Time Management: Calculating Your Most Productive Hours

Your energy, focus, and output aren’t constant throughout the day. A short experiment can reveal your personal peak hours—then you can design your schedule around them.

Step 1: Run a 10-Day Focus Log

For 10 workdays, score each hour on a 1–5 scale for focus and energy. Keep tasks similar if possible. Use calendar blocks or a quick spreadsheet with hours as columns and days as rows.

Step 2: Calculate Hourly Averages

Average the scores for each hour. Your top 2–4 hours are your peak window—protect these for deep work. The next 2–3 hours are good for medium-focus tasks. Everything else is best for admin, email, and meetings.

Step 3: Align Work Types to Energy

• Peak hours: strategy, analysis, writing, complex coding.
• Good hours: reviews, planning, code reviews, documentation.
• Low-energy hours: inbox, scheduling, status updates.

Step 4: Iterate Weekly

Recalculate monthly to adjust for seasonality, sleep patterns, or workload. Small tweaks—like moving a standing meeting out of your peak hours—compound into big gains.

Optional: Add Simple Metrics

Track two numbers: daily deep work hours and task completion rate. If deep work falls below target, inspect your calendar for conflicts in peak windows.

Bottom Line

Don’t fight your biology. Find your peak hours and build a default week that protects them. Everything gets easier from there.