A human development expert recommends finding your 2-3 hour "golden hours" each day when you're sharpest, then guarding that time fiercely for focused work. Peak performance isn't the same for everyone, so you need to experiment to find yours.
Find your golden hours—a 2–3 hour period when you are at your best—and protect them rigorously.
Hey, Dan. Someone who studied human development for 30 years, what's the number one piece of productivity advice you'd have for someone going into 2026?
Um, find your golden hours and protect them. Uh, we sometimes believe that all times of day are created equal. They're not. There are material differences in how your brain and body perform at different times of day. So find the time of day, maybe it's a stretch of 2 hours or 3 hours, where you are absolutely at your best. Run some experiments to figure out when that is, and then guard those like a Freaking hound dog, and you'll get a lot more work done and a lot better work done, and you'll feel better.
Hey, David, as someone who's studied human development for almost 20 years, what's your number one piece of productivity advice for 2026?
Find a way to have some embodied experience with strangers. So many of us doing our own thing, fragmented work, often virtual or hybrid. It's important to our wellbeing to sometimes be in a group, including with people that you don't know. So for me, in fact, I started going to dance meetup, taking some shuffle classes. Specifically so that I could have embodied experience with strangers, because that refills your energy, which goes into everything else you're going to do.
