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How to Bring Your Business Conversations to the Next Level

Whether you’re talking with prospective clients, a new business partner, or your coworkers, business conversations are full of potential. If we have strong communication and conversational skills, we can harness that potential and maximize the interactions. On the other hand, subpar conversations can lead to countless missed opportunities. If you want to bring the value of your conversations up a notch, here are some things to consider:

Demonstrate Interest

The best way to lay a strong foundation for any conversation is to make the other person feel valued and heard, and the best way to do that is to show your interest. Ask questions, stay focused, and genuinely listen to their responses. Create space for the other person to share. At the very least, you’ll make a good impression on them. More likely, you’ll wind up with valuable information you may have otherwise missed out on.

Communicate Value

Whether we’re hoping to earn a prospect’s business or wanting to team up with a referral partner to grow our business, it’s important that we focus the conversation on what we can offer, not what we hope to gain. I’m not suggesting trying to conceal your motivations, as transparency is an important element of clear communication, but it’s really about where the focus of the conversation lies. Of course, you’d like to turn that prospect into a client, but that alone isn’t going to earn you their business. Talk about your experience, why you’re passionate about your work, and be generous with sharing pieces of advice.

Learn Something New

Not all conversations have a clear goal. Sometimes, we’re simply collaborating with a coworker or touching base with our business partner. As I mentioned before, demonstrating interest can have a powerful effect on your conversation partner, but it goes beyond that. When you’re inquisitive, you learn more. Anything from book recommendations to new marketing strategies to solutions to challenging problems. In any conversation, see if you can walk away with a new piece of information.

Connect Emotionally

Conversations are about connecting with another person. Even in the business world, emotions play a role in communication. Empathizing and tuning into how the other person feels, for example, is something all great communicators do. Calculated, cold conversations rarely deliver the best results, especially if you’re hoping to build the relationship. Instead, being open and engaging is how you create that foundation level of trust. From there, more productive and honest conversation can take place.

Keep a Conversation Open

When you’re working on growing your network and strengthening your connections, learning to keep a conversation open is essential. You might be at a networking event or talking to a prospect. You don’t come to any conclusions in your conversation, but perhaps you talked about future possibilities. A great way to close these conversations is with the mention of a follow-up. Let them know that you’ll reach back out — and do. Even if it was just an interesting conversation with no outlook to the future, to develop that connection, How can we maximize the full potential of our conversations?don’t drop the conversation there. Is there a relevant email you could send down the line, asking a question or sharing something useful? Reinforcing connections in this way is an important strategy to strengthen your network.

 

How can we maximize the full potential of our conversations? When you start looking at conversations in this way, you tend to start putting in a bit more effort to make them fruitful. Realizing that conversation is the main currency of connection and using that to establish a more valuable network is powerful. Do you have any other tips for better business conversations? Please share them.

Networking Mindsets for Greater Success

What makes some people great networkers while others seem to struggle? They may be going to the same events, even meeting the same people, but one gets more positive results than the other. Often, the difference isn’t so much in what they’re doing but in what they’re thinking. Our mindsets about networking can significantly impact our success. So, which mindsets should you cultivate? Here are a few top recommendations:

What You Can Give, Not What You Can Get

Of course, networking has benefits for us. We think about greater visibility, connecting with more potential clients, increased referrals, and more opportunities sent our way. While these are all valuable benefits, they shouldn’t be your main focus when networking. Instead of thinking about what you can get, think about what you have to offer. You know that networking is important and beneficial, so you don’t need to focus on that. When you focus on what you’re able to give the other person, how you can add value for them, you can often create a stronger connection. Maybe you’re able to introduce them to someone or send a referral their way. Perhaps you simply follow up with some useful information. Whatever it is, this approach can set the tone for a great interaction.

There’s Always Something to Learn

Asking questions shows that you’re genuinely interested in what the other person has to say, and making your conversation partner feel valued is important. In addition to supporting a positive dynamic, this mindset will help you take in new information you otherwise may have missed out on. When you’re networking, it’s not just about meeting people, it’s also about learning. They may share a great book recommendation or tell you how they overcame a challenge you can relate to.

Valuable Connections Require Effort

The most valuable connections are the ones that are strengthened over time. Sure, it’s great to shake hands and connect on LinkedIn, but if the connection cools there, it’s unlikely much will come of it. On the other hand, if you send a follow-up after your initial meeting and get a second meeting on the calendar, you’ll be growing the relationship and building trust. From there, sending occasional check-ins and keeping the connection alive is key. Continue thinking about how you can add value for others so that you’re not just reaching out when you need a favor.

