I'm most productive first thing in the morning, right after I finish my breakfast and sit down in front of the computer with my first cup of coffee.
I have my day all planned out. I divide my work day into 6 to 8 one hour blocks of time, and I assign a specific task to each block. I do this the night before. Thus I am completely organized for maximum productivity.
So before I even get into my work space, I know exactly what I'm going to do this day.
Are you impressed?
You should be, because I really do this everyday as part of my working routine.
There's only one problem. Even though I have the most energy in the morning, and I have all these tasks lined up, somehow I don't always follow my plan.
My most important time blocks are for content creation, whether it is writing an article, writing a blog post or writing the script for a video.
The problem is that as I sit in front of my computer, I get an unexpected case of writer's block. I know the topic I want to write about, but the words just don't come.
So to avoid being unproductive, I decide to make a couple of posts to my Facebook page. Good Idea! Right?
Well, Facebook can easily start you on a slippery slope so far as productivity goes. I'm sure I don't have to explain how this can happen. There are too many tempting distractions.
The other strange thing I've discovered is that in spite of having the most energy in the mornings, I also seem to have the greatest number of distractions.
I know what I want to accomplish that day, but my mind keeps jumping from one interesting topic to another.
As I go through my day, getting a few things done related to my business, running a few errands to cope with the usual demands of daily life, I soon come to the end of the daylight hours.
After dinner, and an hour or two of TV, I settle back to my work space to plan my next day.
But this is when a strange thing happens. All of a sudden, I get an idea in my mind about some content I want to produce, I start making some notes, and before I realize it I am typing away furiously as the thoughts and ideas pour into my mind.
When I check the time, it's approaching 2:00 AM and I still have a few more lines to complete. I'm now physically tired, but I feel that I have to finish the piece of content I'm working on.
When I'm done, I have two articles written, plus a blog post or some other piece of content I had been thinking about.
So what's going on here!?
Apparently, some of us find that we can be most productive and even most creative late in the day or late at night.
I am by no means a "morning person," nor a night owl, it just so happens that my creative energy, my drive, my desire and joy to work come at various times of the day.
This can be very disconcerting, and very tough on your neatly set up daily working plans. It used to bother me a lot. I thought I was not only weird, but lacking in discipline and organization.
Then I read a comment from a super successful online marketer who confessed to having days when he couldn't get himself motivated in the morning, or the rest of the day and having to just take the day off.
Interestingly, he commented that he was not alone, that everyone working from home had this experience quite frequently.
The secret answer he said was to make the most of those periods, day or night, when everything started to flow, and to get as much done as long as the energy lasted, even if it meant pulling an all-nighter.
So that's what I do now, and I no longer feel guilty when the mornings get off to a slow start.
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