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Working in peaks and dips
When you are working remotely, you need to setup systems that help you do your best work.

With unclear boundaries between work and life, the day passes by and you either end up doing nothing or too much.

One of the major change for me was to align work with peaks and dips. Allow me to explain.

Caliberating work hours

If you want to do your best work, you need to caliberate both your external and internal world. What do I mean by that?

External world
  • Silent zone to work in
  • Phone and Slack in Do Not Disturb mode

Internal world
  • Work during optimal focus hours
  • Less sleep debt

One of the game changers to help cement this learning has been Rise science app.

Your body's energy level goes through a series of peaks and dips throughout the day.

The goal is to align
deep work with peaks and
shallow work with dips

Rise Science
Imagine waking up at 6AM to check Twitter, or working on a critical project at 11PM when you are already exhausted and sleepy.

Depending on your chronotype these peaks and dips might vary.

Chronotype

Blocking calendar

Once you have nailed down your biological prime time, the next objective is to schedule the tasks in corresponding buckets.

Anything that requires deep work (code, design, strategy) is to be scheduled during the peaks.

Everything else is shallow work (meetings, checking emails, social media) and should be taken care of during the dips.

Calendar
With this setup it gives you more structure of when to do what.
  • Easily say no to huddles, and ask them to schedule during dips.
  • Your family has clarity of when they can expect time from you.
  • You can estimate your work better (eg. 6 focus cycles).
  • You can sleep care free knowing that you have done the best you could today.

Hope this helps you approach work more sanely.