When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

by Daniel H. Pink

Positive affect—language revealing that tweeters felt active, engaged, and hopeful—generally rose in the morning, plummeted in the afternoon, and climbed back up again in the early evening.

Before I tell you more about Linda, let me ask you a question about her. Which is more likely? Linda is a bank teller. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement. Faced with this question, most people answer (b). It makes intuitive sense, right? A justice-seeking, antinuke philosophy major? That sure sounds like someone who would be an active feminist. But (a) is—and must be—the correct response. The answer isn’t a matter of fact. Linda isn’t real. Nor is it a matter of opinion. It’s entirely a matter of logic. Bank tellers who are also feminists—just like bank tellers who yodel or despise cilantro—are a subset of all bank tellers, and subsets can never be larger than the full set they’re a part of.

For analytic problems, lack of inhibitory control is a bug. For insight problems, it’s a feature.

Chronotypes are like feet in another way, too. There’s not much we can do about their size or shape. Genetics explains at least half the variability in chronotype, suggesting that larks and owls are born, not made.29 In fact, the when of one’s birth plays a surprisingly powerful role. People born in the fall and winter are more likely to be larks; people born in the spring and summer are more likely to be owls.30 After genetics, the most important factor in one’s chronotype is age. As parents know and lament, young children are generally larks. They wake up early, buzz around throughout the day, but don’t last very long beyond the early evening. Around puberty, those larks begin morphing into owls.

Men tend toward eveningness, women toward morningness. However, those sex differences begin to disappear around the age of fifty. And as Roenneberg notes, “People over 60 years of age, on average, become even earlier chronotypes than they were as children.”32

Much of the research shows morning people to be pleasant, productive folks—“introverted, conscientious, agreeable, persistent, and emotionally stable” women and men who take initiative, suppress ugly impulses, and plan for the future.33 Morning types also tend to be high in positive affect—that is, many are as happy as larks.34 Owls, meanwhile, display some darker tendencies. They’re more open and extroverted than larks. But they’re also more neurotic—and are often impulsive, sensation-seeking, live-for-the-moment hedonists.35 They’re more likely than larks to use nicotine, alcohol, and caffeine—not to mention marijuana, ecstasy, and cocaine.36 They’re also more prone to addiction, eating disorders, diabetes, depression, and infidelity.

Those nefarious owls actually tend to display greater creativity, show superior working memory, and post higher scores on intelligence tests such as the GMAT.40 They even have a better sense of humor.41 The problem is that our corporate, government, and education cultures are configured for the 75 or 80 percent of people who are larks or third birds.

What ultimately matters, then, is that type, task, and time align—what social scientists call “the synchrony effect.”

Yes, early risers display the morning morality effect. But night owls are more ethical at night than in the morning. “[T]he fit between a person’s chronotype and the time of day offers a more complete predictor of that person’s ethicality than does time of day alone,” these scholars write.47

In short, all of us experience the day in three stages—a peak, a trough, and a rebound. And about three-quarters of us (larks and third birds) experience it in that order. But about one in four people, those whose genes or age make them night owls, experience the day in something closer to the reverse order—recovery, trough, peak.

First, determine your chronotype, using the three-question method here or by completing the MCTQ questionnaire online (http://www.danpink.com/MCTQ).

Second, determine what you need to do.

Third, look at this chart to figure out the optimal time of day:

Your Daily When Chart Lark Third Bird Owl Analytic tasks Early morning Early to midmorning Late afternoon and evening Insight tasks Late afternoon/ early evening Late afternoon/ early evening Morning Making an impression Morning Morning Morning (sorry, owls) Making a decision Early morning Early to midmorning Late afternoon and evening

For a more granular sense of your daily when, track your behavior systematically for a week. Set your phone alarm to beep every ninety minutes. Each time you hear the alarm, answer these three questions: What are you doing? On a scale of 1 to 10, how mentally alert do you feel right now? On a scale of 1 to 10, how physically energetic do you feel right now? Do this for a week, then tabulate your results.

To track your responses, you can scan and duplicate these pages, download a PDF version from my website (http://www.danpink.com/chapter1supplement).

