Welcome to Unit 2. This lesson introduces one of the most valuable changes in the program, and it does not require you to create more attention.

It asks you to move demanding work to the time when your attention is already strongest.

Start with the one or two hours your log identified as your focus peaks. Place your most demanding task in one of those periods. Protect the time as you would protect a meeting with someone important, because that is what it has become.

Place routine work in the quieter periods. The decrease in attention after lunch is common. Boredom often peaks around 1 p.m., while focus may not return until later in the afternoon.

This can be a useful time for the mechanical work that you may have treated as an interruption to more important tasks. Examples include formatting, filing, managing your inbox and completing administrative work.

These tasks need to happen anyway. Placing them in a period of lower focus helps keep them from consuming the hours when your attention is strongest.

The scheduling itself is not always the difficult part. Late morning is often when other people also want your time. Recurring meetings frequently appear during the same hours in which focus tends to peak.

You do not need to block your entire day. Start with three smaller changes:

• Protect one peak hour, not both. One hour that remains protected is more useful than an entire morning you cannot maintain.
• Move one recurring meeting. If a regular meeting takes place during your strongest hour, moving it can recover that hour every week.
• Begin the hour with the demanding task. Do not check email first. Email activity often peaks during the same hours as focus. This means your best attention may be going to work that could have been completed during a lower-energy period.

Some jobs offer very little control over the calendar. If you cannot protect your best hour, try the opposite approach.

Avoid placing demanding work in your weakest periods by default. For example, do not automatically schedule it during the first hour of the morning, while your focus is still building, or during the dip around 1 p.m.

Avoiding your two weakest hours may be possible even when protecting your strongest one is not.

It is also useful to clarify what protected means. It does not mean that you are unavailable during an emergency, and you do not need to announce a new policy.

It simply means that the hour already contains a scheduled task. The question is no longer Are you free at 11? It becomes Can you move what you already have planned? People are usually less likely to ask casually when the time is already occupied.

There is one common way this approach fails. You protect the hour but then use it for whatever feels most urgent that morning, instead of the task it was intended for.

Urgent requests often arrive when your attention is strongest. This is why you should choose the task for your peak hour the evening before, not when the hour begins. Lesson 12 will return to this point.