How to discover your team’s peak productivity hours and maximize their impact

Let’s talk about peak productivity hours.

As a manager, you’ve probably noticed that not all working hours are created equal. Some days, your team seems to breeze through tasks with incredible efficiency, while on others, they struggle to stay focused. Understanding and leveraging your team’s peak productivity hours can significantly boost overall performance and job satisfaction.

By tailoring work schedules and assignments to individual peak performance times, you can create a more engaged, productive, and satisfied team. So, let’s dive deeper into how to identify and harness your team’s peak productivity hours.

How to determine your team’s peak productivity window

In order to discover what your team’s peak performance hours are, you will need to collect data about the way they typically work. This will serve as a basis for understanding how to maximize your team’s peak performance time.

Data collection is the first step to determining someone’s peak productivity hours. Ask your employees to keep an hourly log of their workflow throughout the day for an extended period of time, for at least a week or two, ideally a month. Keeping a log over time will help provide an accurate representation of what a typical workday looks like and when they are the most productive.

Pro tip: First try measuring your own peak performance hours – then you’ll see the best tactic for doing it and the most convenient way for displaying the results.

When assessing a whole team’s performance, keeping an extensive log gets tricky. Instead of logging the team’s workflow manually, consider using time-tracking tools to easily access charts representing productivity levels of your individual employees or the whole team.

At the end of each day, ask your team members to look back at the tasks they’ve done (either on their productivity tracking app or simply go through a list of tasks they’ve done) and evaluate:

• The time it took to complete tasks or work on specific projects,
• How alert, energized, focused, and productive they felt while performing those tasks,
• How long they were able to focus, and what distractions bothered them,
• Analyze whether the type of project or task influences productivity levels at different times.

The aim is to find out when each team member feels the most energized and productive on any given workday, which hours are commonly productive for most team members, and what might contribute to your team’s daily wins and losses.

What research says about peak productivity hours

Some sources suggest that we are the most productive within the first few hours after waking up, while other studies have found that peak productivity happens around lunchtime. This shows that some people can be productive right at the start of the day, but others need some time to dive into deep work. 

Researchers have also found that Mondays and Tuesdays are the two most productive days of the week, whereas Thursdays and Fridays are the least productive. In simple terms, this means that you have more energy after a recharge at the beginning of a time period and less toward the end.

Regardless of what studies have found, you should not assume when your team’s peak productivity hours are, but rather collect evidence in real-time and act accordingly.

How to maximize your team’s peak performance time

Now that you’ve got the data on when your team members are most productive, the work doesn’t end here. Even if you know when their peak productivity hours are, there are still potential mistakes that might be stalling their progress, such as taking on too much work, wasting productive hours on mundane tasks, starting the day in the wrong way, not having task management systems in place, or not taking enough breaks. 

Here’s what you should do to maximize your team’s peak performance hours:

1. Plan the most important, labor-intensive tasks during the peak productivity hours

Assign tasks that require high levels of concentration or creativity during your team’s peak productivity hours.

If they’re the most productive in the early hours of the day, encourage them to block off that time for the highest-priority projects and leave the more non-essential tasks, such as answering emails, to the afternoon.

Encourage planning the next work day at the end of the previous one. This way, the next day can start with a clear plan without wasting precious productive hours figuring out to-do lists. 

2. Limit distractions during deep work

This is an essential component of maximizing your team’s peak productivity hours and increasing their ability to focus. Email, phone, noisy environments, and impromptu meetings and chats with coworkers are all major distractions at work, so make sure to minimize those when employees work on critical tasks requiring full attention. 

3. Avoid and prevent multitasking

Again and again, research has shown that we actually get done less, trying to do more and splitting our attention between multiple tasks at once. Maybe it creates a false sense of feeling like a superhuman, but multitasking is widely known for negatively impacting our productivity levels.

Multitasking can lead to mental strain and decreased efficiency. Instead, focusing on one task at a time with clear priorities is key to effective time management. Our study showed that the 52/17 work-break ratio, where 52 minutes of focused work are followed by 17 minutes of breaks, can be highly effective for maximizing focus and productivity. However, individual employees may need to adjust this ratio to suit their personal preferences and needs.

4. Leverage flexible work arrangements

Consider offering flexible work arrangements, such as remote work or flexible hours, to allow team members to work during their most productive times. Some companies even introduce shorter workdays or 4-day work weeks, allowing employees to work when they feel most productive instead of simply sitting out hours when they feel mentally drained.

Time and productivity tracking tools like DeskTime help each employee follow the hours they’ve done for the day – whenever they feel most productive. No matter the length of your workweeks, each employee can do their set hours per week, and how they divide those hours each day can be up to them. Everyone has unproductive days when we may want to switch off earlier. Time tracking tools let employees put in the missing hours on another day.

5. Consider environmental factors

Evaluate the workplace environment, including lighting, temperature, and noise levels, to ensure it supports optimal productivity. Take into account individual preferences for workspaces, such as quiet areas or collaborative spaces.

Keep this in mind

Regularly review your team’s productivity data to identify changes or trends. If necessary, adjust work schedules or task assignments to align with your team’s peak productivity hours.

Once you’ve implemented some changes, make sure to track your team’s progress and evaluate whether or not they have made a difference. Do you feel like your team is getting more done? Do you feel like you’ve found your team’s productivity window but still struggle with cutting out distractions? Assess how your team’s work day has changed and see if any further adjustments are necessary.

Remember that working longer hours will not directly correlate to getting more work done. Instead, the most effective approach is knowing when your peak performance hours are and using them efficiently.