Network Strength Isn’t About Network Size

Sure, a large network can be a powerful tool. But as most of us know, the number of connections we have on LinkedIn or friends we have on Facebook isn’t necessarily representative of genuine relationships. If your network is smaller than you’d like, growing it is a great plan, but don’t rush the process just to arrive at some larger number. As I mentioned above, valuable connections require some effort, and it’s much better to build 10 relationships than it is to have 100 more connections you hardly know.

 

The way we think is reflected in our words and actions, and cultivating these strong mindsets can help us network more effectively. Do you have a networking mindset that has helped you succeed? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The Most Overlooked Aspect of Great Communication

This week, I wanted to dive into an often-overlooked area of communication. When we talk about communication skills, we tend to focus on what we say and how we say it. We think about things like clarity, tone, and brevity. These things are absolutely important, but if we don’t balance them with other important aspects, we can miss the mark. So, what’s this key element of great communication? Listening. It’s so easy to get caught up in what we want to say that we neglect the other half of communicating that is listening. Here are some useful strategies to give your listening skills a boost:

Remove Distractions

There are two important parts of listening. Of course, we want to take in information and engage with it. We want to truly hear what the other person is saying. The other part is that we want the person we’re speaking with to feel valued and heard. We want to make sure they know we’re listening. Removing distractions is essential to accomplishing both of these things. Distractions grab our attention. When you’re waiting for an email or see an incoming text from your boss, you may tune out of the conversation and miss what the other person is saying. In addition, when you leave your phone on the table or are interrupted with notification sounds, it can send a message that your attention is elsewhere.

Use Body Language

Thinking about showing that we’re listening, in addition to removing distractions, we can also use our body language to convey this. Maintaining an open stance, sitting up tall, making eye contact, nodding, and using facial expressions are all ways to show that we’re listening. They also help us to better engage and be more present in the conversation.

Accept Silence

Sometimes we’re eager to move a conversation along, or maybe we’re a bit nervous. Whatever the reason, from time to time, you might find yourself working to avoid pauses in a conversation. It’s important to become comfortable with occasional silences. Brief pauses are part of the natural flow of conversation. They give you time to digest information and synthesize new thoughts.

Ask Questions

This is a key reason that a brief pause may be necessary. That small silence will allow you to formulate a thoughtful question. While you might show up to a meeting with a list of questions, if you want to engage more deeply in the discussion, practice asking more questions on the spot. You can’t prepare for exactly what the other person is going to say, so creating all your questions in advance can leave you missing key pieces of new information. Whether you need more clarity on something, what to express your interest, or simply want to know more, asking questions is an important part of active listening.

Take Notes

Finally, it’s often worth bringing a small notebook with you to meetings. You don’t need to log every back and forth, of course. But by giving yourself a place to note important points, you make it easier to remember key questions down the line in the conversation. You also create a useful record for yourself. Finally, these notes are highly useful when you’re crafting a follow-up message. When you mention something specific from the conversation, the other person will feel reassured of your listening.

 

All great communicators understand balance. They know how to divide their focus between their own words and the words of others. They know how to tune in and be present, and they’re able to engage with new information on the spot. The next time you find yourself in a conversation or meeting, take some time to reflect on how you listen. By incorporating a few of these tips, you may be able to step up your game.

The Importance of Building Strong Communication Skills

We’ve been focusing on time-management and productivity strategies in this blog for a while now, and this week, we want to shift gears a bit to an equally important subject area — communication skills. Going forward, we’ll be sharing thoughts on all things communication, and this week, we wanted to dive into why these skills are so important for professionals to strengthen. Here are several areas where strong communication skills can give professionals the edge they need to succeed:

Collaboration

Working with other professionals can go in a variety of ways. Some people love it, while others dread it. Whether or not this is your preferred work style, being able to work productively with other professionals is a valuable skill. Collaboration can lead to new ideas, creative solutions, and growth for all parties. Perhaps it’s interacting with coworkers in the office or building a partnership with someone in a complementary industry. To get the best results from working as a team, you need strong communication skills to facilitate the partnership. From understanding who is responsible for what to clearly defining your common goals, clear communication should be at the foundation of all collaborations.

