When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing – by Daniel H. Pink
Date read: 4/11/18. Recommendation: 6/10.
Easy read with a few interesting takeaways regarding the science of timing. You'll get most of the value this book has to offer within the first 50 pages. Pink details how everyone experiences the day in three stages–a peak, trough, and rebound (not necessarily in that order). Each has a unique impact on our cognitive abilities. The key is to develop a greater awareness of when we should perform certain tasks by identifying our own personal chronotype – individual biological clock that affects performance and mood. Anyone who's dialed in to their own mental and physical abilities has likely built a natural awareness and routine around this, but it's always worth the reminder.
See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.
My Notes:
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.
Emotional balance (happiness, warmth towards others, enjoyment) rises in the morning, dips in the afternoon, and rises again in the evening.
Juror Experiment: Mental keenness, as shown by rationally evaluating evidence, was greater earlier in the day. And mental squishiness, as evidenced by resorting to stereotypes, increased as the day wore on.
3 key findings from studies on the effect of time of day on brain power:
-Cognitive abilities do not remain static over the course of a day.
-Daily fluctuations are more extreme than we realize (daily low point can be equivalent to the effect of drinking legal limit).
-How we do depends on what we're doing (best time to perform a particular task depends on the nature of that task).
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.
Danish standardized tests:
-Four years of results for two million schoolchildren showed a direct correlation between hours tests were administered and performance. Each hour later in the day, scores fell a little more. Students scored much higher in mornings.
Human beings don't all experience a day in precisely the same way. Each of us has a "chronotype" – a personal pattern of circadian rhythms that influences our physiology and psychology.
Larks (early risers) = 14% of population.
Third birds = 65% of population.
Owls (late risers) = 21% of population.
Chronotypes are influenced by multiple factors:
-Genetics accounts for at least half of the variability...larks and owls are born, not made.
-Age also plays an important factor...young children are generally larks, puberty transitions to owls, return to lark as grow older.
Biological clocks affect our performance, mood, and wakefulness.
Corporate, government, and education cultures are configured for the 75 or 80 percent of people who are larks or third birds.
Figure out your chronotype, understand your task, and then select the appropriate time.
Whatever you do, do not let mundane tasks creep into your peak period.
*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 email. Spend those sixty minutes doing your most important work.
Wait to drink that first cup of coffee an hour or ninety minutes after waking up, once our cortisol production has peaked and the caffeine can do its magic. If you're looking for an afternoon boost, head to the coffee shop between about 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., when cortisol levels dip again.
Typical worker reaches the most unproductive moment of the day at 2:55 p.m.
Judges were more likely to issue a favorable ruling in the morning (65%) than the afternoon (almost zero). But also after they took short breaks.
Breaks: Short breaks are effective and deliver considerable bang for their limited buck...Regular short walking breaks in the workplace also increase motivation and concentration and enhance creativity...Tech-free breaks increase vigor and reduce emotional exhaustion.
Beginnings
Long-term negative impact of graduating from college in a bad year often took the unlucky graduates two decades to catch up to the lucky ones who graduated in robust times. Total cost, in inflation-adjusted terms, of graduating in a bad year rather than a good year averaged about $100,000.
*Negative impact on students who graduated during 2010 and 2011 was double. Those who begin careers during such weak market may see permanent negative effects on their wages.
"When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood." -Margaret Atwood
Midpoints
Wellbeing seems to slump in midlife. Why does this midpoint deflate us?
-Disappointment of unrealized expectations
-Learn that we're lousy forecasters, in youth our expectations are too high.
-Biological? See same trends in apes.
"Punctuated equilibrium" – evolution's path wasn't a smooth upward climb. The true trajectory was less linear: periods of dull stability punctuated by swift explosions of change.
Analysis of 18,000 NBA games and 46,000 NCAA games over fifteen years showed teams that were ahead at halftime won more games than teams that were behind. However, the only exception to this rule was that teams that were behind by just one at halftime were more likely to win. Being down one was more advantageous than being up one (encouraged team behind to exert more effort).
Endings
Every Pixar movie has its protagonist achieving the goal he wants only to realize it is not what the protagonist needs. Such emotional complexity turns out to be central to the most elevated endings.
One reason we overlook poignancy is that it operates by an upside-down form of emotional physics. Adding a small component of sadness to an otherwise happy moment elevates that moment rather than diminishes it.
The best endings don't leave us happy. Instead, they produce something richer–a small rush of unexpected insight, a fleeting moment of transcendence, the possibility that by discarding what we wanted we've gotten what we need.
Nostalgia, research shows, can foster positive mood, protect against anxiety and stress, and boost creativity.
Like poignancy, nostalgia is a "bittersweet but predominantly positive and fundamentally social emotion." Thinking in the past tense offers a "window into the intrinsic self," a portal to who we really are. It makes the present meaningful.
Writing is an act of discovering what you think and what you believe.
I used to believe in ignoring the waves of the day. Now I believe in surfing them.