6 practical ways to get your afternoons as productive as the mornings.

Are your days not as productive as they should be? Are you a feed-scrolling ineffective individual between 12 and 3 pm? This is not your fault, but there are easy ways to fix this. 

What would you do when you’ve got two more focus hours in a day? What would that change in your business, family or relationship? That answer is obvious. So why do so many of us struggle to keep the afternoons as powerful as the mornings? Let’s find out the six practical ways to fix this instantly to achieve high productivity and get a shitload of work done. This starts with:

01. Mastering your clock

It’s important to know why this is happening in the first place so we can fix this daily. For this to understand, we have to go to the foundation of your performance. The one and most important thing 86% of the entrepreneurs struggle with;

Your circadian rhythm.

Before you read further, do you know your circadian rhythm? Have you practically implemented this in your routines and life? No? This will change your life; it did mine and our clients. So what is it, and why is this important? Not what you would expect;

Every cell in our body has a 24-hour clock. This is regulated based on when you see the light, eat your food, and move throughout the day. But this is where most, including me in the past, go wrong;

Their clock is out of sync.

We answer the last emails in the evening, have a snack before bed or do the last workout we want to get into that day. This gives our body the sign that it needs to be alert. Why this matters; your sleep is unproductive—low quality.

This will cause your rhythm to suffer. The effect; low cognitive performance in the afternoons = feeling tired = watching stupid cat video’s on your feed, or other non-productive stuff.

Makes sense?

So the first step is to understand your body rhythms and optimise these so your standard will be higher. I said that I’d keep everything as practical as possible; here are the best tips I can give you with the most significant ROI possible;

1. Stabilise your rhythm based on your sleep chronotype (more on that in my other posts)
2. Avoid light in the evenings, and make use of a blue light blocker when working 3 hours before bed
3. Have an evening and morning routine based on your biology
4. Try not eating 3 hours after waking up and 3 hours before going to bed
5. Workout at the exact times (mornings, preferably 11 am)

So what to do in the afternoons based on this clock when you’ve optimised this. That’s the best time to have;

02. Meetings

Feel groggy in the mornings? I was definitely in the past until I discovered cortisol’s importance.

Cortisol is a hormone. That’s a direct message in our bodies. Cortisol is known as ‘the stress hormone’ because your body secretes it when in a stressful ‘dangerous’ situation. This also happens in the mornings to get yourself out of bed. 

Because of this, we’ll experience something unconsciously known as experiencing a ‘narrow vision field’. This means we’re way better able to focus. On top of that, your cognitive power is better, and we haven’t used our willpower much yet. So this is the best time to;

Focus like crazy.

This is the most valuable asset you have in your day. The highest amount of attention. So the last thing we want to have is;

Meetings.

So to have a crazy productive day, make sure you have your meeting is the lowest cognitive brain power function possible. We only meet with our (non-international) clients between 1:30 and 6 pm. Calendly makes this easy to do for you as well.

But then the following can happen; you feel tired, unmotivated and even a little bit triggered during the meetings. Something is off. That’s where the next step comes in;

03. Controlling your blood sugar

Is food that important? Yes.

You put Coca-Cola in a formula one car as fuel in the image. Won’t it go very far, right? 

The same is with us as entrepreneurs. Whether you already have a more strategic position or have to grind yourself the whole day, you want to master your fuel.

One of the most significant ROIs you can implement is not eating sugars after 3 pm. So no fruit, oats, pasta, bread, etc., before 3 pm.

So what can we eat;

1. Fat-rich shakes with natural stevia or monk fruit
2. Eggs
3. Grass-fed beef or liver with vegetables 
4. Fat rich salad
5. Nuts and seeds 
6. Avocado

This will change your performance for the better. I won’t go too deep into the technical stuff about why this is the case in this post. Instead, check my other content for more.

04. Get outside

A walk can change your day.

This is primarily the case of syncing your circadian rhythm; you see sunlight and move and get out of your environment.

Practical use cases include;

1. Having your meetings walking
2. Get your meal blended to eat when going outside
3. Use audiobooks or podcasts for new insights

05. Napping and NSDR

When you feel like there’s nothing else to do, try this;

NSDR stands for Non-Sleep Deep Rest and means drifting off for 25 minutes maximum with the use of some brain wave AI-generated music (check brain.fm for this.)

Just make sure you use it for the right timing. For example, we only want to nap for 30 minutes at max because of our sleep cycles and being aware of our night’s sleep so that we don’t mess up our next days.

06. Balance your stimulants out in the mornings

I do love your morning coffee as well as you do. But we get our clients to do one thing differently; we balance out the stimulants by using other natural compounds.

Caffeine stimulates our nervous system, which will cause the famous crash 3 to 4 hours after drinking a cup of coffee. Why this happens;

1. Low-quality coffee has much mould; your body gives an allergic reaction to this.
2. The neurotransmitter adenosine (= feeling tired) can’t reach the receptors until caffeine leaves its spots. 
3. Imbalance of the neurotransmitter dopamine (= drive and motivation)

What we can do to fix this;

1. get toxin-free coffee beans and blend them yourselves when possible
2. Use 200mg of L-theanine to balance out your neurotransmitters 
3. Make sure that we lower the amount of adenosine by having a high-quality sleep (master your clock!)

I can assure you; that when you have set these steps in place, you’ll be shocked with your well-being, productivity and success in the long run.

The tips above have the most significant ROI for you; this is important, especially in our busy schedules.

Peakclub specialises in optimising busy professionals’ energy, focus and productivity so they can make the impact they want and are not held back by fatigue and brain fog. Everything we do is based on ROI; we track your data based on accuracy and importance and give you simple to implement feedback based on this data.

This is so you can focus on the things that matter, your business and relationships, and feel energised.

Over the last three years, we’ve watched what over 200+ 7-figure business owners with a solid business and crazy amounts of focus are doing in their lifestyles to maintain this success.

And we found some exciting things that you won’t have thought of;

We’ve structured them in a sheet with the ten biggest quick wins with instant results for focus and concentration and decided to give this away for free. 

Get your copy here at the right.