CHART OF THE DAY: When does work usually get done?

A few years ago I wrote about a study that concluded that the optimal day/time to conduct a job interview was exactly 10:30AM on Tuesday.

Back then, I wrote:

Even without data to back up that claim, it at least makes intuitive sense to me. Mondays are terrible for everything. Many folks mentally check out by Fridays. That leaves Tuesday - Thursday as options for any kind of important meeting, like a job interview. Let's automatically remove anything after lunch, as you never know how a heavy meal, quick workout, or a couple of shots and a Schlitz are going to have on the interviewer.

So that leaves Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. Let's rule out Thursday since it is close enough to Friday to catch a little of the 'Is it the weekend yet?' shrapnel. Now we are in a tossup between Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. And since even by only Wednesday, lots of folks might already be thinking 'How can it only be Wednesday, this week is taking forever?', Tuesday seems like a safer choice. As for a time - use the Goldilocks approach - not too early, not too late (and too close to lunch), which lands you at 10:30AM.

Made sense back then I guess. We (the Royal 'We', your mileage may differ), are at our peak of attention, focus, energy, and mental capacity at 10:30AM on Tuesday. So schedule that important meeting, interview, presentation - whatever you need to be at your best for, at that time and you increase your chance for success.

Remind yourself to check back on that at 10:30AM tomorrow, (assuming you read this on a Monday, which is when it is getting posted).

I came across a slightly different version of the 'When are we at our best?' question over the weekend via some research results posted on the Redbooth (a provider of project management software) blog titled 'At what time of day do people complete the most tasks?'.

Redbooth studied anonymized data from its user base - over 1.8 million projects and 28 million tasks to try and determine when does work actually get done? Take a look at the chart below that shows what they found about how much work gets done during the typical day.

Kind of makes sense, right? The day starts kind of slow, productivity begins ramping up steeply as the work day progresses and peaks at about 11AM local time (time zones of users were taken into account). Then there is a dip in productivity during the 'normal' lunch break hours that does not really recover as the rest of the day pans out. And around 4PM productivity drops off the proverbial clip and does not recover.

Again, not totally surprising like the answer to the 'When should we schedule the big meeting/interview/presentation?' question.

But a couple of things to note in the Redbooth data that might have an impact on how we plan and perform our work, (and how we manage the folks on our teams).

One, we probably should try no to interrupt our own and our people's most productive times with unnecessary meetings, interruptions, emails, and phone calls. If the sweet spot for productivity is from say 9:30AM - 12:30PM or so, then we should do just about whatever we can to keep that block of time free from distractions and other events that can cause conflicts. Take that standing 10AM Tuesday meeting and think about moving it to 3PM on Thursday, (or consider scrapping it altogether).

Two, the productivity drop is so sharp staring at about 4PM (and continuing through the night and weekends), that we all really need to be honest with ourselves about how much we and our teams are really getting done if we are the kinds that see 12 - 14 hour days and working at least some of the time on the weekends as the norm. The data from the Redbooth platform makes it pretty clear that despite whatever great work we think is getting done at 11PM on Wednesday, it does not add up to much in the data.

And finally, this data suggests or hints at something that many of us have known and research has suggested is true - sustained high productivity over such a large block of time - 8, 10, 12 hours, is really hard for most people to pull off. If we remain committed to the 'standard' working schedule that has dominated for decades, (M - F, 8 hour days, etc.), we should be thinking harder about how we architect work, tasks, meetings, interactions, etc. to try and get the most out of these long days - while not burning out ourselves and our people in the process.

Really interesting data, I think and hopefully helps us to think about how to be better at what we do and what we are trying to do.

Have a great week!

PODCAST: #HRHappyHour 298 - HR and the Productivity Network

HR Happy Hour 298 - HR and the Productivity Network

Hosts: Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane

Guest: Mike Psenka, President & Founder, Moovila

Listen to the show HERE

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve and Trish talk with Mike Psenka of Moovila, a technology solution designed to help people work together more effectively. While we all know that email is likely the worst tool for supporting collaboration and execution of important projects and goals, so many organizations continue to resort to email to facilitate how work is done. And the newer generation of enterprise collaboration tools that are 'chat' centric, have the potential to reduce organizational reliance on email, have their own limitations as their unstructured nature makes it hard for people to leverage them to tackle important and complex projects and tasks.

