Do you often find yourself wondering why, no matter your goals, you can’t seem to be productive at certain times? Why while your roommates are plugging away you have no apparent motivation? Me too. Over the course of my first two years in college, I started to notice a pattern. Immediately after waking up, I have a 2-3 hour window of productivity, huge lull midday, and then in the afternoon late into the night, I seem to be capable of endless amounts of work (given caffeine of course). If you’re a lifestyle video person, you like me have probably heard many put together people tell you that the most important part of productivity is getting up early, establishing a morning routine, and crushing your day. While a nice sentiment, a large number of us are simply not built that way. I used to think this was an excuse, but then I learned about Circadian Rhythm, the natural 24-hour cycle that your body is on. This looks different for everyone and isn’t necessarily as simple as being a night owl or a morning person. By recognizing our bodies' cycle and working with instead of against it, we can maximize productivity, something that could not be more important as overworked college students.
What is Circadian Rhythm?
Circadian Rhythm is simply put your body's internal clock. According to the Sleep Foundation, it is influenced by many factors including light, which is why for most people it aligns with day and night. Not being aligned with your internal clock doesn’t only influence your ability to be productive, it can also cause significant sleep problems such as insomnia. What else can be caused by a misaligned Circadian Rhythm?
A disturbed sleep-wake circadian rhythm can give rise to serious sleeping problems. Without the proper signaling from the body’s internal clock, a person can struggle to fall asleep, wake up during the night, or be unable to sleep as long as they want into the morning. Their total sleep can be reduced, and a disrupted circadian rhythm can also mean shallower, fragmented, and lower-quality sleep… As a whole, a misaligned circadian rhythm can negatively affect sleep in many ways, increasing a person’s risk of insomnia and excessive daytime sleepiness. Given the essential role of sleep for productivity and overall health, there are often significant consequences when a person’s circadian rhythm is off. (Sleep Foundation)
According to Philip’s annual global sleep survey, 61% of adults feel that they have worse recollection when they didn’t sleep well, and 75% say that they are less productive after a rough night's sleep. Often we define productivity as how much work we got done during a period of time, and will extend that time farther into the night when we should be sleeping. If you are able to frame your schedule this way and still get enough sleep, great! But most of us have to get up early, and in order to be more productive, we must prioritize sleep. As college students, this is incredibly difficult and sometimes impossible. So what I would suggest is to weigh the importance of what is keeping you up late into the night or morning against what you have going on the next day. If you have a very busy day and can’t afford to be sleepy or take a long nap at some point, reconsider pulling that all-nighter, and try to get things done early enough that that isn’t even necessary. The first step to this is learning more about your own body’s rhythm and how to use that to your advantage, more on that below.
Check out more on the biological influences upon Circadian Rhythm from the Sleep Foundation here:
https://www.sleepfoundation.org/circadian-rhythm
And more on sleep and productivity here:
What do different Circadian Rhythms look like?
https://www.nigms.nih.gov/education/fact-sheets/Pages/circadian-rhythms.aspx
While I don’t like to admit it, my Circadian Cycle looks a lot like the average teenagers according to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Depending upon how little (I no longer define it as how much lol) sleep I got I can usually rally from around 10am-noon. The afternoon slump sets in somewhere between noon and 1 and doesn’t usually let up until around 3pm. From then until about 1am is prime time for me to be productive. You might relate to this or you might have a totally different experience and that is OK. You might actually be a morning person (congrats) or you might find it impossible to get anything done before 5pm. While a medical professional would tell you and definitely me to work on forming healthier habits and slowly getting to a more typical rhythm, this just isn’t possible as a college student. After syllabus week I know for certain that all of my professors have piled on the work and I am in for an overwhelming amount of work and a lot of all-nighters, and I think a lot of us are in the same boat. And the fact is, our schedules do not revolve around our internal clocks. Many of us have classes all day, and meetings to attend, and work, along with any number of social engagements. In acknowledging this, the goal is to recognize a pattern, come to terms with it, and make a plan to take advantage of it.
Recognizing a Pattern
This is the part of the process that can take the most time, whether you are completely unsure of what your natural rhythm is, or you are in complete denial and just aspire to live like a lifestyle blogger. If you are completely unsure of what your natural rhythm is, start taking notes whether that’s physical, digital, or just in your brain. When are you the most productive consistently? When do you want nothing more in the world than to take a nap? Take note of these patterns, and develop a relative schedule based upon them.
For those like me who desperately want to be a morning person and are just straight up in denial, I encourage you to check out this article. Why You Don’t Have to Be a Morning Person to be Successful:
After you do, circle back and embrace what you already know. I predict that like me you can pretty easily identify what your rhythm truly is. Now let’s talk about how to implement it.
How to Take Advantage and Get After It
Now that you have identified your body’s natural schedule, think about ways that you can realistically implement this into your actual schedule of events and classes. This may not be possible every day, but ideally, you will reach a point where you are in tune with your body’s schedule and can follow it most of the time. The question to ask yourself is, what can I control? I can’t control when my classes are, but I can control how I use the time around my engagements. As an example, based off of the schedule that I know my body follows, I do not plan to be productive until the evenings. My morning burst of energy is used up in classes currently, I hit that mid-day slump, and then have meetings or work in the afternoons. If I were still trying to follow that lifestyle blogger template I would not be ok with this, but I have more recently recognized that it is more important to acknowledge when my brain and schedule allow me to be the most productive. This means that during that mid-day slump I do not try to be productive, I know that I won’t get as much done as I want to, feel bad about it, and then just make myself even more tired than I was before. Instead, I take a nap or watch tv, anything that I find pleasant and does not require work. Then in the evenings when I have free time again, some days at least, I feel a burst of energy and get way more done than if I had tried to force myself to be productive in the early morning or when I want nothing more than to take a nap.
Some of you might be thinking, this only works because you don’t have that much going on. If you know me personally, however, you know that that is the farthest from the truth. I like to say that my greatest strength and weakness simultaneously is that I am a notorious overachiever and constantly over-ambitious. I love to take on way too much and overwhelm myself. This semester I am taking 6 classes and am involved in 2 time-consuming leadership positions and a sport. I say this not to brag (cause it’s not a brag) but to attempt to convince you that this works and is worth a try. The next time you are feeling unmotivated or can’t seem to get as much done as you need to when you need to, reconsider how you are structuring your “free time” and see if you can’t use your natural rhythm to your advantage and get after your goals.
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