I unlocked a lot in my career when I figured out when and how I did my best work. Once I figured that out I then designed my environment to optimized for those things.
Here is one quick example. In my mid to late 20's I would often participate in live meetings where I felt like I wasn't contributing to my full capabilities. That would leave me feeling extremely frustrated which led to doing even worse work.
At some point I decided that I was going to block off time before an important meeting to prepare some thoughts. I'd sit down, dump my brain out on paper, then pull together the top structured thoughts. I came to those meetings with better contributions, questions, and clarity of communication.
What I realized out of this is that I do my best thinking through writing. I then figured out I did my best writing in the morning between 8am -11am after a short workout and coffee. I now have habits, rituals, and frameworks designed around these two things. A few:
I block my calendar every morning and defend it with my life.
I have writing rituals to help me work through problems I'm solving.
I have frameworks I turn to when I get stuck.
For the roles that work with me the most, I interview for this to make sure we are a fit.
Everyone is unique. Some people thrive off the live energy of a brainstorm and "talking it out." I didn't discover all of this until I was ≈30 years old. I posed the question on LinkedIn if this is something Reforge could help build to help others discover what works for them.
Tons of interesting responses. My favorite was from Fred Stutzman, CEO of Freedom where they've found in research that there is a wide variety of how people do their best work, but it falls into a few categories: Time, Place, Environment, Physiology, and Emotional State. This topic warrants a deeper essay, but thats for another time.
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