Networking

If you want to grow your business and discover new opportunities, networking is a must. A strong web of connections is a powerful tool for professionals, and it’s no surprise that communication is key to building it. A network isn’t just about having connections though, it’s about building relationships. To maximize the potential of your network, you need to engage with the people in it. Get to know them, share valuable information and connections, ask for advice. When you have strong communication skills, it becomes easier to form these kinds of relationships that make up a great network.

Customer Service

If your work has you engaging with clients, communication should probably be in your top three most important skill sets. The client experience we deliver largely depends on our ability to successfully communicate. Of course, we need to be able to clearly and articulately deliver information. But it’s more than that. We need to tune into tone and body language, we need to ask good questions, we need to listen well. When we strengthen these aspects of our communication skills, we’re able to provide better service to our clients.

Marketing

Marketing is all about communication. It’s how we express who we are and what we do as a professional to a large audience. Good marketing requires that we know what we want to say and how best to say it. You might be writing a post on Facebook or composing a blog entry for your website. Whatever the activity, when your marketing efforts are built on a foundation of strong communication skills, they tend to be more effective.

 

Communication skills are essential for professionals who want to build strong businesses. Whether you’re writing, speaking, reading, or listening, most professionals exercise these skills frequently throughout the average workday. If there’s a communication-related topic you’d like to read more about, leave a note in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Time Management Tips for Social-Media Marketing

Social media and digital marketing are undeniably essential for any business to thrive and compete. It has truly become the fastest form of advertising; everything is constantly being updated and changed. As a social media manager, no matter the time of the day or week, there is always more that can be accomplished. Social media moves at a rapid pace with multiple opportunities for any business to capture a new potential client. How do we, as social media managers, keep up? Time management is the key. However, creating the time you need to execute all you want to accomplish can be tricky. Here are a few tips that can streamline your workflow.

 

Create a Plan

Create a list of your marketing goals as well as the social media tools you want to utilize to attain those goals. Focus on what will have the largest impact on your productivity. Research the data to determine the best time of day, as well as the days of the week, for you to promote on social media and create your schedule accordingly. Create timeline goals. Allow yourself a certain amount of time to accomplish your marketing goals. Creating a schedule or routine that you stick to can vastly improve efficiency and productivity.

 

Eliminate Distractions

Social media is an amazing tool for businesses, but it is also a vacuum, sucking your attention and distracting you towards mind-numbing scrolling and entertaining distractions. Remember, you need to focus on the task at hand. Turn off your personal notifications. Close out all browser windows aside from the one you’re working on. Do not check your email when you are working on your social media tasks. Allow yourself a “break time” to check your personal social media, chat with friends, or respond to emails. The key is to be able to focus on your present task and complete it in a timely manner. Think of multi-tasking as a juggling act – eventually, something is going to drop. It is best to organize your thoughts, create a plan, and avoid distractions to conquer one item at a time with full focus.

 

Apply your focus to one tool at a time

There are many social media tools, and each tool is designed and geared towards certain demographics. It is important to clearly understand the demographic you’re trying to reach and utilize the tools that will help you reach your goals. Keep in mind that it is also essential to use the tools you are most proficient at. It’s much better to be effective using one social media tool than to use five of them poorly.

 

Determine what works and what doesn’t

It is important to evaluate your various online campaigns and determine those that are working and those that are not. Why invest your time and money into an avenue that has no benefit? Cut out the things that aren’t working, and invest more time elsewhere. There are so many tools for digital marketing at your fingertips that you can easily spread yourself too thin. Dabble as you like, but make sure to review your analytics and concentrate on the tools that are most beneficial to your business.

 

Rest

In a digital world, the human brain is more prone to sensory overload. Make sure to take the time to give your body and mind a break. You will be much more productive and effective with a good night’s sleep.

 

Social media and digital marketing are key for businesses to keep up in our constantly changing society. Create your routine, focus on the task at hand without outside distractions, and use the tools that you have found to be beneficial. If you utilize all these skills effectively, you will have a productive and effective marketing strategy. There will always be more to learn and more tools to try. Employing these tips will allow you the time to do so and allow you some much needed rest.

