Update: I decided to place the form at the top of the post to make it easier to download. Grab it here: Blank Daily Productivity Heatmap (4775)
I’ve been a bit bottlenecked recently with some of my posts. I’ve been stewing over A Special Theory of Productivity and trying to figure out the best way to present it. Meanwhile, another post that I’m working on also needs some preluding explanation. This post is related to both of those.
I’m a huge fan of heat maps, and here recently I’ve started to think about productivity in terms of heat maps, as well. The above picture is a heat map of my daily productive capacity.
Productive capacity is different than what you’re actually producing. The way I think about it is that it’s the amount of productivity that you’re capable of in a given amount of time. Of course, many different things affect you’re ability to be productive, so there’s often time a bit of difference between productive capacity and productivity.
It seems that productive capacity is all of the enabling dimensions listed in A General Theory of Productivity except for ideal time. I’ll be working more with how to figure out ideal time in future posts.
I’ll give a quick legend to decipher colors, although most of it should be obvious for people familiar with heat maps:
Red: This is where productive capacity is the highest. All systems are operational and ready for the captain to give the signal to go to warp speed. This is where I get all of my creative heavy lifting done. I call this level the “nova” stage (from “supernova”) because it’s really hot and intense, and it’s also something quick to say to my wife so that she knows what’s going on with me (I get really, really frustrated by trifling issues during novas, since I am acutely aware of what else I could be doing).
Orange: This level of productive capacity is the waystation between creative awesomeness and merely puttering along. A lot of work can get done here, but you’ll be somewhat aware that you’re working.
Yellow: This level of capacity is the idle status. Some productive work can be done, but it’s not going to be high-level, lose-track-of-time type of productivity.
Green: At this level, I’m spending more energy trying to keep work than actually doing the work itself. Creativity, motivation, or focus is pretty much gone.
Gray: Hopefully I’m asleep at this level. Unfortunately, all too often I’m still trying to get something done or can’t sleep because some idea is teasing me.
So, you may be wondering why I decided to present this on a modified clock face rather than the standard columnar way that we normally present time. First, the “heat” of heatmaps is normally mapped over something the way it actually appears. For instance, website heatmaps display the relevant information over the way the site is presented to the reader. More importantly, though, I like to think about time in its natural, circular state, since I get a better overview of the relatedness of yesterday’s activities to my state today. Lastly, it takes up less space to get the information across once you understand the paradigm.
A few other other presentation notes. I use twenty-four hour time for convenience and so that there’s no need for two clocks. I only use four colors because it captures all of the information I need and keeps me from quibbling about whether something’s red-orange, orange, or red. Gray is used instead of black because it’s easier to see and black is too often associated with death or some really, really bad state.
There’s a good deal of usefulness from thinking about your day in this way. It helps answer the following questions:
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Why do I have more productive capacity at some times than others?
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How can I move from one level to the next?
The heatmap above is my (more or less) natural rhythm. With a little caffeine, food, and space, it’s what my day will generally look like. But I’ve often wondered what I can do to move myself from a lower level of productivity to the next.
What I’ve noticed from trying is that I really can only shift up one level. For instance, I can’t get myself to go from yellow to red, although I can easily go from red to yellow. (Apparently productive capacity is like heat: it goes from hot to cold pretty easily, but it takes a lot more effort to go from cold to hot.) But, moving from yellow to orange is a pretty good increase in productivity, so even making that change is worthwhile.
I’ll discuss the specifics of this in a future post, but I’ll give a quick example. The block from 1100-1400 (11 am to 2 pm) is the block that is the most malleable block of time but it’s often the second most important part of the day (after the morning) since what happens during that block determines how the rest of my day will go. I have a few relatively simple methods for shifting that block up:
- Eat a healthy, long burning breakfast (usually oatmeal w/raisins, yogurt, a banana, and a couple glasses of juice).
- Drink roughly 8 oz of water an hour.
- Coordinate with my wife so that she knows I’ll not be up for going out for lunch and will probably just grab something quick.
- Don’t check email, turn the phone on silent, and leave the phone in another room.
- Eat that quick lunch–take no more than 30 mins for prep, eating, and cleanup.
- Stretch or walk for about five-ten minutes.
- Get back to work. Do not check email or your phone messages during lunch.
- Continue to drink 8 oz of water an hour.
