And has this changed over time or has it always been about the same?
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Top comments (30)
From 6:45AM - 11AM is peak, if I'm actively invested in the project I'm working on, afternoons and evenings can be fine too, but if it's after 11AM and I'm not particularly interested in a project it's a struggle to work on things.
5PM-7PM seems to be my sweet spot, which unfortunately clashes with Life Things.
How often do you find yourself taking advantage of this flow — do you do anything to try and be productive during these times or just not worry about it because of life?
Well, I encouraged my partner to take charge of feeding the cats in the evening, and in my last home I put on headphones so I didn't hear them demanding food or the neighbours coming and going.
I find that as I get older I lose the flow much more easily and it can be pretty depressing to have gone all day without achieving much, and start getting in the swing of things towards the end of the day, just to have it all collapse because the doorbell goes and another package arrives.
I deliberately don't check my email until I have a convenient stopping point, and tell people that unless it's urgent they shouldn't call me after 4ish. Teams chat only.
And I know, I know, Teams is the source of great deal of misery itself. We use what our corporate overlords dictate we use!
Probably around 10 AM to noon. I think I've always been that way, but it's especially true now since I work remotely for a (US) west coast company, while living on the east coast, so I don't have many distractions before noon since my coworkers on the west coast are still waking up.
Morning person checking in
Same
same
Normally about 2pm-5pm on a Friday. Instead of mentally winding down, that seems to be when I finally get traction on a work project. It's rather inconvenient.
Also, sometime between 1:00 AM and 4:00 AM. I rouse from sleep and suddenly have the top two or three coding / DevOps issues running through my brain and being "Solved" or at least getting ideas and plans started. Sometimes I can get back to sleep and forget the whole mess, sometimes I can't. I usually wake up at 5:15 AM regardless of any alarm or opportunity to sleep in, so at least I usually have a few hours before the rest of the household and world wakes up to get some stuff done on my own without much interruption (unless the cat wants more attention than is warranted; he has a sleeping box on my desk to save my keyboard 😺💤⌨)
I don't know why but it seems to be early morning, like 3 AM. (Disclaimer: This is super unhealthy). Sometimes I'd have to pull all nighters and I'd get really tired but march on anyway.
I think all the screen time's got to me.
In the workday I definitely prefer being productive and focussed in the morning, which I keep up from 9 until lunch at 12:30 if I take movement breaks and stay hydrated and caffeinated. I tend to slump after lunch and prefer to do more social and ad hoc work like meetings, responding to Slack questions, pair programming etc.
Unfortunately my team at work schedules meetings in the morning so the afternoon is free for focus work. 🙃 I get by with extensive use of body doubling videos, pomodoro timers and rain and thunderstorm sounds, but it's challenging working against your body's rhythms.
Round midnight... until around 4am. Unfortunately it's not really a practical inclination due to kids, social and other constraints. If I didn't have those, I would automatically gravitate from normal daytime routine towards waking up in the late afternoon and coding at night.
When I started learning programming as a teenager in the 1990s, I remember seeing the sun rise for the second day in a row without sleeping... Definitely not healthy, so it's good to have those outside connections to keep you on the level.
I don't know why but 10.30am I seem to just get into a groove
As a university student, I prided myself on being a night owl and started working on priority tasks only after 18:00. This gave me little time to complete them, and I often would feel guilty because of that.
As soon as I started working full-time, I quickly realized that I'm a morning person who does her best work from 08:00-10:00.
As I'm getting older, calm mornings are the foundation of my day. I wake up without an alarm, walk the dogs, have breakfast, and start working around 9:00 or 10:00. I can get into a flow state any time of the day, and walking the dogs four times a day gives me healthy breaks. I feel this is the most balanced way of working for me.