Using Time Management to Achieve Your Goals

When striving towards ambitious goals, time management is a key part of your strategy. Especially when it comes to long-term goals, staying in control of your time is essential. With countless distractions, work pressures, and other priorities, it’s too easy to let a goal fall by the wayside. We may procrastinate, hoping to get to it the next day or feel so overwhelmed that we decide to drop it completely. A strong time-management plan helps to prevent these things from happening. It can keep you on track and in control as you work towards your goal. Here’s how:

Set a Clear Timeframe

The first thing to get clear on with a goal is your timeframe. By giving yourself a deadline (or end date), you make it much easier to plan the day-to-day work necessary to get there. If you’re training for a marathon, for example, your training plan will look a lot different if you have one month to train versus six. A timeframe helps you set your pace. It helps you mark milestones for progress, so you know if you’re falling behind or staying on course. It also fights procrastination. When we have an ambiguous goal with no end date, it’s easy to postpone the work day after day. When we realize our time is limited, it ups the pressure a bit. That pressure can be a powerful source of motivation on those days that you just don’t feel like putting in the work. No matter what your goal is, before you set out, ensure you know when you plan to reach it by.

Break it Down

Once you’re clear on how much time you have to work towards achieving your goal, you’re ready to break it down. When we don’t give ourselves specific daily tasks to complete, a large goal can feel overwhelming. Many of us have busy lives with jobs, families, friends, and hobbies. Adding something else into the mix often requires a bit of effort. The clearer you can get with yourself about exactly what it is you’re adding in, the easier it is to make it fit. Identify the daily steps that will help you progress towards your goal, and map out a path, day by day. Having a small assignment ready for every day makes a goal feel much more manageable.

Use a Timer

Whether you’re trying to learn a new language or improve your marketing skills, determine how much time you plan to dedicate to those efforts every day. Then, set a timer on your phone and give your full attention to the task at hand. Defining a clear window of time in this way makes it easier to concentrate. Watching a timer countdown can keep you from stopping early, and carving out a specific window can keep you from skipping that day’s work.

Treat it Like Work

Finally, treat your goal like you would an important project at work. Remove distractions, avoid multitasking, and include your goal plan in your regular calendar. When we value our goals in this way, it helps us to maintain the motivation needed to achieve them. It helps us to see them as a priority and resist letting other things overshadow them.

 

When it comes to goals, time management is a tool to maintain accountability. Getting clear with time in every aspect of the goal-setting process is key. From the larger time frame down to the daily minutes of work, the better we can define this plan, the more likely we are to follow through. Has time management helped you achieve a goal? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Top Skills to Support Successful Time Management

If you’re striving to increase productivity, it’s worth looking at the challenge from all angles. Today, I want to explore the skills that support our time-management efforts. Our skills don’t exist in a vacuum. While time management is a skill in itself, there are several other skills professionals can develop to support it. Looking at these different areas is a must if you want to increase productivity. We can continue trying new strategies for greater efficiency, but if these important skills aren’t as strong as they need to be, those efforts can be in vain. Here are the key skills that support productivity:

Communication

In just about every profession out there, communication is a vital skill. Whether you’re interfacing with clients, working with coworkers, or connecting with a manager, strong communication skills lay a foundation for efficiency. Without strong communication skills, misunderstandings can eat up valuable time. Confidence can also take a hit. Instead of confidently sending an email, you’ll waste minutes or longer trying to explain yourself. Communicating well is a practice. Some of the most important elements to consider are clarity, medium of communication, and tone. The more you refine your ability to properly navigate these things, the more effective your communication will be and the less time you’ll waste making up for misunderstandings.

The second piece of communication that we cannot overlook is listening. We know that expressing ourselves is important to our time-management efforts, but understanding others is equally important in preventing misunderstandings. When you practice active listening, you save yourself time down the line. Instead of having to dig through emails or research something a coworker told you about, you’ll have paid attention to the information you need.

Note Taking

Along the lines of active listening, we can benefit from finding practical ways to store the information we take in. Keeping it in your mind may work for some, but for most of us, note taking is a great way to ensure that you don’t forget important details. When you have a go-to notebook for logging information, you prevent yourself from wasting time digging for that name your coworker mentioned or the date of a networking event you learned about recently. The better you are at taking regular notes, the more effective this system can be in helping you manage your time.

Organization

The information we take in during conversations and via email isn’t the only information we need to store. As professionals today, there is a wealth of information, much of it in digital form, that we need to keep track of. When we’re not organized, we’re asking for trouble with time management. When your inbox piles up, it becomes difficult to access important messages. When your desk is cluttered, distractions can easily take hold. When you don’t keep a streamlined to-do list, it’s easy to forget important tasks. The stronger your organizational skills, the less likely these time-wasters are to occur.

