Finding Your Peak Hours

Lessons from the Long Haul

The moment that the sky turns from dark blue to a lighter gray, the metal blinds cast thin silver lines across the room. The robins have been up for hours, their caroling energetic and clear as it echoes throughout the neighborhood, only to quiet down as soon as the sun fully rises. This is when my real work begins—in that hushed space after the world's morning chorus, when focus feels possible again.

It took me years to fully lean into these early morning tendencies, this pull toward the return of light each day. "How did you manage growing up in the land of the midnight sun?" people ask me, as if Alaska's endless summer light holds some secret to productivity. I have no idea. It's one of those mysteries of being an Alaskan kid—sleeping with windows open, screens letting in cool breezes but not mosquitos, blinds up and the sky as bright as midday at 11 PM.

In college, I'd find my studying stride in the later evening when the dorm finally quieted. My summer hotel desk shifts started in the late afternoon, which meant clocking out around midnight. Needing time to wind down, I'd stay up another couple hours, the sky still bright as daytime. My athletic club job sometimes demanded 5:30 AM starts. In grad school, I ran long experiments that needed time for contingencies. I’d arrived when the morning fog along the coast had not yet lifted, just as someone else wrapped their overnight shift, NPR's morning edition voices filled the space between sleep and wakefulness.

Through a dozen different schedules across hotel lobbies, lab benches, and government offices, I learned something essential: each person carries their own energy fingerprint. Not early bird versus night owl—something more nuanced. The particular rhythm of when your mind feels sharpest, when your body wants to move, when you can sustain the patient work that climate challenges demand.

Field-Tested: Mapping Your Energy Fingerprint

Your energy moves in patterns throughout the day, rising and falling like tides. Research shows our cognitive performance naturally peaks and valleys in predictable cycles, yet most of us schedule our days around meetings and deadlines rather than our natural rhythms. This disconnect drains the very energy we need for the long-term persistence climate work requires.

Take a week to track these patterns:

Notice your daily energy landscape. How do you feel when you first open your laptop? After your second cup of coffee or tea? During that post-lunch lull when the afternoon light slants differently through the window? Make notes—not judgments, just observations. Does the end of your workday feel heavy with accomplishment or scattered with incomplete thoughts?

Pay attention after deep work sessions. How do you feel after two hours of focused writing, after back-to-back collaborator calls, after diving into data or policy documents? Some tasks feed your energy; others require you to draw from reserves you'll need to replenish.

Track the work that lights you up. Notice which activities—generating written material, facilitating conversations, analyzing complex problems, designing community partnerships—leave you feeling more energized rather than depleted. This isn't about easy versus difficult; it's about what aligns with how your mind and body want to work.

Observe your social energy patterns. Does an all-day workshop energize you for the commute home, or do you need twenty minutes of silence before you can think clearly again? Both responses are valuable information.

Try color-coding your calendar for one week: red for deep focus time, blue for meetings and collaboration, gray for administrative tasks. Leave space for brief energy notes—a simple scale from drained to energized.

Now comes the important part: design your week around these patterns, not just around deadlines.

Remember that breaks aren't productivity killers; they're the fuel that makes sustained focus possible. Write down three things that restore you—a walk around the block, five minutes with your hands in garden soil, or simply watching clouds move across the sky. Build these into your days like essential meetings.

Signals & Shifts

​Dr. Aditi Nerurkar's "resilience rule of 2" suggests focusing on just two measurable changes at a time to avoid overwhelming our already-stretched nervous systems. This gentle approach to habit formation feels especially relevant for those of us carrying the weight of climate urgency—we need sustainable change, not heroic sprints that lead to burnout.

The science of strategic rest continues to reveal what many cultures have long known: brief afternoon pauses—whether a 15-minute nap, quiet meditation, or simply sitting without an agenda—can restore cognitive performance and creative insight. Your eureka moment might be waiting in that pause you've been too busy to take.

Question for reflection: What could you move forward if you carved out daily time for your most important climate work during your energy peaks rather than fitting it around everything else?

This question is also one of our Work That Lasts Summer 2025 Bingo squares—part of tracking the small, sustainable changes that compound into lasting impact. There is still time to download your bingo card!

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​How's your Summer 2025 Bingo going? As we transition into fall and a new month, I'm curious—what squares have you filled in? What surprised you most about building these sustainable habits? Reply and share something you discovered, learned, or simply send a snapshot of your bingo progress. I love hearing how these small shifts are landing in your real life.

Take good care of yourself and the work that's yours to do. Both matter more than you know.

Nikoosh

Work That Lasts arrives every other Wednesday. Forward to a colleague who might need these tools, or reply and let me know what's working in your own practice.

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