When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

by Daniel H. Pink

Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing. —MILES DAVIS

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.

With the DRM, participants reconstruct the previous day—chronicling everything they did and how they felt while doing it. DRM research, for instance, has shown that during any given day people typically are least happy while commuting and most happy while canoodling.

So stark were the results that the authors do something rare in academic papers: They offer specific, practical advice. “[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.”

First, our cognitive abilities do not remain static over the course of a day. During the sixteen or so hours we’re awake, they change—often in a regular, foreseeable manner. We are smarter, faster, dimmer, slower, more creative, and less creative in some parts of the day than others. Second, these daily fluctuations are more extreme than we realize. “[T]he performance change between the daily high point and the daily low point can be equivalent to the effect on performance of drinking the legal limit of alcohol,” according to Russell Foster, a neuroscientist and chronobiologist at the University of Oxford.15 Other research has shown that time-of-day effects can explain 20 percent of the variance in human performance on cognitive undertakings.16 Third, how we do depends on what we’re doing. “Perhaps the main conclusion to be drawn from studies on the effects of time of day on performance,” says British psychologist Simon Folkard, “is that the best time to perform a particular task depends on the nature of that task.”

For most of us, those sharp-minded analytic capacities peak in the late morning or around noon.

Alertness and energy levels, which climb in the morning and reach their apex around noon, tend to plummet during the afternoons.

For analytic problems, lack of inhibitory control is a bug. For insight problems, it’s a feature. Some have called this phenomenon the “inspiration paradox”—the idea that “innovation and creativity are greatest when we are not at our best, at least with respect to our circadian rhythms.”

In the mornings, during the peak, most of us excel at Linda problems—analytic work that requires sharpness, vigilance, and focus. Later in the day, during the recovery, most of us do better on coin problems—insight work that requires less inhibition and resolve.

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. Some of the specific morning versus afternoon differences were stark. For instance, at 11 a.m., doctors found an average of more than 1.1 polyps in every exam. By 2 p.m., though, they were detecting barely half that number even though afternoon patients were no different from the morning ones.2 Look at those numbers

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.

DeskTime claims to have discovered a golden ratio of work and rest. High performers, its research concludes, work for fifty-two minutes and then break for seventeen minutes.

But the evidence is overwhelming that short breaks are effective—and deliver considerable bang for their limited buck.

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

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.

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.

With brief ten- to twenty-minute naps, the effect on cognitive functioning is positive from the moment of awakening. But with slightly longer snoozes, the napper begins in negative territory—that’s

In general, concludes one analysis of about twenty years of napping research, healthy adults “should ideally nap for approximately 10 to 20 minutes.” Such brief naps “are ideal for workplace settings where performance immediately upon awakening is usually required.”

Other researchers have found the same results—that caffeine, usually in the form of coffee, followed by a nap of ten to twenty minutes, is the ideal technique for staving off sleepiness and increasing performance.

As for me, after a few months of experimenting with twenty-minute afternoon naps, I’ve converted. I’ve gone from nap detractor to nap devotee, from someone ashamed to nap to someone who relishes the coffee-then-nap combination known as the “nappuccino.”*

The evidence of harm is so massive that in 2014 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a policy statement calling for middle schools and high schools to begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m.5 A few years later, the CDC added its voice, concluding that “delaying school start times has the potential for the greatest population impact” in boosting teenage learning and well-being.

Suppose you and your team are about to embark on a project. Before the project begins, convene for a premortem. “Assume it’s eighteen months from now and our project is a complete disaster,” you say to your team. “What went wrong?” The team, using the power of prospective hindsight, offers some answers. Maybe the task wasn’t clearly defined. Maybe you had too few people, too many people, or the wrong people. Maybe you didn’t have a clear leader or realistic objectives. 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.