Problem Solving

Developing strong problem-solving skills is key for professionals today. When you don’t have strategies and techniques established for approaching problems, they can sabotage your day. Developing ways to creatively brainstorm, collaborate with other professionals, carve out time, and experiment with innovative solutions are all part of a strong problem-solving skill set. When you work to develop and build on this skill set, you decrease the amount of time problems will steal from your day. You allow yourself to more efficiently arrive at a solution, leaving yourself more time to focus on other things.

Decision Making

Finally, strong decision-making skills are essential for good time management. These skills help you determine which tasks you will tackle when. It might sound simple, but this is at the foundation of productivity. We need to understand how to prioritize our tasks, choose which ones need our attention, and determine the best time to accomplish them. When we don’t have strong decision-making skills, this becomes challenging.

 

If you’re focused on improving your time-management skills, don’t overlook other important skills that can help you get there. The way we manage our time impacts all parts of our workdays, so it makes sense that it incorporates so many skills. Are there any other skills that you find useful when it comes to time management? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Staying Productive in the Summer Months

For many professionals, the summer can feel a lot like that afternoon slump when the caffeine wears off and productivity drains. The beautiful weather (or sweltering heat) can make it difficult to maintain focus and keep efficiency high. Several months of this can start to take a real toll on our work. Whether summer is a busy time at work that requires significant concentration, or it’s a slower time that makes it challenging to stay engaged, maintaining productivity is important for success. With summer just around the corner, here are a few strategies to help you power through:

Find the Right Temperature

It sounds simple, but temperature can play a significant role in our productivity. In the summer, overly air-conditioned offices or rooms that don’t get enough air flow can zap our concentration. Think about the temperature in which you work best, and do what you can to achieve that. This is often much easier done if you work remotely, but even those in an office can plan for how the indoor climate will impact them. For those sensitive to the cold, keeping an extra layer handy can help keep an AC chill from slowing your workflow. If it’s the heat that’s getting to you, staying hydrated is key.

Get Active

Movement is a great strategy to support productivity. It can help give our energy levels a sustained boost and keep us from feeling restless throughout the day. Take advantage of those summer mornings and evenings and get outside to move. Whether it’s running, walking, biking, or swimming, getting active in the fresh air promotes productivity. If you find it difficult to get started at the office in the morning, a workout before work is a great way to wake up. If you feel a regular afternoon decline in energy, just a short walk outside can often do the trick to recharge your mind.

Set Goals

The summer can sometimes feel like vacation time. We’re more relaxed, the kids are out of school, and the pace of life seems to change a bit. This can be great in many ways, but it can also bring down our productivity. Let your personal life benefit from the more relaxed pace, but don’t let your work suffer. Setting some clear goals for the season is a smart strategy to keep you focused.

Try a Change of Scenery

Just as the pace of our lives can change in the summer, so can our routines. While in the fall and winter, routines may be more structured, especially if you have kids in school, those schedules often fade in the warmer months. If possible, allow for some flexibility in your work routine as well. One of the best ways to do this is by working from a new location. Perhaps you can spend an afternoon working from a cafe, or maybe you’re able to adjust your hours a bit. Allowing your work life to change shape a bit in the summer, even in subtle ways, can help keep you connected and engaged.

Enjoy the Season

Sometimes, the summer takes a toll on our productivity because we want to be outside enjoying it instead of inside working. It’s often easier to be inside at a desk when it’s cloudy and cold than on a beautiful July afternoon. Luckily, summer gives us ample time to enjoy. Take advantage of that. Getting out in the fresh air, enjoying time with friends and family, trying out a new hobby, and even just relaxing with a book all give our brains and bodies the chance to decompress from work, allowing us to return refreshed.

 

Don’t let the summer zap your productivity. Set yourself up for success by preparing for the changes that come with the seasons and planning accordingly. Though it has its challenges, with a few adjustments, summer can be just as productive as the rest of the year. Do you find that your productivity varies with the seasons? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Evening Routines to Boost Productivity

The quest to be more productive at work doesn’t start and end with the workday. To make significant changes in productivity, we often need to make lifestyle adjustments as well. One of the most powerful ways to give your productivity a boost is to look at your mornings and evenings. I talked about some great morning routines in a past post, and this week, I wanted to share some evening routines that can also support productivity. Here are some of my favorites:

Consistency

The key to reaping the benefits of a routine is to make it consistent. It’s one thing to design a great routine, but it’s another to follow through with it every day. When crafting your evening routine, start small. Look at what you already do every night and just add a few things from there. Once those have become a natural part of your night, add a few more. Over time, being consistent will reduce the amount of effort needed to do these nightly tasks, and it will allow their positive effects to accumulate.

