558 – Optimize your Business and Life: Tom talks Best Time of Day

Episode 558 - Best Time Of Day
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute,, the entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody is Tom here with episode five hundred and fifty eight. If Screw the Mute podcast today, we're going to talk about the best time of day to write and create products, and this isn't the right time of day in general. This is going to be how you figure out the right time of day for you. All right. Hope you didn't miss episode five fifty seven. That was Pete Moore, and he's a guy that turns your business frustrations into freedoms, and I suggest you kick off your shoes and listen to this episode. Because speaking of shoes, Pete owns multiple shoe stores that pretty much run themselves, and he's taking the family for a month to Florida because it's a true lifestyle business. And he does coaching and other stuff on helping other business owners create processes. So they can either sell their business or make it run without them or not really without them, but but to reduce their actual day to day work tremendously. All right. How'd you like to make big affiliate commissions by referring our products and services? Well? You can make five thousand or more on a speaking engagement referral. You can make anything in between that we have products in all price ranges, and we never get returns because everybody loves our stuff and we take care of the customers so you can make big commissions by referring us.

[00:01:52] So just email me at Tom. It's screw the outcome. If you want details now, pick up a copy of our automation e-book. It saved me, literally. We estimated at seven and a half million keystrokes saves me all kinds of time and makes more money because I can spend more time with customers and prospects than fighting with my computer. So grab a copy of that book. It's really communicate. Automate free while you're at it. Pick up a copy of our podcast app it. Screw the commute dotcom slash app. That's a PPP. You can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. All right, we're still going strong on our pilot program to help persons with disabilities get trained in internet and digital marketing so they don't have to travel to a school. It's high quality distance learning, and they can legitimately be hired from home or start their own business or both. Now I took a grant writing course, so after I proved the concept with this pilot program, then I'm going to roll it out to big companies and foundations to help thousands of people with disabilities. So, so please give us a hand on this. We've got to go fund me campaign.

[00:03:06] You'll be amazed at the videos these people are shooting. Two of them are blind and they shoot better videos than I do. So check it out at I am TCV disabilities. That's my school website. And of course, the link will be in the show notes if you can't remember that. All right, let's get to the main event. So. So when is the best time of day for you to write and create products and notice? I said the right time of day for you. There's not a best time of day. That's the best for everyone. This episode is going to help you determine what the best time is for you to crank out high quality material. Well, let's talk a little bit about the science behind what I'm talking about here. And you all know in the last two years how everyone exactly follows the science, right? Maybe political science. But but anyway, let me read a passage about employees from the Harvard Business Review. Now, the same science occurs for the business owner, and what they're discussing here is the thing called circadian rhythms. So here's from the Harvard Business Review. Employees may want to be their best at all hours, but their natural circadian rhythms will not always align with this desire. On average, about or after the workday begins, employees take a few hours to reach their peak levels of alertness and energy, and that peak does not last long.

[00:04:45] Now, not long after lunch, those levels begin to decline, hitting a low around three p.m.. Now we often blame this on lunch, but in reality, this is just a natural part of the circadian process. After the three p.m. dip, alertness tends to increase again until hitting a second peak at approximately six p.m. Following this, alertness tends to then decline for the rest of the evening and throughout the early morning hours until hitting the very lowest point at approximately 3:30 a.m. After hitting that all time low alertness tends to increase for the rest of the morning until hitting the first peak shortly after noon the next day. A very large body of research highlights this pattern, although of course, there is individual variability about that pattern that was from the Harvard Business Review. So what are these circadian rhythms? Well, these are roughly about 24 hour cycles controlled by your brain. They tell your body when to be alert and when to sleep. Basically, because of these rhythms, you have peaks and valleys of alertness all day long. Now, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out that if you want your best writing and product production to happen. You need to be creating at your peaks of alertness during the day. Yeah, I know if you're still working the dreaded J-O-B, you can't always be working on your stuff when you're at work, but you may find you have other periods of alertness during the day when you aren't at work.

[00:06:36] Like the Harvard article said, maybe six p.m. after work, you could stay at the office and create stuff, or you could rush home and work for an hour or so while your energy is still up. Of course, you still have the weekend where hopefully you don't have to go to work and you have better control over your schedule. And yeah, I know many of you have family obligations, and this is where negotiating comes in. Maybe you say that you need two hours of uninterrupted time Saturday morning and then you and the family are going to go to the park to ride bikes and play frisbee or whatever he happened to negotiate. Then in the late afternoon, you do another uninterrupted session and then it's movie night or something. You figure out what works for you and your family, just just figure it out. For me, things have changed drastically over the years, especially during college, when staying up late was pretty much the, I'll call it, the norm of the dorm. Ok. Then I had a nightclub for six years, we're staying up until four a.m. was common and and I rarely got up before 11 a.m.. Now, during all those years, I was a card carrying night out, I'd say pretty much most of my life I was a night owl.

[00:07:59] Then in the past several years, I totally switched and I head up to bed at about nine o'clock, and most of the time I'm asleep by 11. I get up at 6:00, take care of the dogs, and I'm at my computer by 7:00 a.m. when it's quiet and I can bang out content. Now, it's even surprising to me that I made such a switch, and it seems to have come naturally. We'll find out later. I think it kind of did, but it's surprising because it's difficult to fight your natural circadian rhythms. Now, according to proofread, now you can actually change your circadian circadian rhythms, but you must be consistent. I think I got in that habit by forcing myself to to go to bed earlier because I had early morning consultations. After doing it for a while consistently, I started feeling better, and I even felt a greater sense of accomplishment when I got up early and got a bunch of stuff done or great progress on my next product before the workday technically started. Another thing that helps you keep a consistent circadian rhythm is to turn off all screens and bright lights an hour or so before you go to bed. I even wear an eye covering mass to keep a consistent sleep pattern, and I make it totally dark.

