Matching my physical and mental productivity

in #productivity4 years ago (edited)

COVID-19 and lockdowns really wreck havoc on one's productivity, doesn't it?

For freelancers like myself, working from home itself is not such a big deal. However, for my other family members, namely my kids, it's a challenge.

Imagine having all that pent up energy and not be able to go out to see their friends, or socialise. Which means that I need to step in and make things more fun at home.

And therein lies the challenge

Compartmentalising their needs and mine -- focus on their happy hours, or focus on earning my income?

My current challenge is, because of all the adjustments I need to make at home, my mental and physical energies are all misaligned. When my mind is at its most productive, it's also the time when the body is tired, and vice versa.

So I found that dawn till dusk is actually my best time to focus and sit in front of my computer for hours uninterupted. This also means that I don't sleep at night until about 5 am, and wake up at 12 noon.

That can't be healthy, can it?

I'm thinking that maybe I should re-analyse my ultradian rhythm so that my family, health and income can benefit from a better schedule.

I'm reading up and getting tips from these two articles:

  1. The Most and Least Productive Hours in a Day by Evernote
  2. How to Find Your Most Productive Hours of The Day (The Natural Rhythm Experiment) on Medium.com

Workflow spreadsheet Workflow spreadsheet. src

The Medium article even has a worksheet template for me to figure out the best hour blocks.

Fingers crossed, it'll help me address my work-kids balance. I was thinking that if there's a time where I both feel unproductive and tired, I'll do some simple exercises instead of taking naps. I could even just hang out with my kids and watch Netflix or YouTube together.

This sounds fun. I can't wait to do this, and will definitely post updates once I have the numbers up.

LIKE WHAT YOU READ? Then check out my previous post: https://hive.blog/blog/@webgrrrl/aightigotthis-t08m13t05ouwdgnr30wd