It’s probably no surprise that people who marry when they’re very young are more likely to divorce. For instance, an American who weds at twenty-five is 11 percent less likely to divorce than one who marries at age twenty-four, according to an analysis by University of Utah sociologist Nicholas Wolfinger. But waiting too long has a downside. Past the age of about thirty-two—even after controlling for religion, education, geographic location, and other factors—the odds of divorce increase by 5 percent per year for at least the next decade.

Wait until your relationship matures. Andrew Francis-Tan and Hugo Mialon at Emory University found that couples that dated for at least one year before marriage were 20 percent less likely to divorce than those who made the move more quickly.19 Couples that had dated for more than three years were even less likely to split up once they exchanged vows. (Francis-Tan and Mialon also found that the more a couple spent on its wedding and any engagement ring, the more likely they were to divorce.)

Each group first went through a phase of prolonged inertia. The teammates got to know one another, but they didn’t accomplish much. They talked about ideas but didn’t move forward. The clock ticked. The days passed.

Then came a sudden transition. “In a concentrated burst of changes, groups dropped old patterns, reengaged with outside supervisors, adopted new perspectives on their work, and made dramatic progress,” Gersick found. After the initial inert phase, they entered a new heads-down, locked-in phase that executed the plan and hurtled toward the deadline. But even more interesting than the burst itself was when it arrived. No matter how much time the various teams were allotted, “each group experienced its transition at the same point in its calendar—precisely halfway between its first meeting and its official deadline.”

“As each group approached the midpoint between the time it started work and its deadline, it underwent great change,” Gersick wrote. Groups didn’t march toward their goals at a steady, even pace. Instead, they spent considerable time accomplishing almost nothing—until they experienced a surge of activity that always came at “the temporal midpoint” of a project.14

Think of midpoints as a psychological alarm clock. They’re effective only when we set the alarm, when we can hear its annoying bleep, bleep, bleep go off, and when we don’t hit the snooze button. But with midpoints, as with alarm clocks, the most motivating wake-up call is one that comes when you’re running slightly behind.

Midpoints are both a fact of life and a force of nature, but that doesn’t make their effects inexorable. 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.

The University of Chicago’s Ayelet Fishbach, whose work on Hanukkah candles I described earlier, has found that when team commitment to achieving a goal is high, it’s best to emphasize the work that remains. But when team commitment is low, it’s wiser to emphasize progress that has already been made even if it’s not massive.

Figure out your own team’s commitment and move accordingly. As you set the path, remember that teams generally become less open to new ideas and solutions after the midpoint.6 However, they are also the most open to coaching.

As legend has it, one day Buffett was talking with his private pilot, who was frustrated that he hadn’t achieved all he’d hoped. Buffett prescribed a three-step remedy. First, he said, write down your top twenty-five goals for the rest of your life. Second, look at the list and circle your top five goals, those that are unquestionably your highest priority. That will give you two lists—one with your top five goals, the other with the next twenty. Third, immediately start planning how to achieve those top five goals. And the other twenty? Get rid of them. Avoid them at all costs. Don’t even look at them until you’ve achieved the top five, which might take a long time. Doing a few important things well is far more likely to propel you out of the slump than a dozen half-assed and half-finished projects are.

Think of this phenomenon as a first cousin of the fresh start effect—the fast finish effect. When we near the end, we kick a little harder. To be sure, the effect is not uniform or entirely positive. For instance, as we close in on a finish line, having multiple ways to cross it can slow our progress.12 Deadlines, especially for creative tasks, can sometimes reduce intrinsic motivation and flatten creativity.13 And while imposing a finite end to negotiations—for labor-management contracts or even peace agreements—can often speed a resolution, that doesn’t always lead to the best or most enduring results.

This “end of life bias,” as the researchers call it, suggests that we believe people’s true selves are revealed at the end—even if their death is unexpected and the bulk of their lives evinced a far different self.

“As participants aged, there was a decline in the number of peripheral partners . . . but great stability in the number of close social partners into late life,” English and Carstensen found. However, the outer and middle circle friends didn’t quietly creep offstage in act three. “They were actively eliminated,” the researchers say. Older people have fewer total friends not because of circumstance but because they’ve begun a process of “active pruning, that is, removing peripheral partners with whom interactions are less emotionally meaningful.”