[00:09:30] Now, when you keep these consistent patterns and create habits at your alertness peaks, your brain loves this and functions way better than if it never really knows what to expect. You know, if you're all over the place and you're never consistent with your sleep patterns and everything, your brain is not going to function at its peak. Now, let's talk about the 90 minute rule. Famous researchers like Nathan Kleinman and Anders Ericsson found that even in your peak periods of alertness, you have ups and downs in the actual amount of alertness. And this is called I don't know if they coined this or not, but all all trade in rhythm or ultra radiant. I don't know some old tradition rhythm. What it is is 90 minutes of alertness, followed by 20 minutes of rest led to people's peak performance. They call this doing sprints instead of like working the grind all day long. Apparently, Klitzman found that your brain can only focus for 90 to 120 minutes at a time. Then it needs a break. Now, here's another cool thing that I knew intuitively and wrote about in my waking up business presentations book as early as 1994. Moneypenny, JD.com did a survey of two thousand people, and those people responded the ten point fifty four a.m. was when they were the most alert and isn't that funny that in most cases I have in my speaking contract four years, twenty at least twenty years that I start at approximately 11:00 a.m..

[00:11:22] All right. I called it brunch basically is when people were most awake and alert, and that's when I want to be speaking. Now, other studies show about one 30 p.m. So there is quite a range, but that really doesn't matter. What matters is what time is best for you. Now, Denny Tom, Tomasi or Tomasi was an assistant professor of economics at Monash University and an author of one of these studies. And I'm not sure if that's a male or a female, but anyway, this person said, I can drink as much coffee as I want, or I can eat as much chocolate as I want to try to adapt. But Tomasi says but in the end, our brains decide when we're naturally the most productive. And for many people, that's in the early afternoon. Now again, you can't take this as gospel because consistently switching times and sleep patterns can make your body adjust, and I'm living proof of that. But as I was researching this episode, now I understand why I have switched without really trying. Apparently, the studies have shown that the timing of our internal clocks change as we get older. And many of the studies conducted were on young adults where their sweet spot was between 11:00 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.. The prime productivity time for older farts like me, all right, gets earlier as we age automatically.

[00:12:58] Now, your social activities and work schedule also affect your rhythms, which is why shift work can be so dangerous, your rhythms get all out of whack and by the time your body adjusts. I mean, you're put on some other shift that messes up your rhythms again. I mean, it's kind of like jet lag. That's why I would usually fly in to speaking engagements on the West Coast or internationally several days in advance to give myself at least a little reasonable chance of being at peak alertness when it was my time to speak. But really, it takes longer than that to keep, you know, get into a habit. All right, let's talk about naps now, according to Pew Research Center. A third of U.S. adults nap on any given day, and I would have never dreamed that, according to sleep advisors, or a nap under 30 minutes leads to an energy boost and it was easy to wake up from. According to them, again, over 30 minutes can cause deep sleep. Grogginess and a difficulty waking up. Now, remember, none of these numbers are exact. They're a product of surveying hundreds or thousands of people. So here's an example of a 10 minute discrepancy. According to the National Sleep Foundation, one of their studies found that a 40 minute nap, which remember the other guy says or the other people said 30 minutes and above your groggy and you can't wake up.

[00:14:37] Well, this one said that a 40 minute nap improves your productivity by thirty four percent. So I don't know which one is correct, it doesn't matter what matters is is to figure out what's good for you. That's why you need to concentrate on y-o-u. Make a log of how you are feeling during the day, do it for a whole month, maybe even couple it with what and when you've eaten or or drank during those time periods. I think you're going to see patterns emerge that will help you pinpoint the best time for you. So folks, I don't pretend to be any kind of expert researcher on this stuff, but there's clearly people that have done the research. And if you pay attention to it and add it to your life, you can do a lot more with your business, probably a lot more with your personal life too. Probably for sure. And. Reap the benefits of the work of all these people that have studied so many people, but you have to personalize it for you. And if you want to change, you've got to be consistent about it. So go make yourself a log and start writing down how you feel at different hours during the day, what you've eaten, what time I keep a log of what I have eaten and rough, roughly what time I've eaten it, and then I can gauge that against how I'm feeling.

[00:16:10] So so you can do that too. All right. If you need help with this and all the other kind of stuff it takes to be successful online, check out my mentor program. It's the longest running, most unique, most successful ever in the field of internet and digital marketing, and I have no trouble saying that, and I'd be glad to explain the exact details why I can claim those things because nobody else will hold their program up to mine, because mine just blows them away. And it's all one on one. And my success is tied to your success and you get a scholarship to my school and you get trips to the retreat center and my TV studio. I mean, it's just amazing all the things that I've done consistently for people, for going on twenty four or five years now. Twenty two years at the retreat center. All right. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Go out there and make that log and be productive. Check those circadian rhythms. And I don't think it has anything to do with Cicada the 17 year. Don't wait 17 years like the 17 year cicadas that visit in Virginia. Every so, so anyway, I'll catch everybody on the next episode where we will all be more productive.