You know when you are sharpest.
For you
it is nine to eleven,
coffee in,
messages off.
So that is where
you put the hard thing.
The design problem
you had been stuck on
for a week.
How to split the service
without breaking every caller.
Two mornings in a row
you sat down with it,
fully awake,
completely focused.
Nothing.
The same three options,
the same reasons
each one was wrong.
On Thursday,
at half past four,
tired,
half reading something else,
the answer turned up
on its own.
Not a fourth option.
A different way
of seeing the first one.
That may not have been luck.
In 2011
Mareike Wieth and Rose Zacks
tested more than four hundred students.
First they found out
who were morning people
and who were evening people.
Then they gave them problems
at their best time of day
or at their worst.
Some problems were analytic.
Work through the steps
and you get there.
Others were insight problems.
The kind you only solve
by dropping the way
you first read the question.
The analytic problems
did not care
what time it was.
The insight problems
were solved more often
at people's worst time of day.
The explanation they offered
is about control.
At your peak
you are very good
at keeping out
what does not seem relevant.
That is what focus is.
Off peak
the filter is looser.
Stray ideas get in,
and when you are stuck,
the idea you need
is usually one
you had already ruled out
as not relevant.
It is one study,
and a careful one,
so treat it as a reason
to try something,
not as a law.
But try it.
Give your sharp hours
to the work that needs the filter.
Debugging step by step.
Reviewing a change line by line.
Writing the migration.
And give the problem
that will not move
to the loose hours.
Late afternoon,
or whichever end of the day
you are worst at.
Not to grind it.
Just to look at it again,
lightly,
and let something stray
get in.
Focus is how you
find the answer
inside the frame.
It is also
what keeps you inside it.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
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