When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

by Daniel H. Pink

We all know that timing is everything. Trouble is, we don’t know much about timing itself. Our lives present a never-ending stream of “when” decisions—when to change careers, deliver bad news, schedule a class, end a marriage, go for a run, or get serious about a project or a person. But most of these decisions emanate from a steamy bog of intuition and guesswork. Timing, we believe, is an art.

Across continents and time zones, as predictable as the ocean tides, was the same daily oscillation—a peak, a trough, and a rebound. Beneath the surface of our everyday life is a hidden pattern: crucial, unexpected, and revealing.

Since de Mairan’s discovery nearly three centuries ago, scientists have established that nearly all living things—from single-cell organisms that lurk in ponds to multicellular organisms that drive minivans—have biological clocks.

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.”

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.

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.

Even if you can’t control the big things, you might still be able to shape the little things.

Afternoons are the Bermuda Triangles of our days. Across many domains, the trough represents a danger zone for productivity, ethics, and health.

The good news is that vigilance breaks can loosen the trough’s grip on our behavior.

But I also learned I was making another mistake. Not only was I taking the wrong kind of nap, I was also failing to use a potent (and legal) drug that can enhance a short nap’s benefits. To paraphrase T. S. Eliot, we should measure out our naps in coffee spoons.

Although we can’t always determine when we start, we can exert some influence on beginnings—and considerable influence on the consequences of less than ideal ones. The recipe is straightforward. In most endeavors, we should be awake to the power of beginnings and aim to make a strong start. If that fails, we can try to make a fresh start. And if the beginning is beyond our control, we can enlist others to attempt a group start. These are the three principles of successful beginnings: Start right. Start again. Start together.

Identifying one’s own personally meaningful days—a child’s birthday or the anniversary of your first date with your partner—can erase a false start and help us begin anew.

I used to believe in ignoring the waves of the day. Now I believe in surfing them. I used to believe that lunch breaks, naps, and taking walks were niceties. Now I believe they’re necessities. I used to believe that the best way to overcome a bad start at work, at school, or at home was to shake it off and move on. Now I believe the better approach is to start again or start together. I used to believe that midpoints didn’t matter—mostly because I was oblivious to their very existence. Now I believe that midpoints illustrate something fundamental about how people behave and how the world works. I used to believe in the value of happy endings. Now I believe that the power of endings rests not in their unmitigated sunniness but in their poignancy and meaning.