for a bunch of premium cable channels that are just going to distract you from things that you feel is really important in life?  I’m not saying that you should never have cable, but it is something that is likely to cost you more in time down the road.

By thinking of time as an investment, you should be able to start focusing on doing things that are profitable and minimizing things that have no return.  This is really a mindset thing more than anything else, but the right mindset can make a big difference in what you are willing to spend your time on.

Long Term Benefits

One major difference between people who are productive and those who aren’t is how they view long term investments of their time.  Often, activities that will have the biggest positive benefit are the ones that have very little or minimal short term gains. For example, when I started writing Productivity501 and had virtually no subscribers it seemed like there was very little benefit to sitting down and writing a new post for the site.  Honestly, it took several years to start seeing a significant benefit from my investment.  However, after making the investment in content for five years, we have over 18,000 subscribers and over 1 million unique visitors. Productivity501 is successful enough that it bought me a nice house overlooking a river valley on one of the few hills in our part of Kansas. But, it took years to get to this point.

It is hard to work on things that don’t give you an immediate return.  Time discounting causes us to under estimate the value of future gains.  This makes it harder to mentally justify investing our time now for future benefit.

When you invest in things that will give you a long term benefit, you use current efforts to secure a more desirable future.  People who don’t have the ability to make future investments are usually left wondering why everyone else is so lucky.

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Do you wish your co-workers had volume controls?

You can’t turn your co-workers down and it is generally considered impolite to physically push them to the other side of the room.  One potential solution would be to play music, but then you become part of the problem for other people.  You could use headphones, but most of the time that will leave you a bit too isolated.  (I know someone who does this and it is impossible to get his attention without making him jump three feet from his chair.) Also with music, part of your brain power goes toward listening.  This may be fine if you are just adding a list of numbers, but less than ideal if you need 100% of your mental capabilities focusing on a specific problem. The ideal solution is something that will mask the distracting sound without becoming a distraction itself.

The sound of the ocean creates privacy on the beach

Think of the ocean. On the beach the sound of the surf and the wind help create a certain degree of sonic privacy.  You can still talk to people near you, but you aren’t dealing with as much distraction from the conversation of people sitting nearby. Even though the ocean is making quite a bit of noise, it isn’t a distraction.

Most people don’t realize how much distractions cost them. If your job involves anything beyond very mundane work, it is impossible to jump right back into where you left off once something breaks your concentration.  Even for very average work, it will often take 10 to 15 minutes to get back to your full level of concentration.  That means if you make $20 per hour, every interruption costs you around $5 in work value. Yes, I know you probably still get paid–even when you are interrupted, but your output is often what will determine your raises and promotion, so interruptions of your concentration do eventually cost you money.

Designed to help you concentrate

Productivity501 has created several sound files designed specifically to help make it easier to concentrate on work.  They have been selling for $12.50 each, but we are temporarily dropping the price to $5 each for the download versions. Depending on how much you make per hour and how distracting your environment is, the value you get in the first day is likely to be 5 or 6 times what you will spend for the file. If you are a student, work for yourself or are on salary, reducing your distractions can make a dramatic decrease in the amount of time you have to spend working or studying.

Pays for itself by blocking a single interruption

These are very large files.  They come zipped and weigh in at 130 Mb.  Our goal was to give you the best sonic quality in an hour long recording of nature sounds designed to make it easier to concentrate by blocking distracting sounds. If this sounds like something that would help you, please consider buying from the links below.

• Brook Ambient Sound MP3 Download . . . . . . $12.50 $5.00
• Ocean Ambient Sound MP3 Download . . . . . . $12.50 $5.00
• Rain Ambient Sound MP3 Download . . . . . . $12.50 $5.00
• Rain on a Lake Sound MP3 Download . . . . . . $12.50 $5.00

If you prefer a physical CD, you can buy them from the products page.

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Amazon Prime

We live in a rural area and while I like to try to shop local, there is a lot of stuff we need that simply isn’t available nearby.  Amazon Prime gives me free two day shipping on most of their items.  This means I can place an order on Monday afternoon and have it Wednesday.  For an extra $3.99 per item I can get it the next day.  I’ve used this to buy everything from books to fruit juicers to network cables.

Working from Home

Working from home means I don’t have to waste any time getting in a car and going somewhere every day.  My office is down the hall and down the stairs.  Its not that uncommon to find people who are putting 6 hours (or more) into just sitting in their car each week.  That’s more than a full day of work for most people (once you take out all the interruptions and office stuff).  Working from home means I can spend my time either making money or being with my family without the whole “sitting in the car on the road” part of things.

