You Saved the Stuck Design Problem for Your Sharpest Hour and It Would Not Move

During his most productive hours, from nine to eleven, the individual focused on a challenging design problem that had been troubling them for a week. Despite sitting down twice on consecutive mornings, fully awake and highly focused, they could only come up with the same three options, all of which were deemed incorrect. On Thursday, at four thirty in the afternoon, while tired and momentarily distracted, the solution suddenly emerged.

Instead of finding a fourth option, they perceived the problem through a new lens, changing their perspective on the initial solution. While this might not have been pure luck, research conducted in 2011 by Mareike Wieth and Rose Zacks suggests that this approach could be more effective. The researchers tested over four hundred students, identifying those who were morning people and those who were evening people.

They then presented these students with problems during their peak and off-peak times of the day. Analytic problems, which required working through steps to arrive at a solution, did not depend on the time of day. However, insight problems, which required dropping the initial understanding of the question to solve, were more frequently solved by individuals when they were at their worst time of day.

The researchers proposed that this was due to control. At peak performance, one is skilled at filtering out irrelevant information, enhancing focus. Off peak, this filtering mechanism is less effective, allowing stray ideas to enter the mind. While this study provides evidence for the potential benefits of tackling challenging tasks during off-peak hours, it should be viewed as a suggestion rather than a definitive rule.

Nonetheless, it is worth experimenting with this approach. Allocate the most difficult tasks to peak hours, when focus is at its best, for activities such as debugging, reviewing changes, or writing migrations. Reserve the more relaxed, off-peak hours for the problems that seem to resist resolution, giving them a light touch and allowing new ideas to emerge.