Confession, I am an introverted morning person. My favourite thing to do at 3 pm is lying in the fetal position in my bed or on the couch (which doesn’t always work as I have a job and a family). Knowing these things however quirky can give great strength to how I organise my life and in particular my days.

As the saying goes, if you continuous organise beautiful days, you’ll end up with a beautiful life.

In a previous article I spoke about values and how they should drive how you organise your life, how it fits into your personal finances and now we’ll explore how you can add value by organising your perfect day(s).

First question – are you a morning person or a night owl?

Utilise your predisposition, you don’t have to be a hardcore 4 or 5 am convert. I don’t always leap out of bed, unless I have a clear purpose. However I find that the days I wake up early, do some work, spend several hours in solitude are my most productive and favourite types of days.

By the time everyone wakes up I had my serenity, probably produced more than I would in a normal 9-5 schedule and have more flexibility to deal with whatever unexpected thing the kids, work or life throws at me.

Do what is valuable but hard in your peak energy states

I like having a clean organised home, learning, producing good quality work etc. knowing when I have most energy I can tap into that. Hard thinking, writing, cleaning, exercise, food prep you name it, what I can do between 5 am and 10 am seems superhuman to my husband who is a night owl. It seems superhuman to myself because at 3 pm “there ain’t that much happening”. The kids are used to me saying for an hour in the afternoon that I can’t adult right now but will come back soon.

Slack off when you are already slacking off anyway.

If you “know thy self” you can organise accordingly. I feel less guilty having a moment at 3 pm when I have produced good quality work, moved forward with my job, study, business or home project in the morning. I often gift myself either the plan for tonights dinner or some food prep, a clean house etc. so for practical purposes the overall effect of my very strong 3 pm slump is not noticeable to anyone (who doesn’t live with me).

Share the load

If you figure out who is most energetic at different parts of the day you can organise accordingly. For example, I don’t ask my husband to unload the dishwasher at 7 am, he doesn’t expect me to clean up after dinner at 8 pm.

Some research into this phenomenon

I loved the book the 20-minute break by Ernest Laurence Rossi, it talks about the human circadium rhythm it states we can produce good quality work for 1.5 – 2 hours the body then needs to rest for 20 minutes. I’d like to add that it could benefit potentially from doing something very different, letting your subconscious roam and get back to the task at hand maybe one more time today, noting also that there are strong arguments that we are kidding ourselves about being productive for 8, 10, 16 hours a day most people can produce between 3- 5 hours of high-quality brain power. I think someone should build a sign for us seeing a lot of us are now in the knowledge economy.

Warning – knowledge work is only feasible for 3-5 hours a day, don’t kid yourself, go out , chat and play the rest of the time.

Coffee time, ice coffee, coffee, cake and water

If you link this to when you feel more energetic you are onto a very powerful combination of working with your strengths, rather than fighting “the (your own) systems”, this in turn makes you a very organised person.

An example of how Ms Straver organises her days:

I wake up between 5 – 7 am depending on what I have on that day and how many 5 am mornings I have done recently.

5 – 6 am Wake up

Don’t talk to anyone (for a while),I often start with a coffee do some reading or computer work

8 am Early morning

The time normal human’s start to function

I do some exercise, cleaning, tidying and eating

9 am*- 1 pm – Day Time

Meetings / Outings

*note I have already done one bout of work and some exercise or organising the house when 9 am arrives.

2- 4 pm - Rest

Where possible do as simple tasks that take little energy

4 – 8 pm - Wrap up the day

Sometimes we have our evening exercise here/ Dinner / Chat / socialise

8- 9 pm – Transition to sleep

Go to bed early with some reading

These are clearly just ideas the fact that you are reading articles like this means you are pretty bright and can figure out what works for you. I hope however that you take a few ideas away from this page. Use whatever autonomy you have over your own schedule to work with your energy levels, watch your results in organising and other areas of life unfold.

Do you like this post?

You’ll love the book “How to organise your home and paperwork”. I’ll explain the Essence of Clarity organising system which will help you breakdown decluttering and organising in simple and manageable steps.

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If inspiration strikes you, you could even become an uber nerd (like yours truly) and make an energy schedule notice the red block. It helps me accept that during that time of the day I should be kind to myself rather than push through and create mediocre / bad work.