At Your Best

At Your Best Plot Summary

Introduction

Have you ever felt like you're constantly racing against time, perpetually overwhelmed by endless tasks and commitments? You work harder and longer hours, yet somehow fall further behind. Your calendar is packed with meetings, your inbox overflows with messages, and despite your best efforts, the most important work often remains undone. This relentless cycle leaves you exhausted, frustrated, and wondering if there's a better way. What if you could break free from this pattern? Imagine accomplishing more meaningful work in less time, having energy left for your family and personal interests, and feeling genuinely fulfilled rather than perpetually drained. The secret isn't working more hours or pushing yourself harder—it's about understanding when you're at your best and aligning your most important work with those peak periods. This approach isn't just about productivity; it's about creating a life you don't want to escape from, one where you thrive professionally and personally by making your time, energy, and priorities work in your favor.

Chapter 1: Identify Your Green Zone Hours

Your energy isn't constant throughout the day. Despite having twenty-four equal hours, not all hours feel equal or produce equal results. This fundamental insight forms the foundation of the Green Zone concept—those precious few hours when your mind is sharp, your creativity flows, and your productivity soars. Most people have only three to five deeply productive hours in a day when their energy is at its peak. This isn't a limitation to overcome but a reality to embrace. Daniel Pink's research on timing shows that about 14 percent of people are morning people, 21 percent are night owls, and 65 percent fall somewhere in between. Regardless of your chronotype, you have a specific window when you're naturally at your best. Claire Diaz-Ortiz, who worked at Twitter during its startup years, observed that even the most brilliant Silicon Valley engineers have about three creative and highly productive hours daily. Cal Newport, author of Deep Work, reached similar conclusions after extensive research, arguing that our capacity for intense, focused work is approximately four hours per day. This pattern affects everyone—even medical professionals. Studies show that anesthesiologists have "adverse events" about 1 percent of the time at 9:00 a.m., but by 4:00 p.m., that rate rises to 4.2 percent. Similarly, endoscopists detect polyps at a lower rate as the day progresses, with detection decreasing about 5 percent each hour. Your energy clock is not just about productivity—it can be a matter of life and death in some professions. To identify your Green Zone, track both your productivity and mood throughout the day. When are you most creative? When do you feel most focused and engaged? When do ideas flow easily? When are you kindest and most optimistic? These indicators will help you pinpoint those precious hours when you're truly at your best. Don't pretend you're superhuman with eight peak hours—be honest about your natural rhythms. Remember, three leveraged hours will beat ten unleveraged hours every time. Once you've identified your Green Zone, you can begin designing your day around it rather than competing with your natural energy patterns. This isn't about cramming more into your schedule but about strategically aligning your most important work with your peak energy periods, creating a sustainable rhythm that will transform both your productivity and your quality of life.

Chapter 2: Leverage Your Natural Energy Patterns

Understanding your energy patterns is only half the battle—the real power comes from intentionally leveraging these patterns rather than fighting against them. Most people compete with their natural rhythms, pushing through low-energy periods with caffeine and willpower. The Thrive Cycle approach flips this dynamic by cooperating with your body's natural ebbs and flows. Consider Carey's experience as a communicator. As a pastor, he had to deliver a new forty-minute talk every week. Before understanding his energy patterns, he would schedule breakfast meetings during his morning Green Zone, his most creative and focused time. By the time he returned to the office, dealt with staff questions, and finally sat down to write, his peak energy was gone. The result? Mediocre content created with tremendous effort. "The more naturally gifted you are at something," Carey notes, "the easier it is to spend less time on it, not more. Why? Because you can do a good job without even trying." This approach might produce acceptable results, but it cheats your gift. You use your talent but never develop it to its full potential. When Carey began protecting his Green Zone for writing and strategic thinking, everything changed. Not only did the quality of his work improve dramatically, but he also accomplished more in less time. He reserved his Yellow Zone (moderate energy) for meetings and administrative tasks, and his Red Zone (lowest energy) for email, routine work, and exercise. This simple shift transformed both his productivity and his enjoyment of work. The key insight is matching tasks to energy levels. Your Green Zone should be reserved for what you're best at—your unique combination of gifting, passion, and impact. Your gifting is what comes naturally to you, what seems effortless to you but difficult for others. Your passion is what energizes you, what makes you lose track of time. Impact refers to activities that, when done, make the biggest difference to your work, organization, or life goals. When you align these three elements—gifting, passion, and impact—with your Green Zone hours, you create a powerful formula for exceptional results. Instead of just using your gift, you develop it. Like compound interest, small daily investments in your skill set during your peak hours yield remarkable returns over time. This approach isn't just about work efficiency—it transforms your relationship with your work. When you do what you're best at when you're at your best, those hours become the most treasured part of your day. You end more energized, not less, creating a virtuous cycle that sustains you rather than depletes you.

