A couple of weeks ago I started tracking my energy levels every hour during each day. This time I've been avoiding alcohol and coffeine as much as I can.

I was trying to find out my naturally occurring ebbs and flows in my energy levels. If I would be biologically tired and useless at 11:00 each day, then I would know I should maybe try to tide over that low with a cup of coffee, for example. Or if I have a difficult task to accomplish, I could reserve time to do it at exactly the point of day when I'm most energetic.

Results

Looking at the Google sheet, it seems my highpoint is actually just at the end of the normal 9-5 workday. This is a bit surprising, because at one point I was always completely tired and ready for a nap, when getting home from work. This shows more in the actual raw data, than the graph above.

During this tracking period, it seemed like I slowly revved up during morning and was at peak efficiency after 12:00. Then tapered off towards the evening and oblivion.

Also, it seems that coffee doesn't really affect me that much. It's a habit and I do miss the taste of good coffee, but I couldn't really notice any physical withdrawal symptoms at all. I also didn't really notice any markedly boosted energy levels, when I happened to drink a cup of coffee couple of times during these weeks. Getting a cup of coffee is a nice way to give myself a break and maybe a psychological boost, but not much more.

Retrospective

This might have been a terrible place to try to track this. I had just moved, had to commute way longer each day and also it's winter in Finland, which means five more minutes of darkness every day. During the tracking period, we lost over 1,5 hours of sunlight per day. Which might also affect person's energy levels somehow, I dunno.

I'll probably have to try this again when it's summer (steadier day-night cycle) and maybe when I'm on vacation (no forced sleep cycle). But these results are still probably pretty accurate for now. I think I can try to use this to put my hightimes into optimal use and reserve my lowpoints for less meaningful meetings or drinking coffee!