1Password

1Password is a little application that keeps track of your passwords for websites.  You can create a login in Safari and then access it from Firefox.  Since I usually have a few different browsers open at a time, this saves me a lot of time.  It will also help generate passwords for you, which makes it easier to use different passwords for each site you visit and keeps things much more secure.

Online Bill Payments

This saves a lot of time–especially when we are traveling.  Paying a bill is a matter of logging into my bank’s site, filling out the amount in the list of people I pay and clicking “ok”. One of my biggest frustrations is that to pay the water bill at our new house requires reading the meter and then sending it back in to the company along with a check, so it is the single bill where I can’t use online bill payment.

Connect Now by Acrobat

Since I work from home, most of the people I’m interacting with are somewhere else.  Connect Now lets me quickly share screens with people so I don’t have to waste a bunch of time explaining how to do something over the phone.  There are a bunch of other remote control products that do this as well.

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That isn’t really an amazing idea, but it is very very powerful.  If you can, early in the day, do one or two things that have lasting value, you’ll be taking steps in the right direction–even if the entire rest of the day is shot. The goal of this approach is to make sure you aren’t sitting still.  You want to make sure you are moving forward, and the best way to do that is to make some progress–even if it is very small–as soon as you can.

Here are some things that may be important tasks to do early in the day:

1. Read a chapter of a book–If you are trying to get better at what you do, reading is probably going to be a pretty important activity.  Spending some time reading before the day gets started makes sure you are making incremental progress.
2. Networking — Keeping in contact with your business acquaintances is a very valuable activity, but one that is often pushed to “tomorrow”.  Spending 30 minutes sending emails, making phone calls or sending out birthday cards can go a long ways toward keeping you in touch.
3. Practicing — We tend to think of practice as something that is reserved for athletes and musicians, but if  your job requires a skill, there is probably a way to practice it. The trick is to practice something that helps you get better at what you do.  If you are a secretary, maybe you spend 10 minutes typing something as fast as possible just to help raise the bar on your speed.  If you are a programmer, maybe you try to write some code that uses a technique you recently read about, but don’t routinely use.
4. Writing — Writing can be a very good way to develop your thoughts and perspective on something.  Spending a few minutes on a regular basis writing about a topic where you want to become better will deepen your understanding. For example, if you are interested in leadership or management, spend some time writing about the things you see others doing and how effective they are.

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In an effort to expand our readership to people striving for unproductivity, here are six things you can do to guarantee that your co-workers get as little done as possible. Productivity501 takes no responsibility for the results of actually implementing any of these ideas.

1. Randomly put entries on their calendar like: “1:30 meeting with John White Important!” or “Call Sally 535-321-1242″. Place them far enough in the future that they won’t suspect you did it.
2. Write in fake delegated tasks and followup reminders: “Ask Joe for status of XYZ presentation.”
3. Set up their copy of MS Word to autocorrect their boss’s name with “The Silly Clown” or “The Supreme Ruler of Canterbury”
4. Switch their phone display to Hebrew.
5. There are still a number of “Fax Back” services out there where you call in, select the documents you want and then give the system your fax number. Call in an use their desk phone or cell phone number.
6. Put an ad on Craig’s List saying that you have 4 Superbowl, Hannah Montana, or Blueman Group tickets that you aren’t going to be able to use and you’ll give them away free to whoever tells you the funniest joke on the phone. List their work number.

Originally published April 01, 2008.

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Thank you to everyone who participated. If you’d like your own copy of Where the !@#% did my day go? or his other ebooks checkout his products page. Also

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Doing more is only valuable if you are doing things that really need to be done.  A system that just enables you to always be busy isn’t really valuable.  Obviously there is some value in not letting anything “slip through the cracks” if you are talking about things like getting your wife a birthday present or going to your son’s soccer game, but letting some things slip through the cracks can be a valuable way to let go of things that just aren’t important.

When you are making lists or putting stuff into your “trusted system,” think hard about the consequences of not doing a particular task.  Are the consequences really all that bad? Maybe you really don’t need to do it.  Maybe you should replace it with something much more valuable–something that, at the end of your life, you will regret having not done.

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1. Keep cleaning supplies within easy reach

It is a simple thing, but having some Windex and paper towels nearby to wipe down your desk can save you time and help keep your workplace more organized and tidy.