The harsh reality of work—whatever we do, whatever our title—is that many of us don’t fully control our time.

Be aware. Simply knowing that you’re operating at a suboptimal time can be helpful because you can correct for your chronotype in small but powerful ways.

Suppose you’re an owl forced to attend an early-morning meeting. Take some preventive measures. The night before, make a list of everything you’ll need for the gathering. Before you sit down at the conference table, go for a quick walk outside—ten minutes or so.

Work the margins. Even if you can’t control the big things, you might still be able to shape the little things. If you’re a lark or a third bird and happen to have a free hour in the morning, don’t fritter it away on e-mail. Spend those sixty minutes doing your most important work. Try managing up, too. Gently tell your boss when you work best, but put it in terms of what’s good for the organization.

Lose weight: When we first wake up, having not eaten for at least eight hours, our blood sugar is low. Since we need blood sugar to fuel a run, morning exercise will use the fat stored in our tissues to supply the energy we need. (When we exercise after eating, we use the energy from the food we’ve just consumed.) In many cases, morning exercise may burn 20 percent more fat than later, post-food workouts.1 Boost mood: Cardio workouts—swimming, running, even walking the dog—can elevate mood. When we exercise in the morning, we enjoy these effects all day.

Build strength: Our physiology changes throughout the day. One example: the hormone testosterone, whose levels peak in the morning. Testosterone helps build muscle, so if you’re doing weight training, schedule your workout for those early-morning hours.

Enjoy the workout a bit more: People typically perceive that they’re exerting themselves a little less in the afternoon even if they’re doing exactly the same exercise routine as in the morning.6 This suggests that afternoons may make workouts a little less taxing on the mind and soul.

FOUR TIPS FOR A BETTER MORNING

Drink a glass of water when you wake up. How often during a day do you go eight hours without drinking anything at all? Yet that’s what it’s like for most of us overnight. Between the water we exhale and the water that evaporates from our skin, not to mention a trip or two to the bathroom, we wake up mildly dehydrated.

Don’t drink coffee immediately after you wake up. The moment we awaken, our bodies begin producing cortisol, a stress hormone that kick-starts our groggy souls. But it turns out that caffeine interferes with the production of cortisol—so starting the day immediately with a cup of coffee barely boosts our wakefulness.

The better approach is to drink that first cup an hour or ninety minutes after waking up, once our cortisol production has peaked and the caffeine can do its magic.

Soak up the morning sun. If you feel sluggish in the morning, get as much sunlight as you can. The sun, unlike most lightbulbs, emits light that covers a wide swath of the color spectrum. When these extra wavelengths hit your eyes, they signal your brain to stop producing sleep hormones and start producing alertness hormones.

Schedule talk-therapy appointments for the morning. Research in the emerging field of psychoneuroendocrinology has shown that therapy sessions may be most effective in the morning.8 The reason goes back to cortisol. Yes, it’s a stress hormone. But it also enhances learning. During therapy sessions in the morning, when cortisol levels are highest, patients are more focused and absorb advice more deeply.

Or consider colonoscopies. I’ve reached the age where prudence calls for submitting to this procedure to detect the presence or possibility of colon cancer. But now that I’ve read the research, I would never accept an appointment that wasn’t before noon. For example, one oft-cited study of more than 1,000 colonoscopies found that endoscopists are less likely to detect polyps—small growths on the colon—as the day progresses. Every hour that passed resulted in a nearly 5 percent reduction in polyp detection.

One British survey got even more precise when it found that the typical worker reaches the most unproductive moment of the day at 2:55 p.m.

Ponder the consequences: If you happen to appear before a parole board just before a break rather than just after one, you’ll likely spend a few more years in jail—not because of the facts of the case but because of the time of day.

what should those breaks look like?

Something beats nothing. One problem with afternoons is that if we stick with a task too long, we lose sight of the goal we’re trying to achieve, a process known as “habituation.” Short breaks from a task can prevent habituation, help us maintain focus, and reactivate our commitment to a goal.17 And frequent short breaks are more effective than occasional ones.18 DeskTime, a company that makes productivity-tracking software, says that “what the most productive 10% of our users have in common is their ability to take effective breaks.”

