Energy-First Planning: hard work in your best hours.
Map your peak, flat and low energy hours, then match tasks to your energy, not just to the clock.
Download the templateTry it
Tick each step as you go.
Why it works
The idea behind it.
Energy here means how alert you feel, hour by hour. Most people have a few hours when hard thinking comes easier, and a stretch when it doesn’t.
A review of research on time of day and thinking found that attention, focus and memory change across the day, and that the pattern differs between morning and evening people (Schmidt and colleagues, 2007). There’s no single best time to work, but there is probably a best time for you.
Putting the hardest task in your best hours, and routine work in the slow ones, gets the same work done with less pushing.
In practice
Where it tends to slip.
- Copying someone else’s schedule. An early start works for some people; your map is yours.
- Letting email fill the peak window because it feels urgent.
- Assuming the map stays the same. Sleep, travel and busy seasons move it, so check it again every few weeks.
The template
Paste it into Notion, Apple Notes or any doc, or download it as a text file.
ENERGY MAP — [dates] Mark each hour: P = peak, F = flat, L = low 08:00 09:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 My peak window: My low window: TOMORROW Peak: [the hardest task] Flat: [routine work] Low: [easy tasks]