Work to Your Energy, Not Your Clock

Over the last few issues I’ve shared tips on how to tackle overwhelming amounts of work.

Personally, I write to-do lists to capture a full picture of what I need to do and I plot each task on a calendar to confirm I can get it all done. 

But all of that sounds like tips you only need it when you have a lot of work.

The truth is, scheduling is actually easier when you have a lot of work.

You spend all day in fifth gear, jumping from one task to the next, and collapse at the end of the day. Very healthy. 

It’s much more difficult to manage a less-than-jammed calendar littered with items that are medium-priority. 

Think about it, when you’ve just crushed two days with 20,000 deadlines and see you only have two tasks due next week. Which one do you choose?

It’s at this point that how you structure your day becomes important. 

Not What But When

Going through deadline hell comes with the one benefit of having your day laid out for you. No need to hem and haw about what to do next if there’s no choice. 

That should be the goal when structuring your own little daily hell. 

Not so much the suffering and collapsing, but the lack of hems and haws. 

To-do lists and time blocks can tell you what to do and how long you’ll need to do it, but when you choose to do what you do - that can be the difference between crushing momentum and decision paralysis. 

The Stupidest Hacks That Actually Work

(This is a five-part series. Find the links to parts #1 to #3 below in Further Reading.)

4. Day Sequencing

Let me walk you through how I sequence my day.

The goal isn’t to prioritize and create a rigid timetable. The goal is to figure out a loose rhythm that works with the phases of your brain. The scientific terms I use for my brain phases are foggy, caffeinated, and failing. There is actual science to this, but I’ll keep it vibes.

The Pre-Game

Last year my business partner shared this pearl: First thing when you get up, work for an hour, then start your day.

I tried it and immediately made it my daily routine.

Before I make coffee, before email, before Slack ruins my day, I pump out one uninterrupted hour of work. No expectations. No pressure. Just: make.

The beauty of this hour is that my brain’s not fully online yet. I can sneak past my own overthinking and inner critique. I write without judgment, sketch without cringing. It’s not always usable, but it’s always useful.

Plus, when I start my day in earnest, I already feel productive. 

Prime Time

Once I’m properly into the day, I treat my late morning and early afternoon as my “prime” hours. Writing strategy, developing concepts, building presentations, making stuff that actually matters.

It helps that by now, I’m caffeinated and fully awake. Firing on all cylinders. 

But I also structure this time of day around the fact that I can only go so many hours in this mode. It’s usually about six - and the last hour ain’t the same as the first hour.

There’s a business book called Eat That Frog that attributes a pretty great quote to Mark Twain: 

The thinking is do the scary thing first. I may or may not follow this, but leaving the scary thing for last is definitely asking for trouble. 

Instead, as I start to downshift later in the day, I switch to lower-stakes tasks: admin, emails, etc. Things that are better done with less brain. The game is to match the work to the energy, not the time.

Intermissions

Another juicy tip is when I take breaks.

Not when I’m tired. Not when I’m stuck. When I’m about to hit something easy.

If I’m in a good groove and I know what’s coming next is something I could do in my sleep, that’s when I get up. Stretch, snack, allez pi-pi, whatever.

The more typical approach is the opposite of this - crushing until you get stuck and only then breaking. 

But leaving right before a stretch of easy, familiar work means I can drop back in and fly through something and build momentum - instead of starting at a wall. It’s like hitting pause right before the chorus.

None of these tricks are groundbreaking. But that’s the point. The goal isn’t to engineer an airtight system, it’s to build a rhythm that you feel comfortable in and sets you up for success. 

Day Sequencing helps me show up and just start/keep moving, whether I’m on fire or just fumbling my way through. It gives the day a shape - and sometimes that’s all you need.

Further Reading

The last two issues have been about making to-do lists and time-blocking your tasks. After a good walk both of those are great ways to add structure to the shapeless blob of everything everyone expects of you. Look at Day Sequencing as a way of classifying the items in your lists and blocks. Task A just needs mindless doing. Task B needs three coffees. Task C can be done with useless tired brain. And so on.

The One-Question Interview

Working Creative: How has your approach to managing creative work and focus changed over the years?

Guy Georgeson: It sounds cliche, but exercise when I can - spin class, mowing the lawn, maybe coffee but sitting outside. If I'm not feeling that, I'll play piano or shoot some basketball to get completely away from screens.

I used to procrastinate on finishing edits and work very late into the night, pulling 20-hour days before deadlines. Now I try to wake up at 6am and get a solid 2 hours in before any distractions. I told myself for years that early mornings weren't conducive to creativity, but working until 6am just isn't sustainable as I get older.

When my eyes start to lose focus or my back kills, I know it's time to take a break. Or when I look at what I'm editing and despite spending hours on a scene, it just seems to be getting worse - that's when I know my brain is tired.

I think getting out of my pyjamas helps too. Even if I can work in my underwear all day at home, having a shower and putting on a nice shirt is key to getting stuff done. And realizing that prescription medication can help with concentration - a lot of editors I know have issues with procrastination, and there's no shame in medication that can help.

If everything's on fire and something absolutely needs to get done, I have young kids and work at home, so I'll send them to the store on a candy mission and set them up with an iPad. I regret it later, but I'll get the time I need.

Bonus Question:

Working Creative: What do you imagine/picture/visualize when you hear the words “Working Creative”?

Guy Georgeson: A Russian teenager using AI and making more money than I am, lol, just kidding, kind of.

But seriously, I imagine someone who is amazing at their job. If you can work as a creative today and get paid at whatever level you are at, you are doing something right.

Working creatively with others though - that’s the tricky part and what I think you can really hone over time. I’m fortunate to be in a position where I can pick a lot of my projects and timeline. I think it stems from being good at my job but also from getting along with others, taking criticism and not being an asshole.

No matter how good you are, actually being a Working Creative is only possible if you aren’t an asshole.

That would also be my one-sentence Ted Talk on the subject.

Parting Thought

I used to feel like it was a lack of self-discipline when I got tired at the end of a workday and felt like stopping for the day. Granted, in my twenties that was usually lunch time. But now I know it’s not laziness telling me to step away from the task - and it isn’t necessarily the right thing to do either. It’s a signal or a frequency I need to tune into. Maybe if I’m writing code and my brain isn’t clicking, it’s time to switch to browsing for mood-board images. “Not feeling it” isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card, but it also doesn’t mean that you’re not a good creative professional. Work with, not against, your energy. Bend like a willow to the winds of your thoughts.

“Forget about the worries on your mind.
You can leave them all behind.
To the beat of the rhythm of the night.”

- Debarge