When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

by Daniel H. Pink

Moods are an internal state, but they have an external impact. Try as we might to conceal our emotions, they inevitably leak—and that shapes how others respond to our words and actions.

A]n important takeaway from our study for corporate executives is that communications with investors, and probably other critical managerial decisions and negotiations, should be conducted earlier in the day.”11

Other research has shown that time-of-day effects can explain 20 percent of the variance in human performance on cognitive undertakings.16

an analytic task. It’s tricky, to be sure. But it doesn’t require any special creativity or acumen. It has a single correct answer—and you can reach it via logic. Ample evidence has shown that adults perform best on this sort of thinking during the mornings. When we wake up, our body temperature slowly rises. That rising temperature gradually boosts our energy level and alertness—and that, in turn, enhances our executive functioning, our ability to concentrate, and our powers of deduction. For most of us, those sharp-minded analytic capacities peak in the late morning or around noon.17

Alertness and energy levels, which climb in the morning and reach their apex around noon, tend to plummet during the afternoons.18 And with that drop comes a corresponding fall in our ability to remain focused and constrain our inhibitions.