Passing professional exams takes hours of concentrated study. Do you know your best time to concentrate? Read this to find out plus learn how to match YOUR best times with MIT’s (most important tasks).
Researchers have uncovered a new key to productivity: match your peak tasks to your peak times of day. Mismatching over time is one reason candidates don’t pass; their study prep was not effective.
CONTENTS OF THE BLOG
That there are peak times and trough times during our day is not a foreign concept. We all know morning people and night people and the difference between. I am a morning person and my ex-husband a night person. While still happily married we I traveled the whole country with him once for 5 years living in a motor home of 300 square feet of space. If we were both there one would have to sit down for the other to move to the front or back of the vehicle. Why did it work? Our differing circadian rhythms gave me the place by myself until noon and him until late in the night. For our time of the day we had the place to ourselves.
Working with our natural rhythms kept us productive – even sane.
Rhythms
What are these cycles caused by? They’re called circadian rhythms. Every human and obviously every mammal has a sleep cycle. Bears even have a sleep season. What prompts that? It’s the intensity of natural light and the angle of the sun.
We react to the light through our eyes and specific receptors in the brain. We’re hard wired to these cycles. It’s why people who work night shifts have shorter lives – except for those whose circadian rhythms naturally have them stay up all night.
Recent research expands on the concept even further and looks at the impact of actions we generate in addition to the things happening to us. This field is called chronobiology and it takes into account the demands of family, chosen eating and sleeping cycles, light pollution, sleep conditions, and hormonal fluctuations.
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You can see why this knowledge is important to consider when planning a CFA exam prep approach. Most candidates have lives that are already full and busy and scheduled. There’s work and social life and family and recreation. Most try to fit in hours around all those demands for CFA prep. That means studying after a long day of work or after or before the kids are sleeping or around other formal education.
Low cycles bring feelings of being foggy or scatterbrained and fatigued, while peak hours bring clear thinking and high energy.
If that describes you how’s it working? For most (without fine tuning) it’s not doing much at all. These might be low-productive hours for you. And the truth is that the recommended 300 hours if spent in low-productive studying will not get you very far.
The Averages
From the enormous field of sleep research, we have data to guide us. Studies conclude that people have similar peak hours and days.
Days of Week
There is a good and bad day for just about everything.
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We get the least amount work done on a Friday (one survey documents a 20% drop in productivity on this last day of the week across the globe).
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Tuesday morning is the most productive for Brits.
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Apply on Monday if you’re looking for a job.
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Tuesday wins if you want your customers to open your emails.
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Tuesday also wins for holding efficient meetings.
Times of Day
Research into productivity at work and effectiveness at sports reveals averages of groups.
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11 a.m. clocks at the highest point for productivity among office workers
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About 75% of people tend to be most mentally alert between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. according to a global study.
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Sleepiness also tends to peak around 2 p.m., making that a good time for a nap.
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Productivity plummets completely after 4 p.m.
The field of sports also attracts research into peak performance. Research on athletes can bring interesting insights to all who want to improve.
Take one study that looked at athletes and their workouts based on whether they were early, mid, or late risers. Researchers wanted to see if natural rising times impacted peak time of day to workout. What they discovered is that the best time of day to work out really varied person to person:
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Early risers performed best around noon
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The intermediates during the late afternoon, and
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The late risers needed more time to get moving (surprise, surprise), showing peak athleticism in the evening.
Professional sports use this research and conduct their own. U.S. major league baseball teams queried their players and found that players who identified themselves as morning people performed better during day games and the night owls stood out in late-afternoon and evening games. You can bet the “moneyball” data-driven managers factor that into their starting lineups.
Matching and Mismatching
So, the key here is to find YOUR peak hours and cycle during days and weeks and then match high value activities with peaks in your cycle. And you are here because you clearly want to match your peak times as closely as possible with CFA study times but you can see that if you have this self-knowledge that it applies to many areas of your life.
You probably know what it is like to get to the end of a day and the feeling of having worked ridiculously hard but not having accomplished what you desired. And you have had the opposite experience. You blazed through a massive task while feeling in flow.
The likely reason? Match or mismatch of type of task to your natural cycles.
To make the change take 2 steps.
First step. Look at your task list. Don’t just prioritize. Categorize. Separate the tasks into “most important tasks (MIT’s)” from “routine garbage”.
Second. Find your peak times each day. Track your moods for next 60 days. Then match moods with tasks.
Tasks are of two types. There are most important tasks (MIT’s) and there is routine garbage.
MIT’s are complex projects that involve problem-solving, complex thought, and critical decisions.
Routine garbage is answering emails and filling out expense reports.
Once you find your peak times match the task with the time. Usually you want to tackle complex projects early in the day, make time for brainstorming, meetings, and collaboration in the afternoon.
There is a third category though that for many people can be a huge value-add. Later in the day we recover from the 4 PM slump but are certainly still tired. And guess what — fatigue boosts creative powers.
During this recovery time (which is later in the day for most people but you will see your own patterns as you track) our mood has boosted back up but we are less vigilant, more open minded.
Tackle your problems that require open-ended thinking during this late-day recovery time.
For CFA candidates clearly the peak hours of the day are when you want to study. That’s not always possible with work and other demands of life. But could you get creative? Could you move some work tasks that are less analytical but benefit from brainstorming and creative work to hours even after regular work hours, and move your CFA prep into the prime hours during your day for instance?
Are you a night owl? There is another insight from the sports studies that could boost your performance on exam day. 8 AM on exam day will certainly not be prime time for you. Consider what some marathoners use. There are techniques call “circadian coaching” that can help you be conscious of your energy during the full 5 hours of exam day that could help you manage yourself for better performance.
Finding your own rhythm
Interestingly most adults have a general idea of their own rhythms. You’ve had enough experience trying to work with or against type to have your cycles as part of everyday conversation. But since haven’t learned to go with them, or you’re unable to change others’ demands on your time, you haven’t paid attention to precisely when your peak hours are.
Now that you know how valuable that knowledge could be, you’re probably wondering how to put all this into practice. First you have to reveal your rhythms.
We know that everyone’s body clock is not the same and what works for me may not work for you.
So, journal to find out exactly what your own rhythms are. Find a method that takes little effort and also that generates data that you can analyze.
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You could write phrases in a journal or
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Color code or
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Use a mood tracker
If you spend 10 seconds each hour each day for 60 days to score your mood and energy you can analyze your trends you will gain this valuable knowledge about yourself.
Some advice — be open to the idea that your peak times may not be what you initially thought they were.
Once you understand the periods of the day in which you feel most productive, you can begin planning your tasks accordingly.
Use your peak time carefully.
Protect your peak time from intrusions and commitments that don’t require your full brain power.
Your goal is not to achieve perfection but to gain an edge in your study and for exam day.
If your peak time of day is 2-4 PM but work demands you give that time to them, study CFA in the second peak time.
Also, plan workday to match peak performance time with highest value add activity.
Even that will boost your off-work energy because you will see improved accomplishment during the day. THAT is a real boost.
Want to know more? Check out Daniel Pink’s book? “When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing”.
Want to know how effective your current study approach is? Take a 2-minute survey and get your score.
