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The ideal naps—those that combine effectiveness with efficiency—are far shorter, usually between ten and twenty minutes.
Vigilance breaks prevent deadly mistakes. Restorative breaks enhance performance. Lunches and naps help us elude the trough and get more and better work done in the afternoon. A growing body of science makes it clear: Breaks are not a sign of sloth but a sign of strength.
Until about ten years ago, we admired those who could survive on only four hours of sleep and those stalwarts who worked through the night. They were heroes, people whose fierce devotion and commitment revealed everyone else’s fecklessness and frailty. Then, as sleep science reached the mainstream, we began to change our attitude. That sleepless guy wasn’t a hero. He was a fool. He was likely doing subpar work and maybe hurting the rest of us because of his poor choices.
Breaks are now where sleep was then. Skipping lunch was once a badge of honor and taking a nap a mark of shame. No more. The science of timing now affirms what the Old World already understood: We should give ourselves a break.
The first day of the year is what social scientists call a “temporal landmark.”15 Just as human beings rely on landmarks to navigate space—“To get to my house, turn left at the Shell station”—we also use landmarks to navigate time.
They discovered that searches for the word “diet” always soared on January 1—by about 80 percent more than on a typical day. No surprise, perhaps. However, searches also spiked at the start of every calendar cycle—the first day of every month and the first day of every week. Searches even climbed 10 percent on the first day after a federal holiday. Something about days that represented “firsts” switched on people’s motivation.
To establish a fresh start, people used two types of temporal landmarks—social and personal. The social landmarks were those that everyone shared: Mondays, the beginning of a new month, national holidays. The personal ones were unique to the individual: birthdays, anniversaries, job changes.
Individuals who get off to a stumbling start—at a new job, on an important project, or in trying to improve their health—can alter their course by using a temporal landmark to start again.
In later research, Dai, Milkman, and Riis found that imbuing an otherwise ordinary day with personal meaning generates the power to activate new beginnings.
Recent research has shown that the fresh start effect applies to teams.24 Suppose a company’s new quarter has a rough beginning. Rather than waiting until the next quarter, an obvious fresh start date, to smooth out the mess, leaders can find a meaningful moment occurring sooner—perhaps the anniversary of the launch of a key product—that would relegate previous screwups to the past and help the team get back on track.
Or suppose some employees are not regularly contributing to their retirement accounts or failing to attend important training sessions. Sending them reminders on their birthdays rather than on some other day could prompt them to start acting.
If you’re trying to encourage people to eat healthier, a campaign calling for Meatless Mondays will be far more effective than one advocating Vegan Thursdays.
Those who entered the job market in weak economies earned less at the beginning of their careers than those who started in strong economies—no big surprise. But this early disadvantage didn’t fade. It persisted for as long as twenty years.
In any dynamic system, the initial conditions have a huge influence over what happens to the inhabitants of that system.
By imagining failure in advance—by thinking through what might cause a false start—you can anticipate some of the potential problems and avoid them once the actual project begins.
EIGHTY-SIX DAYS IN THE YEAR WHEN YOU CAN MAKE A FRESH START
If you’re on a ballot (county commissioner, prom queen, the Oscars), being listed first gives you an edge. Researchers have studied this effect in thousands of elections—from school board to city council, from California to Texas—and voters consistently preferred the first name on the ballot.2
If you’re not the default choice—for example, if you’re pitching against a firm that already has the account you’re seeking—going first can help you get a fresh look from the decision-makers.
If there are relatively few competitors (say, five or fewer), going first can help you take advantage of the “primacy effect,” the tendency people have to remember the first thing in a series better than those that come later.
If you’re interviewing for a job and you’re up against several strong candidates, you might gain an edge from being first. Uri Simonsohn and Francesca Gino examined more than 9,000 MBA admissions interviews and found that interviewers often engage in “narrow bracketing”—assuming small sets of candidates represent the entire field. So if they encounter several strong applicants early in the process, they might more aggressively look for flaws in the later ones.
If you are the default choice, don’t go first. Recall from the previous chapter: Judges are more likely to stick with the default late in the day (when they’re fatigued) rather than early or after a break (when they’re revived).