Chapter 3: Eliminate Distractions and Set Boundaries

In our hyperconnected world, distractions have become the norm rather than the exception. The average person touches their smartphone 2,617 times daily, while heavy users reach for their devices a staggering 5,427 times. These constant interruptions aren't just annoying—they're devastating to your productivity and mental health. Imagine if notifications on your phone came from a human ringing your doorbell instead. You're deep in thought, working on an important project, when the doorbell rings. You walk downstairs, open the door, and someone asks, "What do you want for lunch?" You answer and head back upstairs. The doorbell rings again: "Mayo?" This scenario would be absurd in real life, yet we accept this level of interruption from our devices without question. Research shows it takes the average person nearly twenty-five minutes to refocus after a single distraction. With dozens or hundreds of interruptions throughout your day, it's no wonder deep work feels impossible. As Cal Newport argues, deep work—the ability to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding tasks—is becoming increasingly rare and increasingly valuable in our economy. Carey discovered that creating a distraction-free environment was essential for protecting his Green Zone. For him, this meant working on his porch or in his basement office, away from the bustle of daily activity. When traveling, noise-canceling headphones became his "people-canceling" solution. The physical space where you work profoundly impacts your ability to focus deeply. Beyond your environment, the most important step is turning off all notifications on your devices. This simple action, which takes just minutes to implement, can save you days or weeks of productivity each year. Set your devices to Do Not Disturb, allowing only critical contacts (family, key team members) to break through. Most things that present themselves as urgent aren't actually urgent. Another powerful strategy is incorporating movement into your Green Zone. When working on breakthrough ideas, stepping away from your desk for a walk can unlock your subconscious mind. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was famous for his walking meetings through the neighborhoods of Palo Alto. As philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, "Only thoughts which come from walking have any value." Early mornings offer a unique advantage for many people—the rest of the world is still asleep. Between 5:00 and 8:00 a.m., the distractions aren't just muted; they're largely absent. This creates an environment where focus comes naturally, allowing you to accomplish more in less time. Combined with adequate sleep, this approach can dramatically enhance your productivity and wellbeing. By creating a distraction-free environment, silencing your devices, and working with your body's natural rhythms, you transform your relationship with work. A focused you is a better you—more productive, more creative, and ultimately more fulfilled.

Chapter 4: Prioritize What Truly Matters

Why does it feel like you never have enough time for what truly matters? The answer lies in how your priorities get hijacked. Every text, email, phone call, and knock on your door puts someone else's priorities on your calendar. Nobody will ever ask you to accomplish your top priorities—they will only ask you to accomplish theirs. Carey experienced this firsthand when he set aside a morning for writing an important article. He started early, before most people arrived at the office, but soon found himself distracted by YouTube videos, emails about a project crisis, text messages from friends, social media, and colleagues dropping by his office. By lunchtime, he had accomplished almost nothing on his priority list. This pattern repeats because we spend our days reacting rather than intentionally focusing on what matters most. Stephen Covey's distinction between urgent and important tasks helps explain this phenomenon. Most of us spend the majority of our time on things that are urgent but not important (like many emails and meetings) or neither urgent nor important (like random social media scrolling). Meanwhile, the important but not urgent activities—strategic planning, relationship building, personal development, exercise—get perpetually postponed. The solution begins with narrowing your focus using the Pareto principle: 80 percent of your results come from 20 percent of your activities. Instead of spreading yourself thin across countless tasks, identify the vital few that produce the majority of your results. For Carey, these were casting clear vision, creating and delivering great content, crafting a healthy organizational culture, keeping top staff and clients aligned, and ensuring financial resources for the mission. Next, master the art of saying no. Without a strategy for declining requests, you default to yes, and your life vaporizes with other people's priorities. Start by expressing empathy and appreciation, but be firm in your response: "As much as I'd love to, I'm going to decline" or "Thank you, but I'm going to pass." If possible, redirect them to someone who might help, and always thank them for considering you. Perhaps the most powerful approach is making categorical decisions—one decision that eliminates dozens or hundreds of other decisions. For example, decide to eliminate particular types of meetings (breakfast meetings, weekend meetings), change which levels of staff you personally meet with, or select specific charities to support while declining all other requests. These predecisions save tremendous mental energy and protect your calendar from constant invasion. The fear of missing out often prevents us from setting these boundaries. But remember: saying yes to something good now will lead you to say no to something great later. By prioritizing what truly matters and developing systems to protect those priorities, you create space for your most important work and relationships to flourish.