2. Remove your guest chair

People are less likely to stay for a long time chatting if there isn’t a place to sit.  You can keep a fold out chair nearby or borrow a chair from the conference room when necessary.  If you stand when someone enters the room, you can easily signal for them to leave by sitting back down.  It doesn’t always work, but often it will.

3. Open your mail over the trash can

Even better, don’t bring it into your office–open it in the mailroom and toss anything you don’t need.  The idea is to touch everything as few times as possible.  If you open everything onto your desk, then you have to deal with picking up the parts that need to be discarded and handling them again. Anything you can do to keep clutter from getting into your office in the first place will save you time.

4. Keep some emergency items in a drawer

It isn’t a bad idea to keep an extra stick of deodorant, mouthwash, five or ten dollars in cash and other emergency items in your desk.  You probably won’t use them often, but if you happen to forget your deodorant or eat something for lunch that gives you bad breath, you won’t have to deal with running out to the store.  If you are on the road a lot, you might consider keeping some deodorant and a toothbrush in your computer bag.

5. Speed-dial, bookmarks and shortcuts

If you go to a particular list of websites everyday, they should be in a shortcut folder.  If there is an application you use every day, it should have a shortcut on your desktop.  Numbers that are called repeatedly should be on your speed dial.

6. Keep a journal of your notes

When someone gives you a telephone number, address or other piece of information over the phone, where do you put it?  Many people write it on scraps of paper or post it notes.  A much better solution is to have some type of “notes” journal where you put this type of stuff in chronological order.  Most of it should probably be transferred to an address book, calendar or somewhere else, but having a single place to go back to where you can look up that number that you thought you’d only need once is very valuable and can save a significant amount of time.

7. Strategic hours

If your employer gives you some flexibility in your start and end time, consider arranging your working hours strategically.  You can plan your day to avoid heavy traffic, to give you an hour to work before people and distractions come to work or even just to get a parking space closer to the office. For many people, a small shift in their arrival and departure time could easily save 10 to 15 minutes in travel time each way.  This amounts to a very significant amount of time over a typical work year.

8. Work from home one day each week

If your employer will let you, working from home one day each week can be a big timesaver.  Not only does it cut out your travel time, but it can also give you uninterrupted time to concentrate for periods longer than what you can do in the office.  If you need tips for approaching your employer about such an arrangement, checkout our guide on How to Convince Your Boss to let you Work from Home.

9. Scan old records

If your office has a high speed copier/printer, it probably has the ability to scan directly to a PDF file.  Many can even do OCR.  By scanning in your older records, you not only save space, but you make it a lot easier to search for the part of the document you are looking for.  A program like DevonTHINK or Google’s desktop search can make it easy to locate your documents when you need them.

10. Forward your phone

Some tasks will take only 30 minutes to complete if they have your undivided attention, but 3 or 4 hours if you get interrupted a few times.  When faced with one of those tasks, forward your phone, turn off your mobile, and close your email program.  Give the task the attention it requires and complete it.  If you need to, you can even add a message saying that it is 9:30 and you are wrapping up an important project, but you will return all calls by 10:45. Just remember to unforward your phone when you are done.

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If I am able to maintain my same level of pay and cut my work time in half, I’ve made some pretty significant improvements in my productivity.  But what if, instead of maintaining the same level of pay, we just try to maintain the same standard of living. Or better yet, just maintain the same standard of living on things that are important to us.

This type of thinking suddenly opens up many new ways of looking at how we spend our time.  If I can cancel cable, reduce the number of times I eat out each month, and move to a smaller house, what will that buy me in terms of time? Could I spend another 20 hours a week with my daughter if I were willing to give up some things that will lower my cost of living?

I see a lot of people that become so obsessed with “doing more” that they never stop to ask themselves “why?”

Consider this:  Do you have more or less time to spend on things you enjoy and that are really important to you than you did 5 years ago?  If not, when do you expect the trend to reverse?

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What time of day do you feel you are most productive and why? (198) Here are their answers.  What about you?  Leave your thoughts in the comments.

I feel most productive in late morning and early afternoon.  My energy peaks at this time of day, and I have found I am able to focus more on important tasks.  I am not a morning person, so usually I end up going around in circles or repeating something- basically, wasting my time.  Late afternoon, beginning around 3, I begin to get sluggish and often need a nap!  It is important to know when your energy level is at its highest and when you are least distractable.  That is when you should schedule your top priorities for the day.  That way, the task is more likely to be finished.