(I’ve written about this here)
I told you it was relatively simple, didn’t I? It works because it preempts all of the things that make me naturally downshift:
- The good breakfast keeps energy levels high.
- The water does two things. First, it makes you think better. Second, it makes sure you take a break every hour or so, so you stretch, rest your eyes, and have a mini-break at regular intervals.
- The coordination with my wife lets her know that I’m going nova and removes that wasted 30-45 minutes when we’re both trying to figure out what the other’s doing for lunch.
- The quick lunch ensures you don’t disengage from what you’re doing.
- Not checking email and phone removes a lot of distractions and opens up a lot of psychic RAM. Having the phone in the other room removes it from my view and keeps me from even thinking about it.
I’ll warn you that if you do this, you may not be good for a whole lot of work afterwards, unless you’ve got much more mental fortitude than I do. Just make sure you do the right things during that block so that you’ll feel rewarded for what you’ve done.
The plus side, though, is that I often do an entire week’s worth of work in those six hours, so I can spend the rest of the time, all things being equal, on other pursuits. Like writing absurdly long blog posts.
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How should I plan my day?
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It explains why I get so pissed when I wake up late
You’ll notice on the heatmap above that from 08-11 and 14-16, I go nova. Then towards meal times I start to downshift. One obvious reason for this is that I get hungry and my blood sugar drops. A second, less obvious reason this happens is that I can only sustain peak focus for about three hours before I lose it.
A lot of the same reasons explain why I’m not good for a whole lot after 1600 (4 pm for those not familiar with 24 time). If it’s been a good, productive day, I’ve burned burned myself out by that point.
Knowing what your rhythm is allows you to plan the right tasks for the right times. I think a lot of personal planners miss this and people look at all chunks of time as being equal. All chunks of time are not equal! I can get more done from 0800-1000 on most days than I can from 1600-2000, even though the latter block has twice as much time.
As can probably figure out, I try to put my writing in the morning blocks, since I know that I can go nova during those periods. I may do some editing, planning, or networking during the orange blocks, and I try to check email and other low horsepower stuff from 1600-1700.
Leveraging my day like that ensures that I’m not up at 0200 in the morning trying to work and creating a product that I’ll spend more time editing the next morning. It does that in two very powerful ways: 1) I’m normally very satisfied with what I completed that day, as I know I couldn’t have done any more than I did, and 2) I’m exhausted by 2200 (10 pm) or so, and if I’m thinking clearly, I know I’m going into a phase in which the time would be better spent sleeping.
If I wake up past 0930 any day I’m grumpy for a long, long time because I know that the best, productive block of time is done. I’ll be at half-capacity, and I’ve got way to much that I’d like to do for that.
So I’ll try to work late that day, go to bed at 0445 (I’m not kidding), wake up late (1000ish) the next day, get pissed, go to bed at 0330, wake up late the next day (1100ish), and not be good for anything because I haven’t been sleeping, eating, and drinking like I should. Luckily, I’ll generally be so exhausted by the third day that I sleep well and can start the right rhythm over again. But doing that loses me four nova blocks during that three day period, and those blocks are far too valuable to squander that way.
Heatmapping your productivity is a great way to get a grip on figuring out how to be more productive and how to plan your days. As as we learned from G.I. Joe, knowing is half the battle!
I’ve included a blank heatmap in case you want to go through this exercise yourself. It may take a few days of recording for you to find your natural rhythm. Get out your highlighters and markers! (If you find the Productivity Heatmap really helpful and valuable, please consider donating as that encourages me to keep creating these types of aids. A dollar or two goes a long way for motivation.)
Blank Daily Productivity Heatmap (4775)
If you liked this post, please consider subscribing to my feed, commenting, or submitting it to StumbleUpon or Digg. If you find the heatmap helpful or have any suggestions for how to make it more useful, please let me know; with enough nudging, I’ll continue working on these types of aids. Thanks for sharing your time with me, and I appreciate your support!
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41 comments ↓
I like this heatmapping concept, and it’s very useful to identify and work within your highly productive hours. My problem is my natural rhythms are not conducive to being a wife and mother.
I’m a night person and if I worked only when it was best for me that would mean chaining myself to the computer from about 4-7pm and then 10.30pm-1.30am. It’s really annoying because as a writer, it’s slow going when I try to work outside my natural creativity peaks. I can sit down in the morning and end up with maybe 400 decent words two hours later. Whereas at night those 400 words will spew out in about 20 minutes.