Research from UCLA’s Corinne Bendersky suggests that over time extroverts lose status in groups.13 So, at the outset, concentrate on accomplishing a few meaningful achievements, and once you’ve gained status by demonstrating excellence, feel free to be more assertive.
On your first day in a new role, you’ll be filled with energy. By day thirty? Maybe less so. Motivation comes in spurts—which is why Stanford psychologist B. J. Fogg recommends taking advantage of “motivation waves” so you can weather “motivation troughs.”
The best hope for turning a slump into a spark involves three steps. First, be aware of midpoints. Don’t let them remain invisible. Second, use them to wake up rather than roll over—to utter an anxious “uh-oh” rather than a resigned “oh, no.” Third, at the midpoint, imagine that you’re behind—but only by a little. That will spark your motivation and maybe help you win a national championship.
One solution is to get your mind to look at the middle in a different way. Instead of thinking about all 25,000 miles, set a subgoal at the 12,000-mile mark to accumulate 15,000 and make that your focus.
One reason the Hemingway technique works is something called the Zeigarnik effect, our tendency to remember unfinished tasks better than finished ones.2 When you’re in the middle of a project, experiment by ending the day partway through a task with a clear next step. It might fuel your day-to-day motivation.
FIVE WAYS TO COMBAT A MIDLIFE SLUMP
Carstensen began developing this idea in 1999 when she (and two of her former students) published a paper titled “Taking Time Seriously.” “As people move through life,” she wrote, “they become increasingly aware that time is in some sense ‘running out.’ More social contacts feel superficial—trivial—in contrast to the ever-deepening ties of existing close relationships. It becomes increasingly important to make the ‘right’ choice, not to waste time on gradually diminishing future payoffs.”
Moreover, what spurs editing isn’t aging per se, Carstensen found, but endings of any sort.
When the workday ends, many of us want to tear away—to pick up children, race home to prepare dinner, or just beeline to the nearest bar. But the science of endings suggests that instead of fleeing we’re better off reserving the final five minutes of work for a few small deliberate actions that bring the day to a fulfilling close. Begin by taking two or three minutes to write down what you accomplished since the morning.
At North High School in Des Moines, Iowa, choir teacher Vanessa Brady enlists her husband, Justin, on the last day of school to bring in griddles, butter, syrup, and his homemade pancake batter for an end-of-the-year Pancake Day.
For the last class of a term, Alecia Jioeva, who teaches at Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia, takes her students to a small restaurant where they offer toasts to one another.
For instance, research by Bahar Tunçgenç and Emma Cohen of the University of Oxford has found that children who played a rhythmic, synchronized clap-and-tap game were more likely than children who played nonsynchronous games to later help their peers.31
Running with others offers a trifecta of benefits: exercising, socializing, and synching—all in one. Find a running group through websites like the Road Runners Club of America, http://www.rrca.org/resources/runners/find-a-running-club.
Cooking, eating, and cleaning up by yourself can be a drag. But doing it together requires synchronization and can deliver uplift (not to mention a decent meal). Find tandem-cooking tips at https://www.acouplecooks.com/menu-for-a-cooking-date-tips-for-cooking-together/.
To be clear: Not everyone will instantly warm to all these exercises, but sometimes you’ve got to fight for your right to synchronize.
E-mail response time is the single best predictor of whether employees are satisfied with their boss, according to research by Duncan Watts, a Columbia University sociologist who is now a principal researcher for Microsoft Research. The longer it takes for a boss to respond to their e-mails, the less satisfied people are with their leader.
Nostalgia, research shows, can foster positive mood, protect against anxiety and stress, and boost creativity.8 It can heighten optimism, deepen empathy, and alleviate boredom.9 Nostalgia can even increase physiological feelings of comfort and warmth.
For example, one reason some people don’t save for retirement is that they somehow consider the future version of themselves a different person than the current version. But showing people age-advanced images of their own photographs can boost their propensity to save.
168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think (2010)
A Geography of Time: Temporal Misadventures of a Social Psychologist
Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired
Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation (2017)