High performers, its research concludes, work for fifty-two minutes and then break for seventeen minutes.

Moving beats stationary.

One study showed that hourly five-minute walking breaks boosted energy levels, sharpened focus, and “improved mood throughout the day and reduced feelings of fatigue in the late afternoon.” These “microbursts of activity,” as the researchers call them, were also more effective than a single thirty-minute walking break—so much so that the researchers suggest that organizations “introduce physically active breaks during the workday routine.”20 Regular short walking breaks in the workplace also increase motivation and concentration and enhance creativity.21

Social beats solo. Time alone can be replenishing, especially for us introverts. But much of the research on restorative breaks points toward the greater power of being with others, particularly when we’re free to choose with whom we spend the time. In high-stress occupations like nursing, social and collective rest breaks not only minimize physical strain and cut down on medical errors, they also reduce turnover; nurses who take these sorts of breaks are more likely to stay at their jobs.

Outside beats inside. Nature breaks may replenish us the most.24 Being close to trees, plants, rivers, and streams is a powerful mental restorative, one whose potency most of us don’t appreciate.25 For example, people who take short walks outdoors return with better moods and greater replenishment than people who walk indoors. What’s more, while people predicted they’d be happier being outside, they underestimated how much happier.26 Taking a few minutes to be in nature is better than spending those minutes in a building. Looking out a window into nature is a better micro-break than looking at a wall or your cubicle. Even taking a break indoors amid plants is better than doing so in a green-free zone.

Fully detached beats semidetached.

In the same South Korean study mentioned earlier, relaxation breaks (stretching or daydreaming) eased stress and boosted mood in a way that multitasking breaks did not.27 Tech-free breaks also “increase vigor and reduce emotional exhaustion.”28 Or, as other researchers put it, “Psychological detachment from work, in addition to physical detachment, is crucial, as continuing to think about job demands during breaks may result in strain.”

So if you’re looking for the Platonic ideal of a restorative break, the perfect combination of scarf, hat, and gloves to insulate yourself from the cold breath of the afternoon, consider a short walk outside with a friend during which you discuss something other than work.

When scholars have applied more rigorous scientific methods, breakfast’s benefits have been much more difficult to detect.

“A recommendation to eat or skip breakfast . . . contrary to widely espoused views . . . had no discernable effect on weight loss,” says one.

By one estimation, 62 percent of American office workers wolf down lunch in the same spot where they work all day. These dismal scenes—smartphone in one hand, soggy sandwich in the other, despair wafting from the cubicle—even have a name: the sad desk lunch.

The non–desk lunchers were better able to contend with workplace stress and showed less exhaustion and greater vigor not just during the remainder of the day but also a full one year later.

Not just any lunch will do, however. The most powerful lunch breaks have two key ingredients—autonomy and detachment. Autonomy—exercising some control over what you do, how you do it, when you do it, and whom you do it with—is critical for high performance, especially on complex tasks. But it’s equally crucial when we take breaks from complex tasks. “The extent to which employees can determine how they utilize their lunch breaks may be just as important as what employees do during their lunch,” says one set of researchers.37 Detachment—both psychological and physical—is also critical. Staying focused on work during lunch, or even using one’s phone for social media, can intensify fatigue, according to multiple studies, but shifting one’s focus away from the office has the opposite effect. Longer lunch breaks and lunch breaks away from the office can be prophylactic against afternoon peril.

Done right, naps can be a shrewd response to the trough and a valuable break. Naps, research shows, confer two key benefits: They improve cognitive performance and they boost mental and physical health.

In many ways, naps are Zambonis for our brains. They smooth out the nicks, scuffs, and scratches a typical day has left on our mental ice. One well-known NASA study, for instance, found that pilots who napped for up to forty minutes subsequently showed a 34 percent improvement in reaction time and a twofold increase in alertness.

However, the returns from napping extend beyond vigilance. An afternoon nap expands the brain’s capacity to learn, according to a University of California–Berkeley study. Nappers easily outperformed non-nappers on their ability to retain information.