Love your blog. I’m going to subscribe.
Kelly
Kelly@SHE-POWER’s last blog post..SHE-POWER Fiction: The Missing Baby
Thanks for the comment and for subscribing, Kelly! I oftentimes think about how hard it must be to be a second-shifter because everyone else is obstensibly off and it’s more or less the time most people spend with families. Third shifters fare a little better, as people sleep, but second shift is the sweet spot for family and friend time.
I’m personally pretty lucky that my wife detests the morning before 1100, so I have free reign to do what I want as long as it’s quiet.
I am confused and need clarification. To me the term nova signifies repeated bursts of intense activity since that is what a nova does in nature–relatively short bursts of intense output repeated at a period determined by the ratio of external pressure to inward pressure. The key is the recurrent nature of the nova. Seems like a weekly review intended to slough off high pressure items.
A supernova in nature cannot reoccur. Das ist alles for the star. The end. Can you clear this up for me? I can be reached at sidvacuous at yahoo dot com. Thanks.
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@ Ed: You are exactly right that I should have been more clear on this. Most conflate ‘nova’ with ’supernova’, so I went with the reference to what more people would know. Technically speaking, however, I should have just used ‘nova’, since stars can have multiple novae but only one supernova.
I use this term rather than ’steaming’, ‘hot’, or ‘really productive’ because it motivates me a little more. The main point is that it’s a quick reference for self-observation and it allows me to communicate quickly with my wife.
Thanks so much for commenting on this and helping me clear it up. If there’s anything other questions, please let me know.
@ Techblogger: Thanks for the link. I hope you find this helpful.
This article led me to your site, but looking though your posts has been brilliant! I’m a couple years out of undergrad, and work in theatrical Stage Management and Set Design, two fields that can be difficult to balance at times - usually I find them complimentary in many ways, but my processes can be wildly different for both, depending on a variety of factors (not the least of which is the *wide* variety of people and settings you’re expected to work in, collaboratively and under strict deadlines). Working on myself, my creative/productivity processes, and being a life-long learner are vital things for me, and your tone and words are absolutely DEAD ON with what I’ve been looking for in a blog.
I’ve subscribed - keep up the great work, and I look forward to reading more in the future!
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Hey I’m with Kelly. I’ve always been a night owl and often find that I can work until 3 or 4 in the morning without feeling tired. The problem is that I have a JOB from 7 AM-3:30 PM. So if I do my personal projects, write, or play until the wee hours of the morning I’m absolutely wasted! I’ve been reading some of those articles on “cheating sleep” but haven’t tried it yet. I think the old fashioned way seems to be the best–eat, sleep, exercise.
I love the heat map concept. It took a dry little thing like charting your time and made it a little more tolerable.
Dustin Boston’s last blog post..Happy First Easter!
[...] How Heatmapping Your Productivity Can Make You More Productive | Productivity and Personal Developme…Heatmapping your productivity makes you more productive because it explains your productivity trends, how you can increase productivity, and how to plan your day. [...]
[...] mentioned in How Heatmapping Your Productivity Can Make You More Productive that I thought most personal planners got time wrong and presented all blocks of times as being [...]
@ Ben: Thanks for the wonderful comments and for telling us a little bit about yourself. I can see how managing those sometimes divergent roles could be tough; few people are harder to manage than creatives. If there’s anything I could write about that would be particularly helpful, let me know! I look forward to hearing from you.
@ Dustin: I think the “old fashioned way” is the only one that’s sustainable over the long haul. I haven’t tried polyphasic sleeping, either, although it’s an option. It’s hard to use the second shift to fuel the third shift when everyone else is active on the second shift. Maybe we can think about ways to help keep you working during your peaks without hurting your performance at work…
Thanks for the comment, the link, and subscribing! If you can think of anything that would make the heatmap concept and aid more useful, please let me know.
@ Honest Holly: Thanks for the link and review!
Love the idea of the personal heatmap. Not too crazy about pulling out the highlighter and markers.
Are there any programmers out there that can develop something that we can click on over the period of a day and then generate our personal heatmap?