On the show Mike discusses these challenges, and how he and the team at Moovila are taking a different approach to collaboration, execution, transparency, and accountability. By making collaboration more purposeful, the activities and contributions of team members more visible and open, and creating a platform designed to support the real goals and vision of the organization, and not just collaboration for its own sake, Moovila is breaking new ground in the HR and workplace technology market.

Additionally, Steve provided a solid 'I hate email' rant, Trish shared some perspective on the upcoming HR Tech Conference, and we learned the true meaning of the word "Moovila'.

You can listen to the show on the show page here, or by using the widget player below:

Thanks as always to the HR Happy Hour Show sponsor Virgin Pulse, learn more at www.virginpulse.com.

Subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show wherever you listen to your podcasts - just search for 'HR Happy Hour' to subscribe and never miss a show.

REPRISE: You probably can only do one important thing each week

I saw this piece, 'If you must hold a team meeting, schedule it during this one hour' on Inc. this morning and I thought, 'I should blog about that', followed by 'I am pretty sure I have already blogged about that.'

And it turns out I had, kind of, a little more than a year ago when I deduced from various pieces like the one above from Inc. that attempt to give us advice as to the optimal time to schedule a job interview, important meeting, big contract negotitation, etc. Since in a year's time not much has changed it seems, and we all, still have a tiny window of prime productivity each week, instead of coming up with a new take on the issue, I will just re-run my piece from 2016 - You probably can only do one important thing each week.

Enjoy.

I caught this piece the other day on Business Insider - When to Schedule Your Job Interview, that quotes some research from Glassdoor from a few years back which indicates that all things being equal, the optimal time for a candidate to schedule a job interview is 10:30AM on Tuesday.

Even without data to back up that claim, it at least makes intuitive sense to me. Mondays are terrible for everything. Many folks mentally check out by Fridays. That leaves Tuesday - Thursday as options for any kind of important meeting, like a job interview. Let's automatically remove anything after lunch, as you never know how a heavy meal, quick workout, or a couple of shots and a Schlitz are going to have on the interviewer.

So that leaves Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. Let's rule out Thursday since it is close enough to Friday to catch a little of the 'Is it the weekend yet?' shrapnel. Now we are in a tossup between Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. And since even by only Wednesday, lots of folks might already be thinking 'How can it only be Wednesday, this week is taking forever?', Tuesday seems like a safer choice. As for a time - use the Goldilocks approach - not too early, not too late (and too close to lunch), which lands you at 10:30AM. 

As I said, it makes perfect sense, but it also sounded terribly familiar when I read the advice.

I feel like i had heard some variations of the 'Tuesday at 10:30AM' advice before. 

As it turns out, it is pretty common scheduling advice for other kinds of work/business events as well. This piece recommends scheduling important presentations for Tuesdays.  And this article also strongly suggests a combination of 'Tuesday' and 'late morning', (also known as 'Tuesday at 10:30AM), is an optimal time to conduct any type of negotiations.

If I had more time, and I wasn't staring down the weekend myself, I would do some more searching and I am pretty sure I'd find a bunch more examples of how Tuesday mornings are the best time to do anything important at work. So Tuesdays at 10:30AM it is.

Which is good to know and sort of sad at the same time. We work ALL OF THE TIME. We are chained to our email 24/7 with our 'smart' phones. We are (mostly), evaluated and assessed by our success in the workplace.

And yet there is only one 'good' time each week to do anything important. 

Tuesday at 10:30AM.

It's only Wednesday right now, so you have a couple of days to plan your attack for next week's sliver of time where you can actually do something important. 

Don't blow it. It won't come around again for an entire week if you do.

Have a great day!

Life at 2.0x Speed

I was talking to some folks I met recently at an event about the HR Happy Hour Show, and the cool things that are happening there with the other HR Happy Hour Network Shows, (I admit to talking about this a lot. I'm sorry). During the conversation, one of the persons at the table indicated that she would love to listen to more podcasts, but she (like many of us, I suppose), felt like she just didn't have enough time in her day/week to fit them in. With work, family, friends, community involvement, etc, spending a couple of hours a week listening to all the great podcasts that people tell her about just seems not doable for her right now.

At that point another person who was sort of half-participating in the conversation chimed in that he had the same challenge finding time for podcasts too, but he's 'solved' it by now listening to his favorite podcasts at 1.5x or sometimes even 2.0x speed. For those who don't listen to podcasts regularly, or who just may not be familiar with the speed adjustment feature of podcast apps, all of them allow you to increase the speed of the podcast stream to 1.5x or even 2.0x the normal speaking rate. So at 1.5x speed, a 30 minute podcast could be listened to in 20 minutes. At 2.0x you could cover it in 15. It just speeds up everything you hear. It is kind of like the old speed reading craze, except with audio.

