“Creativity is best achieved when one is truly at peace with the universe”

–Anonymous

Introduction

Different people find different hours of the day to be optimal for productivity and creativity, you need to find the best period of the day whereby you can produce satisfactory work at the very best of your innate ability.

Doing this will allow you to do a lot of work within a short time frame roughly between 3 to 5 hours, work done when at optimum performance levels is more or less equivalent to working 7 hours when not at peak performance levels.

Storytime

I feel explaining this as a story will hammer home the concept of finding the best time of day (day as in 24-hours) when one is most creative/productive

I had a strange friend named Arnold who never did any important assignments/work during the morning and afternoon hours of the day despite that fact he was normally at the top of our class. He would usually laze around whilst my other friend (James) and I would work our buts off. James always seemed to have unusual amounts of energy in the afternoon, he would focus all that energy into assignments and getting his notes up-to-date (and no he never used stimulants such as coffee). 

Arnold piqued my interest, I wondered as to why he never worked during the day. One day he invited both James and me over to his place because we had an assignment due the following day which we had to complete. As we were unpacking our painting equipment, I asked Arnold why he didn’t do much work during the day to which he replied “I’m much more creative and engaged in the late hours of the night plus I’m usually sleepy during the day”, It was fascinating knowing that people experience different levels of creativity at different times of the day, I also wondered how his performance would change if he were to do all his work during the earlier hours of the day, so I tried daring Arnold into working with us in the morning but not to my surprise he flat out said NO. 

As we were finalizing our assignments, I had realized that during the painting process I had felt great bursts of creativity and I was in a state of “flow” as some have dubbed it, at that point, I realized that working at night would benefit me more vis-à-vis working during the earlier hours of the day. James, on the other hand, couldn’t keep up with us, it made sense considering he had the same rush as us, but in the afternoon (at least he completed 4 fifths of his project in the afternoon)

Are you a night owl or an early bird?

From what you’ve read you should be able to categorize yourself in one of 2 groups, but let me first define the terms:

Night owl

A night owl, evening person or simply owl, is a person who tends to stay up until late at night, or the early hours of the morning. People who are night owls tend to enter the state of flow later on during the night or early mornings. (anywhere from 20:00 to 06:00)

Early bird

Early birds are people with a natural habit of waking early, and often also going to bed before it gets too late. People who are early birds tend to enter the state of flow in the early mornings or afternoons. (anywhere from 06:00 to 15:00)

Fun fact: It’s usually a compliment to be called an early bird.

Seems like we night owls have a bad reputation in the eyes of society, but that shouldn’t weigh anyone down as long as you set a reasonable sleeping schedule.

Your personality type is important in this context

Knowing your personality type can help you identify your chronotype (A chronotype is the behavioral manifestation of sleep patterns exhibited by a human. Basically what time of day you are likely to stay up and go to sleep)

Introvert

Introverts are people who draw their energy from within, they are reserved, quiet and require less social interaction.

Extravert

Extraverts are people who draw their energy from the world around them, they are outgoing, somewhat loud and thrive in social situations.

You can be a mixture of both, known formally as an Ambivert.

Introverts are more likely to be night owls while extraverts are more likely to be early birds. 

So, to sum things up first find out whether you’re a night owl or an early bird, depending on your personality type (introvert and extravert) it will be easier to identify your chronotype.

You can find out your personality type here: www.personalitymax.com 

Thanks for reading until the end, I’m confident that you took something from this and with absolute certainty, you will revisit next time when we take a look at “Drawing inspiration for creativity.”

Make sure to leave your thoughts in the comments, like and share. It will mean the world to me!

Next blog in 3 days