Chapter 5: Design Your Thrive Calendar

Blank space on your calendar is a trap. It looks like freedom, but it's really jail disguised as liberty. The moment you think white space gives you freedom, disappointment is right around the corner. Without intentional planning, your most important priorities will get hijacked by urgent matters you never planned on addressing. Carey learned this lesson the hard way. One Tuesday evening, a casual acquaintance asked him, "What are you doing next Saturday?" Checking his calendar and seeing nothing scheduled, Carey replied, "Nothing." The man invited him to a party, and despite wanting to spend his only day off with his family, Carey felt trapped and agreed to attend. Later, he faced his disappointed wife and children, wondering why he couldn't say no to a party but routinely said no to them. The solution is the Thrive Calendar—a fixed calendar that represents your predecisions about how to spend your work and personal time, expressed in repeating appointments with yourself. Unlike a to-do list that tells you what to do but not when to do it, the Thrive Calendar puts you in control of your day rather than your day controlling you. Creating your Thrive Calendar involves four key decisions: what you will and won't do within each zone, whom you will and won't meet with, when you'll do specific tasks within each zone, and where you'll do your work. Begin by revisiting your Energy Clock to confirm your Green, Yellow, and Red Zones. Then sync these zones with your most important priorities—both tasks and people. For Carey, this meant scheduling his first hour every day for quiet reflection, prayer, and reading. He reserved his mornings (his Green Zone) for writing, thinking, and strategic planning. Meetings were scheduled in his Yellow Zone during afternoons or late mornings. He kept Fridays free of scheduled meetings to finish projects and dream. Personal and family time was blocked off on evenings and weekends. When you implement the Thrive Calendar, you'll notice several positive changes. You'll accomplish your priorities because you've scheduled them in advance during your peak energy hours. You'll get better at what you do because you're developing your gift, not just using it. You'll enjoy meetings again because you've prioritized whom you need to meet with. You'll have time for yourself and your family because you're no longer giving them leftover time and energy. And perhaps most importantly, you'll be happier because the things that matter most are getting done. With the Thrive Calendar in place, responding to requests becomes much easier. When someone asks about your availability, you can truthfully say, "I have a commitment" because you've already committed that time to something important. Healthy people respect boundaries, and you don't need to explain that the commitment is to yourself, your family, or your most important work. By deciding how you'll spend your time before others decide for you, you transform your relationship with time from scarcity to abundance. Your intentions become your new rhythm, and you create a life that works for you rather than against you.

Chapter 6: Master the Art of Saying No

One of the most challenging aspects of protecting your time and energy is learning to decline requests gracefully yet firmly. Many of us are people-pleasers by nature, making "no" one of the hardest words to say. Without a strategy for saying no, you default to yes, and your life vaporizes with other people's priorities being realized rather than yours. Steve Jobs famously noted, "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things." Carey struggled with this for years, particularly in his role as a pastor where being available to people seemed like part of the job description. He developed a five-step approach that maintains relationships while protecting boundaries: First, tell them you'd love to meet with them. This is often the truth—in a perfect world with unlimited time, you probably would enjoy connecting. Second, express empathy. Let them know you understand where they're coming from and that you want to be helpful. Third, be firm. Make sure your answer is direct and clear: "As much as I'd love to, I'm afraid I'm not in" or "Thank you, but I'm going to pass." Fourth, redirect them if possible. Maybe you can't help, but someone else might be better suited. Finally, thank them for asking and express appreciation for them. Carey experienced this approach from the other side when he asked a friend who leads a large organization to speak at an event. His friend called him, asked some questions about the event, and then said, "I'm going to say no to this one, but I appreciate you asking me." He explained why and affirmed he'd like to do something in the future. They talked for another forty-five minutes about leadership and common goals. Despite not getting a yes, Carey respected his friend more for the clear boundary. Beyond individual requests, categorical decision-making can dramatically reduce the mental load of saying no. This means making one decision that eliminates dozens or hundreds of other decisions. For example, you might decide to no longer do breakfast meetings, eliminate particular kinds of meetings, or change which levels of staff you personally meet with as your company grows. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, it created a massive categorical decision for everyone. Carey had been debating how much he should be on the road speaking at events. Suddenly, a year of speaking engagements disappeared or switched to virtual. While this was involuntary and challenging, it demonstrated the power of removing entire categories of activities from your calendar. The greatest fear in setting these boundaries is missing out on amazing opportunities. Remember that if something truly exceptional comes along, you can make an exception. The point is that you've already eliminated ninety-nine things that would not have been the best use of your time, allowing you to say yes to the one or two things that are truly worthwhile. By mastering the art of saying no, you create space for your most important priorities and relationships to flourish. You'll discover that saying no to good things allows you to say yes to great things.