Make Your Plan for Tomorrow

Setting aside a window to plan for tomorrow is a great way to prepare your mind for unwinding. Once you have everything down on paper or in your phone, you don’t have to worry about holding it in your mind. It can give you a sense of tidying up the day and bringing your efforts to a close. It’s also a great strategy to have a plan in place when you begin your day, so this will help in the mornings as well. In addition to looking at the specifics like meetings and tasks, this is a great opportunity to check in on your goals.

Give Your Morning Self Some Support

That evening plan is a useful tool for your mornings, but there’s often even more you can do to foster productivity. Simple things like laying out clothes, packing a gym bag, or preparing your lunch can all make your morning run more smoothly. Reflect on your own morning challenges, and see which of those could be addressed in the evening. Checking things off the list the night before can make it much easier to relax.

Ditch the Screens

We’ve all probably heard this tip by now, but how often do we actually practice it? For many of us, our phones and computers have become extensions of our person. All that stimulation in the evening can make it difficult to get good rest, and that can limit productivity. Whether it’s checking work emails or just watching a show, see if you can limit that screen time in the evenings. Maybe try setting a time limit, with no screens after a certain hour, or making your bedroom a screen-free zone. It can always be challenging at first if you’re used to having your phone, but with some practice, this can be a powerful tool to set you up for better productivity.

 

These are a few of the strategies that I find effective, but everyone’s ideal routine will look different. The idea is to take the time to identify which actions will help you most and to make the effort to do them every day. When you make that commitment to a healthy evening routine, you’re setting yourself up for a productive tomorrow.

When Should You Work? Understanding Ultradian Rhythms

You’ve likely heard of the circadian rhythm that influences our sleep and wake cycles, but the ultradian rhythm hasn’t gotten the same level of attention. Recent research into this bodily cycle has found it has powerful implications for productivity. If you’re striving to improve your efficiency, it’s wise to take a look at the things that are out of your control and how you can use them to your advantage. The ultradian rhythm is one of these things that, when tuned into, can have powerful benefits.

What are Ultradian Rhythms?

You’ve probably noticed that your energy, focus, and productivity levels are not constant but instead, fluctuate throughout the day. Perhaps you’ve really noticed these shifts and pinpointed a regular afternoon slump or morning energy boost. What you’re noticing here is, in part, your ultradian rhythm. The ultradian rhythm is the 90-to-120-minute cycles that the body moves through throughout the day and night. Every 90 to 120 minutes, we experience a period of significant energy, followed by a period of fatigue. When sleeping, these cycles correspond to our sleep cycles. When awake, they can play a significant role in our productivity.

Peak Productivity

Though we all have our own ultradian rhythm, research suggests that around 11am is a period of peak productivity for many people. The more you start to notice these cycles of energy and fatigue, the better you can plan your schedule to maximize your energy. Schedule those tasks that require intense focus and attention for a time frame when you know you’ll be at your most alert. Rather than fighting your body and trying to push through a period of rest, timing your tasks can allow you to maximize productivity.

Peak Creativity

Interestingly, some research suggests that, unlike peak productivity, peak creativity may happen during a fatigue period. The relaxing of the mind can allow new ideas to flow more freely. If you’re working on a creative project or need to think out of the box to solve a problem, time it with one of these more relaxed points in your cycle.

Strategy

We can’t control this system, but we do have a few choices. We can ignore it and continue trying out external strategies to improve efficiency; we can work against it by forcing ourselves to work on highly-focused tasks during windows of fatigue; or we can harness it and use it to our advantage. Since we know these cycles are about 90-120 minutes in length, it makes sense to work in similar bursts. When you’re in an alert window, give all your energy to the task at hand. When you move into a window of fatigue, allow your body the time to rest. Working in bursts like this may feel different than the typical structure of a workday, but it can dramatically improve productivity.

 

If you tune into what’s happening in your body, you can give your productivity a real boost. If you’re used to being in go-mode from the time you wake up to the time you fall asleep, this might be a challenge. I’d recommend giving it a try, though. It may take some time to identify your own cycles and plan your schedule accordingly, but the results are absolutely worth the effort.