I’ve just wrapped up another productive session of my personal “genius time”. I was working on a particularly tricky task at the tail end of my day yesterday and I wasn’t making very good progress - I kept making a series of small mistakes that were setting me back. I decided to shut down my computer and re-visit the same chunks of code this morning, during my “genius time”. Turns out it was the right thing to do. I ended up figuring out a far more elegant solution to my problem, a solution I just couldn’t see the day before.
The concept of genius time is something I worked on with my business coach about a year ago and its quickly become a part of my daily routine (personally and professionally). It’s a simple concept that’s often overlooked in today’s ridiculously fast paced, iphone and blackberry dominated workplace. In a nutshell, I have 2-3 hours every day where I’m at my thinking best. My mind is fresh, I’m focused and creative. This is my genius time. It happens for me between 7am and 9am.
To properly take advantage of this genius time, I try and tackle more challenging tasks, tasks that require uninterrupted thought. I keep my email closed and my iphone in another room. It’s really worked for me.
I believe we each have a daily window of genius time. The trick is figuring yours out and shifting your schedule accordingly.
Bryan Mahoney
- Bryan is Dynamo's Director of Technology, continually breaking new ground evaluating, developing and guiding our sites and webapps, & a pillar in Dynamo's client service front. Co-author of 2 early books on the integration of ColdFusion and Flash, he is an expert in database driven content management and design. Bryan now principally rides Ruby on Rails.
