When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

by Daniel H. Pink

you’ll soon realize that much of what we assume are “natural” units of time are really fences our ancestors constructed in order to corral time. Seconds, hours, and weeks are all human inventions. Only by marking them off, wrote historian Daniel Boorstin, “would mankind be liberated from the cyclical monotony of nature.”5

The day is perhaps the most important way we divide, configure, and evaluate our time. So part one of this book starts our exploration of timing here.

PART ONE. THE DAY

1. THE HIDDEN PATTERN OF EVERYDAY LIFE

The result is that, like the plant on de Mairan’s windowsill, human beings metaphorically “open” and “close” at regular times during each day.

When the researchers crunched the numbers, they found a “consistent and strong bimodal pattern”—twin peaks—during the day. The women’s positive affect climbed in the morning hours until it reached an “optimal emotional point” around midday. Then their good mood quickly plummeted and stayed low throughout the afternoon only to rise again in the early evening.7

VIGILANCE, INHIBITION, AND THE DAILY SECRET TO HIGH PERFORMANCE

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

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.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. Our powers of analysis, like leaves on certain plants, close up.

The effects of later-in-the-day testing were similar to having parents with slightly lower incomes or less education—or missing two weeks of a school year.19 Timing wasn’t everything. But it was a big thing.

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.”23 And just as the studies of school performance in Denmark and Los Angeles suggest that students would fare better taking analytic subjects such as math in the morning, Wieth and Zacks say their work “suggests that students designing their class schedules might perform best in classes such as art and creative writing during their non-optimal compared to optimal time of day.”24

LARKS, OWLS, AND THIRD BIRDS

The Edisons among us are late chronotypes. They wake long after sunrise, detest mornings, and don’t begin peaking until late afternoon or early evening. Others of us are early chronotypes. They rise easily and feel energized during the day but wear out by evening. Some of us are owls; others of us are larks.

Let’s begin with personality, including what social scientists call the “Big Five” traits—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

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.37 No wonder they don’t show their faces during the day. And no wonder bosses consider employees who come in early as dedicated and competent and give la...

Well, not exactly. When scholars have tested Franklin’s “gnomic wisdom,” they found no “justification for early risers to affect moral superiority.”39 Those nefarious owls actually tend to display greater creativity, show superior working memory, and post higher scores on intell...

What ultimately matters, then, is that type, task, and time align—what social scientists call “the synchrony effect.”44 For instance, even though it’s obviously more dangerous to drive at night, owls actually drive worse early in the day because mornings are out of synch with their natural cycle of vigilance and alertness.

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.

The trough, as we’re about to learn, is more dangerous than most of us realize.

HOW TO FIGURE OUT YOUR DAILY WHEN: A THREE-STEP METHOD

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. Does it involve heads-down analysis or head-in-the-sky insight? (Of

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

HOW TO FIGURE OUT YOUR DAILY WHEN: THE ADVANCED VERSION

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?

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

WHAT TO DO IF YOU DON’T HAVE CONTROL OVER YOUR DAILY SCHEDULE

Be aware.

Work the margins.

Gently tell your boss when you work best, but put it in terms of what’s good for the organization.

WHEN TO EXERCISE: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE

Exercise in the morning to:

Lose weight:

In many cases, morning exercise may burn 20 percent more fat than later, post-food workouts.

Boost mood: Cardio workouts—swimming, running, even walking the dog—can elevate mood.

Keep to your routine:

Build strength:

Exercise in the late afternoon or evening to:

Avoid injury:

Perform your best: Working out in the afternoons not only means that you’re less likely to get injured, it also helps you sprint faster and lift more.

Enjoy the workout a bit more:

FOUR TIPS FOR A BETTER MORNING

Drink a glass of water when you wake up.

Don’t drink coffee immediately after you wake up.

Soak up the morning sun.

Schedule talk-therapy appointments for the morning.