@ John: Thanks for the comment. There are a few ways around having to program something new without pulling out the markers:
1) Use the codes R, O, Y, G, and Gy to represent the colors. It would still get the information across without having to color. I figured people would just make ticks with markers, but I’m sure the parents wouldn’t mind letting their kids color them in completely.
2) This was created in Omnigraffle. I could make that file easily available. With OG, you could just drag the color into the wedge and it’d color it for you. It gets bonus points for being really easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.
3) I could make it as a Powerpoint file for (nearly) universal compatibility. Wouldn’t be as pretty or as easy to use as OG, though.
Lastly, whether I’d go the full route to having it programmed would depend on how popular it becomes. I’d probably make the app donationware. If anyone wanted to get this going, I take donations, and you could just comment on the donation that you would like the money to be earmarked for app development.
While one size very rarely fits all, I’m worried that having an app that does this would be more distracting if not pulled off correctly.
I’m willing to pursue any of these avenues if people are interested. Just bump it if you are.
We’ll see where it goes. Thanks for the feedback, John!
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Here’s a technique that would make this heatmap even fancier… i’d make it, but im far to busy.
Create a excel spread sheet with each column broken down into each hour of the day. Set a reminder on your outlook or egg timer to remind you once an hour to “rate” your level of productivity. Enter a number between 1 and 10.
Complete this over the course of a week each day on a new column of data.
Take the average at the end of each week and apply that data to the heatmap (or graph or pie chart).
Conditionally format the graph so that low averages are green, medium numbers are yellow and high levels are red.
Then it will be always updating and super fancy schmancy
@ Justin: Great suggestion! I could make a whip up a template to make it (mostly) fiddle-proof, too, as that would probably counter productive. I’ll put it in the queue. Thanks for taking the time to give some input!
This is a great idea — don’t get me wrong, I love this particular concept — but this needs to be automated. IE a sensor you can wear for 24 hours that tells you, based on electroimpedence or other measure, when you are most alert and focused.
Self-rating isn’t accurate enough. I know, for instance that between 230-330pm I am next to useless without a lot of artificial wake-me-up drugs, but beyond that the granularity of my day is beyond my ken.
Independent verification FTW
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Love the idea, and you saw where I posted about it on my own blog. John B made a comment about wanting some type of app that you can use for tracking your productivity during the day, and I’m curious if that has ever gone any farther. I would love to see something like that come to fruition.
John F’s last blog post..Decisions
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@ Thirtyplus: Thanks for the feedback. I’m still having a hard time telling whether you’re serious about the automation of this. Let me know if you are or whether you were just kidding.
@ John F: You’re the second person that has expressed interest in the creation of an app. I’ve got a good picture of what needs to happen to balance simplicity and usefulness, but I have zero programming skills and thus will have to outsource the actual coding of it. I also have ways that it can plug into the Daily Productivity Planner. With more feedback I’ll move it from concept to reality. I’d LOVE to pursue this further. Thanks for the feedback.
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@Charles: I’m afraid I can’t be of much assistance for programming. However, if there’s anything else I can do to help, feel free to let me know. I would love to see this become a reality. Drop me a line at ki4hrg /at/ gmail dot com
John F’s last blog post..Pop Music
[...] sets involves the use of color. This became even more apparent to me when I started designing the Daily Productivity Heatmap and the Daily Productivity Planner because of my use of colors. I stated in my post about [...]
This is a great application of the idea that our daily productivity follow a kind of rhythm. Now and then I have had an insight into my own productive capacity, and I moved my most creative work to the morning,and my errands to the afternoon.
This worked MUCH better for me, and helped me to schedule my day with better skill. I now do my best to protect my mornings from intrusions, including email, and try to get my best work done before 12:00pm.
I love the heatmap — it’s a great representation of the idea and one that I think I can use immediately. It would help me as I schedule each day, as I could tell at a glance what my energy is likely to be like in any given day (although I know there are fluctuations.)
There is a concept I remember reading about called biorhythms, which deals with how our energy levels shift during a given month, but that’s not a concept that’s as useful as the daily rhythm.
Francis Wade’s last blog post..How I Do My Capturing
@ Francis: Thanks for the feedback. I’m like you - I firewall and fight to have my mornings distraction-free, because that’s when I’m at my peak. Let me know how if it helps or if there’s anything I can do to improve the tool.
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I’ll try heatmapping my productivity
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