Problem
It never fails—two PM rolls around and your energy drops like a rock. There must be some way to avoid this, right?
Reality
Well, you can try getting more sleep, taking short walks throughout the day, or meditating, but the reality is that nearly everyone has a midday slump and there’s not much you can do about it. You can’t expect optimal performance for a full eight-hour (or more) workday, and most people run low on energy around the afternoon.
With that said, you can work around it. According to Christopher Barnes, an assistant professor of management at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, the trick is to save muscle memory tasks—returning calls, answering emails, filing paperwork—for the afternoon, leaving creative work for the morning.
The Takeaway
Most of us start the day with email. That’s a mistake—since most people are most creative in the morning, that’s when they should be doing their most important or energy-dependant tasks. Hey, if it’s really important, you’d get a call—right?
