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Get It Done
1-2-3: Why Doing Less in the Afternoon Makes You More Productive Overall
sent by Joaquín Kosegarten | August 18, 2026
Here is a strange truth. The people who get the most done in a day are not the ones grinding hardest from 2pm to 5pm.
They are often the ones doing noticeably less in those hours.
Once you see why, you will never structure an afternoon the same way again.
1 Idea
Fill your afternoons with lighter tasks, and protect your mornings for heavy work.
2 Ways it saves you time
1. Your brain’s cognitive capacity naturally dips in the afternoon. Trying to do your hardest work during that window is like running uphill with a weighted vest. A task that takes 45 minutes during your peak hours can stretch to 90 minutes at times when your brain is naturally slower, with more errors on top. Doing less demanding work in the afternoon saves you hours you would waste grinding through tasks that don’t belong there.
2. Protecting your afternoon for lighter work also protects tomorrow morning. When you burn yourself out by 5pm, your sleep suffers, your recovery shrinks, and tomorrow’s peak window starts slower and cloudier. Lighter afternoons compound. You save time today and buy back sharper mornings for the rest of the week.
3 Steps to Get It Done:
1. Look at tomorrow’s to-do list. Identify the 1 or 2 tasks that require real thinking, writing, or decision-making. Those belong in the morning.
2. Move lighter work, email, admin, quick calls, routine meetings, into your afternoon block. Stack them intentionally.
3. When your afternoon energy dips, lean into it. Do the easy stuff, take a short break, and let your brain coast where it wants to coast.
Conclusion
Productivity isn’t about grinding every hour equally. It’s about matching the right work to the right hours.
Treat your afternoon as a finishing lap, not a second sprint. Try this tomorrow and watch how much more you actually complete by 5pm.
This is what the Recovery step in Get It Done is built around: knowing when to push and when to slow down, so you stay sharp for the hours that matter most.
I feel guilty doing easy stuff in the afternoon when I still have big things on my list…
That guilt’s expensive. It pushes you to force deep work into hours your brain can’t deliver it, which costs you more time than just moving the task would have. Easy work in the afternoon isn’t slacking. It’s smart sequencing. The calendar does not care how hard a task felt. It only cares whether it got done.
As promised — 1 minute that can save you hours
Yours in Getting It Done,
Joaquin Kosegarten
Author of Get It Done
Creator of the 1-2-3 Get It Done Newsletter
P.S. Fun Fact: A study published in the journal Psychological Science analysed over 500 million tweets and found that positive mood, energy, and mental sharpness followed a strikingly consistent daily curve across cultures. People everywhere peaked mid-morning, dipped in the afternoon, and recovered slightly in the early evening. The researchers concluded that this pattern isn’t personal or cultural. It’s biological. Trying to push against it’s like trying to argue with the tide. The smartest approach is to plan your day around it, not against it.
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Why Doing Less in the Afternoon Makes You More Productive Overall
About the Newsletter
1-2-3 Get It Done is a weekly 1-minute read trusted by busy professionals who want to achieve more in less time without burning out.
Each issue gives you 1 idea, 2 ways it saves you time, and 3 steps to put it into action immediately.