Do things when you do them best

Between 4 AM and 3 PM, my brain is firing on all cylinders.

After that, my ability to do any kind of rigorous mental or physical work rapidly declines.

The best approach I’ve found to organizing my days is simply aligning with this observation: anything that is high effort I’ll do as early as possible — including writing this post.

Anything that requires relatively low effort, I’ll actively defer to later.

We are not the same person throughout the day.

There’s arguably a morning, afternoon, and evening version of us — perhaps even more than that — and each one is poised to perform certain activities better than other versions.

Instead of trying to do in the evening what the morning version of you can do 10 times better, deferring important problems for the late afternoon when you’re mentally fatigued, or any other suboptimal pairings, you’ll save a lot of time and feel a lot better by focusing on doing things when you know you can do them best.

It’s a remarkably simple and effective strategy.