But, and this could be just a personal issue for me, listening at 1.5x or 2.0x speed is really unsettling. The podcast hosts and guests all seem really amped up on six cups of coffee, everything about the conversation feels nervous, and listening to people talk that fast for that long, never taking what would seem to be natural pauses or breaths is just really off-putting. But technically you can listen that fast if you, as our friend above, are so pressed for time that turning 30 minutes into 20 is important in your day/life. But I still think you shouldn't do it. It's too weird.

Why do I care about this enough to blog about it?

I probably shouldn't care, but I have thought about that conversation and mister 'I listen at 2.0x' guy a few times since it happened a couple of weeks ago. And I kind of felt bad, (and a little guilty too).

Bad for a guy who is just a representative of our hyper-focused, productivity over all, 24/7, 'more-more-more', professional climate that seems to value doing as much productive work as possible at all times. And in this instance, turning the concept of time itself into something that can be bent to the gods of productivity.

And guilty for the fact that I don't speed up the listen rate when I play back podcasts, I do, often, find myself trying to make people get to the point faster, cut to the chase in emails, and text me instead of calling me - lest an interaction that can be reduced to 16 seconds actually take 3 minutes.

I don't speed up my podcasts, but too often I (try) and speed up lots of other things. And that is probably as unsettling as listening to sportswriters talk about the NBA draft at double speed.

NOTE: I spent 28 minutes writing this post. With any luck, next time I can get it down to 21.

The tyranny of connectivity

I am slightly ashamed to admit to having done a fair bit of 'real' work over the long Labor Day weekend, (including yesterday, Labor Day itself). 

Of course I didn't really want to work on Labor Day, or perhaps said differently, I did not want involve other people in said work, mainly by sending out email messages to them on a holiday. But, sadly, I indeed did send a few email notes out, interspersed with the other work that I was doing that did not need to involve communicating to others in order to complete.

And I as wind up the holiday, (I am writing this on Monday night, pretty late), I have three quick observations from my Labor Day spent, (at least partly), working.

1. LOTS of other people were working too. As I mentioned, I did, against almost everything I hold dear, send a few work-related emails on Labor Day. I received replies from almost everyone I contacted. And three or four people replied to me within 10 minutes of my original message. If Labor Day is meant to be a celebration of the working person, lots of working persons I know were also, actually, working.

2. NO ONE I corresponded with over email or chat on Labor Day did not mention the fact that it was, in fact, a holiday. No one questioned why I was messaging them. No one replied, 'hey, it is a holiday, I will get back to you tomorrow', and almost no one failed to get back to me by about 8PM ET, (as I am writing this). 

3. Aside from the aforementioned email exchanges, I spent most of my 'working' time on tasks that did not require outside collaboration, input, or communication. They were just things I needed to do, and were fairly important, but for some reason had not been done. I noticed my ability to get these tasks completed on a holiday, where I was not being peppered every 2 minutes with a new incoming email or chat message was incredibly enhanced. Quite simply, I was probably twice as productive working on these items on a holiday as I would have been on a normal Monday, when I am, like everyone else, almost constantly being barraged by incoming messages and requests. If I changed my working hours to say, 7PM - 3AM I swear I would be two or three times more productive than I am now. The technology and the need to stay 'connected' all the time during the normal workday is killing our ability to get things done.

I am not about to change my official work schedule to 'off hours', but I can't say that I am not tempted. there is something to be said for working when no one, (or most anyway), are not working, and you can be, despite our state of constant connectivity, be more or less alone with your thoughts.

There are thousands of productivity advice pieces that advocate that you consciously disconnect from email and work chat and Slack, etc. during the work day in order to get more work done. But realistically, how many people actually take that advice and feel comfortable and empowered enough to actually not be accessible to work colleagues for large stretches of the workday?

Most organizations, and teams, expect if not demand almost real-time access and response.

It is not until you spend a day, or even a few hours, working when that expectation simply does not matter until you realize how our constant connectivity damages our ability to get anything done.

Having said that, maybe I should not have been surprised so many other folks seemed to be working on Labor Day. They too must have realized that a holiday is the best day to get anything done.

Have a great week!