There has been a lot of chatter in the blogosphere lately about the topic of the best hour of the day.
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You might ask, “what is the ‘best hour of the day?’” It differs slightly from person to person but generally you’ll see it described in a couple of different way as something along these lines:
- The time period in any given day that’s identified as the most productive or effective in getting one’s highest quality work done.
- The time invested by someone in setting up themselves for the highest level of productivity or effectiveness.
The best hour of the day doesn’t necessarily refer to the hour that’s created by a solid block of 60 minutes (cf. “not his finest hour,” “the hour had come,” etc.). It is perhaps most accurately defined as a person’s “prime time,” the period of time in any given day where things just seem to hum, time passes quickly, and much has been accomplished.
My best hour of the day starts the moment I get out of bed until I walk out the door to go to my office. Most days there are more than 2 actual hours that pass and I wouldn’t trade that time for just about anything in the world.
It is during this time of the day that I perform various activities that achieve positive, forward movement in several areas that are a direct fulfilment of my life values (more on life values in a future post). For instance, when I’m intentional with my time (i.e. deliberate and not lazy), a long list of activities can occur in approximately 2 hours. For the sake of brevity (and good taste 
), I won’t list them all here but here are a couple highlights:
- Parental: A good chunk of this time is invested simply sitting at the dining room table having breakfast with Caleb, my almost-three-year-old boy. He’s “Daddy’s Little Tank” and when breakfast is done, we typically get several minutes of good T-Time (short for “testosterone time”) in together. By the way, just to clarify, I don’t count time with my son as “productivity” the way we would define office or workplace productivity; there are, however, many teachable moments and fantastic opportunities for mental, emotional and physical progress for Caleb because of this time. You parents know what I’m talking about. I just thought this deserved specific syntax and context.
- Personal: My goal is at least 15-20 minutes early in each day of concentrated time with Jesus Christ in prayer and systematic intake of the Bible. Becoming involved with Word of Life Canada as a teenager and now ministering full-time with the organization, I’ve been using the Word of Life Quiet Time as my devotional for almost 15 years. I’ve seen a lot of devotionals and there is none better. The Online Quiet Time takes the printed editions to a whole new level. See the Online Quiet Time in action and use clyons@wol.ca as your coupon code to sign-up for a one month free trial.
Listen, achieving my list (or even most of it) on any given day doesn’t make me super-human. In fact, it’s likely that many of you do much more than I do every morning; as my family grows, I expect I’ll do more too but, this is where I am right now and accomplishing these things is one of my small, daily victories.
I’ve also recently realized that the effectiveness and productiveness of my morning time will be increased manifold by investing even a small amount of time the night before to better prepare for it.
Bottom line: What is your best hour of the day? What are the things you can do to make it even better?
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