The Best Time to Do Your Most Challenging Task

Classic productivity advice to “eat the frog” advocates doing your most challenging task first thing in the morning, before you do anything else.

This is terrible advice for many people.

The key to performing your best on any task is to choose the right timing for that task.

What is the “right time” for your most challenging task?

There are two levels to this, and neither one is about clock time or time management.

Macro Timing: Timing to the Seasons and Cycles of Nature

On the macro level, it’s about timing to the right season or cycle of nature.

There’s a popular saying that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

This is wrong.

The best time to plant a tree is not “now” if “now” is in the middle of winter.

The best time to plant a tree is in early spring, once the ground thaws.

Otherwise you’re working against nature’s cycles.

The best time to surf is when the waves are good.

Sometimes timing to nature can be counter-intuitive. The best time to invest in real estate is when most people think the market is at the bottom.

Another component of “macro timing” is the environment around you. The same drive between two locations can take different amounts of time depending on when you go, because traffic conditions might vary.

Personal Timing: Timing to Your Seasons and Cycles

On a personal level, the right time for a task is the time that aligns with your personal energy cycles, or your personal seasons of life.

Here are two examples:

(1) Personal Seasons

In my real estate business, people often ask me “how’s the market?” — it’s their way of gauging whether it’s a good time to buy or sell. In response, I ask them “how’s your life?”

The best time to buy or sell a home is when your personal needs dictate it; not when the market is in a certain condition.

(2) Personal Energy Cycles

In the recent CrossFit Open, I deviated from my typical routine of doing CrossFit at 5:30 am. Instead, I did the hard Open workouts at 9 am. For each workout, I redid the workout at 10 am.

Even though I typically do CrossFit at 5:30 am, I know that’s not the ideal time for me to perform at my best. I am typically much stiffer in the early morning. I do better with physical activity in the later part of the morning.

On those days, I still woke up at my normal time, and even did an early “warm-up workout” to prime my body. Then I took a break to do some work before doing a more specific warm-up for that workout.

I also know that I am more efficient in writing early in the day, immediately after a workout — assuming the workout isn’t so intense that it depletes my dopamine.

This structure allowed me to stay consistent with my routine of getting up early and moving my body, take advantage of my most productive creative time, and then do the workouts when my body temperature had risen sufficiently and I was more open in my joints and muscles.

Time Management is About Timing

How effective you can be in performing a task depends on how the timing aligns for the task.

If you want to get things done more effectively, the key is to understand both the macro timing and the micro timing:

• What are the factors in the environment around you that impact the nature of the task?
• What season of life are you in?
• What is your personal energy cycle, and how does it align with the task?

Creating awareness for yourself about your personal energy cycles and seasons will have a far greater impact on your productivity than trying to master “time management” or doing the hard thing first just because someone told you to eat a frog.