Rebecca from Life Lists

Morning. I’m well rested, my head is clear and I’m full of coffee!

Brendon Connelly from BikeHacks (rss)

Mid-morning to early afternoon.  I’ve tried being productive early in the morning, and sometimes I’m able to, but most of the time I can’t wake up my mind enough to tackle complex projects early in the morning.  Between the hours of 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.  are usually when I do the most of my paper writing and other thought-intensive work.

I usually schedule all my reading and research for the evening hours.  It helps that I have figured out what times of day I work best in, so I don’t even waste my time trying to write after 3.

Too early and I can’t wake up my mind enough to focus, and any later than 3 and my mind is too tired to focus.  My sweet spot is late morning-early afternoon.

Sam from Sam I Am (rss)

I think different people have different habits. I have worked nights for years but I still feel that an early morning riser is more productive then a night crawler. Thats because the sleep which you get at night is most useful for the body and it provides you with a new energy to work every morning.

Abhijeet from Jeet Blog (rss)

I’m most productive in the morning between a run and the first time I check email (which is usually after 11:30).  I usually don’t take or schedule calls until after lunch either, so I can instead focus on thought-intensive or otherwise important tasks all morning.

Jared Goralnick from Technotheory (rss)

I’m most productive in the morning, because I’m refreshed!  When I have a client appointment to go to in the afternoon, I’m even more productive because of the adrenaline I get from knowing I have to be somewhere later.

Ariane Benefit from Neat & Simple Living

If I am passionate about what I am doing or what I’m trying to accomplish, any time of day is good. The key is being well rested. When well rested, it is easier, even natural, to get passionate about stuff. If I am tired, even the most compelling things won’t capture my imagination.

Fred Gratzon from The Lazy Way to SUccess

Definitely early in the morning.  During this time, I have the most energy and am looking forward to what all I will get done during that day, and it’s also the time with the fewest distractions.

Charlie Gilkey from Productive Flourishing (rss)

Mid-afternoon to early evening.  I find that I’m only good for rote work first thing in the morning.  Too bad my research doesn’t require a lot of rote work!  But come 2 p.m. or so, I’m ready to so some serious thinking.  I peter off again around 9 p.m., although I’ve been known to work later if coding.

I think I’m just groggy after sleeping.  By the time the afternoon rolls around, I’m annoyed at myself for not working harder, and am just generally able to focus better.

GTD Wannabe from GTD Wannabe (rss)

Anywhere between 9pm and 2am. It’s shocking, really, especially considering I’m rudely awoken by an energetic two year old at disgusting hours of the morning, but that’s when I’m most productive, so that’s when I typically work!

Why? I have no idea. Maybe something to do with being a musician.

http://www.joelfalconer.com from Joel Falconer (rss)

I am most productive early in the morning. Its more peaceful and free from the usual interruptions of the working day. I work on my high priority tasks during this time as i feel more refreshed early in the morning. By getting a good start on more pressing tasks i also find i can get a head start on the next days work.

Grace Smith from Postscript5 | Freelance Web Design

I’m definitely a night owl.  I typically get the most done in the evening.  I think it’s when I’m most alert and focused.  Plus, I don’t have to deal with the distractions of phone calls and people in the office.  Evening hours are usually distraction-free and available for prime productivity.

Andrew Flusche from Legal Andrew (rss)

I’m usually the most productive later in the day and in to the night. There’s typically a greater sense of urgency later in the day that almost forces me to focus. I also find that I’m more creative and open to new ideas at night.

John from Fiscal Musings (rss)

I feel most productive in the early mornings because the rest of the world isn’t around to bother me. It’s the time that has the least amount of distractions.

Glen Stansberry from LifeDev (rss)

I am in my most creative mindset between 12am and 3am. I am the most productive after I take a shower in the morning. I’m not sure why, heh. Probably because I use the shower to think, so once I’m out, I’m ready to execute.

Nathan Snell from The Technopian (rss)

Between 5am and 7am

Ever since I started to rise early I discovered that these are golden hours. It’s because:

• I’m the only one awake in the house
• I’m not bothered by any troubles of the day yet
• I’m on caffeine vs. on alcohol (morning vs. evening). But even without the caffeine this time rocks!

Between 3pm and 5pm

Not sure why, but these are golden hours for me as far as writing is concerned.

Lodewijk van den Broek from How to be an Original (rss)

I’m a morning person. 4am to 6am is my most productive time. After 5pm… forget it!

John Richardson from Success Begins Today (rss)

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