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.”24

Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Robert Sutton explains the qualities that make someone worth working for. If your boss has your back, takes responsibility instead of blaming others, encourages your efforts but also gets out of your way, and displays a sense of humor rather than a raging temper, you’re probably in a good place.2 If your boss is the opposite, watch out—and maybe get out.

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. Making progress is the single largest day-to-day motivator on the job.7 But without tracking our “dones,” we often don’t know whether we’re progressing. Ending the day by recording what you’ve achieved can encode the entire day more positively. (Testimonial: I’ve been doing this for four years and I swear by the practice. On good days, the exercise delivers feelings of completion; on bad days, it often shows me I got more done than I suspected.)

Now use the other two or three minutes to lay out your plan for the following day. This will help close the door on today and energize you for tomorrow. Bonus: If you’ve got an extra minute left, send someone—anyone—a thank-you e-mail. I mentioned in chapter 2 that gratitude is a powerful restorative. It’s an equally powerful form of elevation.

“[T]he very end of an experience seems to disproportionately affect our memory of it,” which means that “going out with a bang, going on the hot air balloon or whatever on the last day of the trip, could . . . be a good strategy for maximizing reminiscence.”8 As you plan your next vacation, you needn’t save all the best for last. But you’ll enjoy the vacation more, both in the moment and in retrospect, if you consciously create an elevating final experience.

Feelings of belonging boost job satisfaction and performance. Research by Alex Pentland at MIT “has shown that the more cohesive and communicative a team is—the more they chat and gossip—the more they get done.”

Group timing requires belongingness, which is enabled by codes, garb, and touch. Once groups synch to the tribe, they’re ready to synch at the next, and final, level.

Exercise is one of the few activities in life that is indisputably good for us—an undertaking that extends enormous benefits but extracts few costs. Exercise helps us live longer. It fends off heart disease and diabetes. It reduces our weight and improves our strength. And its psychological value is enormous.

The research on the benefits of singing in groups is stunning. Choral singing calms heart rates and boosts endorphin levels.16 It improves lung function.17 It increases pain thresholds and reduces the need for pain medication.18 It even alleviates symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome.19 Group singing—not just performances but also practices—increases the production of immunoglobulin, making it easier to fight infections.20 In fact, cancer patients who sing in choirs show an improved immune response after just one rehearsal.21 And while the physiological payoffs are many, the psychological ones might be even greater. Several studies demonstrate that choral singing delivers a significant boost to positive mood.22 It also lifts self-esteem while reducing feelings of stress and symptoms of depression.23 It enhances one’s sense of purpose and meaning, and increases sensitivity toward others.24 And these effects come not from singing per se but from singing in a group. For example, people who sing in choirs report far higher well-being than those who sing solo.

Choral groups are the most robust expression of this phenomenon, but other activities in which participants find a way to operate in synch also create similar good feelings. Researchers at the University of Oxford have found that group dancing—“a ubiquitous human activity that involves exertive synchronized movement to music”—raises the pain threshold of people who participate.

Working in harmony with others, science shows, makes it more likely we’ll do good. 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 In similar experiments, children who first played synchronous games were far more likely than others to say that if they were to come back for more activities they would be interested in playing with a child who wasn’t in their original group.

In other words, coordinating makes us better people—and being better people makes us better coordinators.

The longer it takes for a boss to respond to their e-mails, the less satisfied people are with their leader.1

The benefits of thinking fondly about the past are vast because nostalgia delivers two ingredients essential to well-being: a sense of meaning and a connection to others. When we think nostalgically, we often feature ourselves as the protagonist in a momentous event (a wedding or a graduation, for instance) that involves the people we care about most deeply.

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. We’re more likely to feel nostalgic on chillier days. And when experimenters induce nostalgia—through music or smell, for instance—people are more tolerant of cold and perceive the temperature to be higher.