Chapter 7: Recalibrate When Life Changes

Even the most perfectly designed Thrive Calendar will eventually face disruption. Growth, promotions, new jobs, children, staff changes, travel, moving, health issues, personal crises—all these and more can throw off your carefully crafted rhythms. The question isn't whether these changes will occur but how you'll respond when they do. Carey discovered that staying out of burnout for over fifteen years required not just implementing the Thrive Cycle but continually recalibrating it as life evolved. Most people change only when the pain of the status quo exceeds the pain of change, spending months or years letting circumstances determine their stress levels. Wise people don't wait to adapt—they recalibrate proactively when they see change coming. When you receive advance notice of a significant change—like a promotion taking effect in a month or a new location opening in two weeks—start planning immediately. Consider how your rhythms might need to adjust. If you're about to become a new parent, you might need to reduce your expectations for Green Zone productivity temporarily. If new staff are joining, think about reorganizing reporting structures in advance. For unexpected changes, begin by tracking how you're actually spending your time. There's often a gap between what we think we're doing and what we're actually doing. Executives who claim to work 80-100 hours weekly typically work closer to 60. A time audit helps reveal the truth and identify where adjustments are needed. Review your Energy Clock to ensure your Green, Yellow, and Red Zones are still accurate. Examine the demands on your time—have they increased without your realizing it? Has the nature of requests changed? Ask yourself: What's taking my time that shouldn't be? What needs more of my attention? What's wasting my time? How are my zones changing? Whom should I start or stop meeting with? For deeper recalibration, consider three key ratios that predict how well you'll thrive: the percentage of time you spend alone versus with people, the percentage of time you spend in meetings, and the percentage of time you spend at home versus on the road. Everyone has an ideal mix for these ratios, and exceeding your limits increases stress. Carey discovered that his ideal alone-to-people ratio shifted from 20/80 in his thirties to 60/40 in his fifties. He also found that he produces his best work when meetings occupy no more than 40-50% of his work time, with a cap of fifteen meetings weekly. Regarding travel, being grounded during COVID-19 showed him that he enjoyed being home more than anticipated and could be more engaged with his team. The beauty of these recalibration tools is that they become more familiar and natural over time. Your team will grow accustomed to the new patterns and even help protect them. Carey's staff now routinely tells him, "Your January is already at capacity. You can't take on anything else." This creates a culture where everyone recognizes their limits and supports sustainable productivity. Remember that in an overwhelmed culture, your agility is the cap on your ability. By proactively recalibrating when life changes, you maintain control of your time, energy, and priorities rather than letting circumstances control you.

Summary

The journey through the Thrive Cycle reveals a profound truth: doing what you're best at when you're at your best isn't just about productivity—it's about creating the space you need to focus on who you're becoming. When you align your most important work with your peak energy periods, protect your time from constant hijacking, and build sustainable rhythms, you transform not just your calendar but your character. "In the end, who you're becoming is so much more important than what you're doing." This insight captures the heart of the approach. The strategies in this book—identifying your Green Zone, leveraging your natural energy patterns, eliminating distractions, prioritizing what truly matters, designing your Thrive Calendar, mastering the art of saying no, and recalibrating when life changes—all serve a greater purpose than mere efficiency. They create margin for growth, relationships, rest, and purpose. Your first step toward this transformation is simple but powerful: decide today to focus your time, leverage your energy, and realize your priorities by doing what you're best at when you're at your best. Live in a way today that will help you thrive tomorrow.

About Author

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Carey Nieuwhof

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