I’m a big believer in the power of peak times. Everyone has peak hours to do everything. I enjoy solitary work in the mornings, meetings in the afternoons, my writing habit has settled into the evening (after putting the kids to sleep), and I like to read before going to bed.

It’s hard to fight those peak times - I’ve tried to write in the mornings, and everything about the habit is more difficult. As James Clear says - “we don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems”. Our peak times are a part of our system.

So much of productivity is understanding your peak times for your tasks, and designing your day around it. You can always change your peak hours, but unless it’s really getting in the way of your day, just work with what works. Changing peak times takes some intentional conditioning and discipline.

This is especially true when you are just starting a habit - do whatever it takes to get you started, and once the habit is established, you can go about optimizing your day so that certain things fit better together.

This concept is amplified in a team - when a team working together doesn’t respect each other’s peak hours for productivity, interruptions can be particularly harmful. Most of the times, it’s because people simply don’t know each other’s peak times. It’s a simple exercise to make that available, and can be a huge boost to team productivity.