I read recently that the most productive time of day for most workers is before 4 p.m. I have to concur with that estimate. I am a fairly early riser who gets her best work done in  the morning hours. For just about, oh, always I’ve been one to fade fast as the afternoon approaches, no matter what the job: retail, desk work, parenting. I’d be ready to punch the time clock at around 3 and retire my brain for the evening. (When fully immersed into parenting little ones, my down time coincided with the start time of, at first, Donahue and Oprah and then Dr. Phil and Oprah, whose shows were a great way to unwind before the dinner rush.)

Well, this new job that I acquired has me working in the afternoon on a daily basis. In fact, one of yesterday’s assignments, which I was told would be difficult (and they weren’t a-kiddin’), didn’t start until 4 p.m.–way past my productive time. Not only was the assignment ill timing for my productive cycle, it landed smack dab in the middle of the dinner hour. I didn’t finish that assignment until 7:30 p.m., and only stopped once to remove three frozen pizzas from their boxes and place them in the oven, so that the family would have something to eat for dinner.

My husband supervised the baking of the pizzas, one of my boys put together a salad, and both boys handled the dish duty. There were cranky words among all males involved, as this prepping for dinner and cleaning up afterward is so foreign to them.

But that’s another blog post, this one concerns my fading brain that was on overdrive yesterday. As I usually wind down my day and put aside my work until the next day or for later in the evening, when I’ve gotten my second wind, I needed to be in full-force. Not a good plan for someone who is fading fast. And the rush nature of the assignment made me feel like I was conducting a runaway train with a blindfold on.

I hope I can arrange for my assignments to come in a bit earlier in the day (although being on the Left Coast, I am typically going to get these later-in-the-day calls). I suppose I’ll have to brew a fresh pot of coffee, make myself toast to snack on, and fool my body into thinking it’s morning again. Oh, yeah. That should do the trick.