kinds of people.
Other creators marched to a different diurnal drummer. Novelist Gustave Flaubert, who lived much of his adult life in his mother’s house, would typically not awaken until 10 a.m., after which he’d spend an hour bathing, primping, and puffing his pipe. Around 11, “he would join the family in the dining room for a late-morning meal that served as both his breakfast and lunch.” He would then tutor his niece for a while and devote most of the afternoon to resting and reading. At 7 p.m. he would have dinner, and afterward, “he sat and talked with his mother” until she went to bed around 9 p.m. And then he did his writing. Night owl Flaubert’s day moved in an opposite direction—from recovery to trough to peak.49
After coding these creators’ daily schedules and tabulating who did what when, French found what we now realize is a predictable distribution. About 62 percent of the creators followed the peak-trough-recovery pattern, where serious heads-down work happened in the morning followed by not much work at all, and then a shorter burst of less taxing work. About 20 percent of the sample displayed the reverse pattern—recovering in the mornings and getting down to business much later in the day à la Flaubert. And about 18 percent were more idiosyncratic or lacked sufficient data and therefore displayed neither pattern. Separate out that third group and the chronotype ratio holds. For every three peak-trough-rebound patterns, there is one rebound-trough-peak pattern.
So what does this mean for you?
At the end of this chapter is the first of six Time Hacker’s Handbooks, which offer tactics, habits, and routines for applying the science of timing to your daily life. But the essence is straightforward. Figure out your type, understand your task, and then select the appropriate time. Is your own hidden daily pattern peak-trough-rebound? Or is it rebound-trough-peak? Then look for synchrony. If you have even modest control over your schedule, try to nudge your most important work, which usually requires vigilance and clear thinking, into the peak and push your second-most important work, or tasks that benefit from disinhibition, into the rebound period. Whatever you do, do not let mundane tasks creep into your peak period.
If you’re a boss, understand these two patterns and allow people to protect their peak. For example, Till Roenneberg conducted experiments at a German auto plant and steel factory in which he rearranged work schedules to match people’s chronotypes to their work schedules. The results: greater productivity, reduced stress, and higher job satisfaction.50 If you’re an educator, know that all times are not created equal: Think hard about which classes and types of work you schedule in the morning and which you schedule later in the day.
Equally important, no matter whether you spend your days making cars or teaching children, beware of that middle period. The trough, as we’re about to learn, is more dangerous than most of us realize.
Time Hacker’s Handbook
• CHAPTER 1 •
HOW TO FIGURE OUT YOUR DAILY WHEN: A THREE-STEP METHOD
This chapter has explored the science behind our daily patterns. Now here’s a simple three-step technique—call it the type-tasktime method—for deploying that science to guide your daily timing decisions.
First, determine your chronotype, using the three-question method on page 28 or by completing the MCTQ questionnaire online (http://www.danpink.com/MCTQ).
Second, determine what you need to do. Does it involve headsdown analysis or head-in-the-sky insight? (Of course, not all tasks divide cleanly along the analysis-insight axis, so just make the call.) Are you trying to make an impression on others in a job interview, knowing that most of your interviewers are likely to be in a better mood in the morning? Or are you trying to make a decision (whether you should take the job you’ve just been offered), in which case your own chronotype should govern?
Third, look at this chart to figure out the optimal time of day:
| Your Daily When Chart | |||
| Lark | Third | Owl | |
| Analytic tasks | Early morning | Early to midmorning | Late afternoon and evening |
| Insight tasks | Late afternoon/early evening | Late afternoon/early evening | moring |
| Making an impression | Morning | Morning | Morning(sorry, owls) |
| Making a decision | Early morning | Early to midmorning | Late afternoon and evening |
For example, if you’re a larkish lawyer drafting a brief, do your research and writing fairly early in the morning. If you’re an owlish software engineer, shift your less essential tasks to the morning and begin your most important ones in the late afternoon and into the evening. If you’re assembling a brainstorming group, go for the late afternoon since most of your team members are likely to be third birds. Once you know your type and task, it’s easier to figure out the time.
HOW TO FIGURE OUT YOUR DAILY WHEN: THE ADVANCED VERSION
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:
1. What are you doing?
2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how mentally alert do you feel right now?
3. On a scale of 1 to 10, how physically energetic do you feel right now?
Do this for a week, then tabulate your results. You might see some personal deviations from the broad pattern. For example, your trough might arrive earlier in the afternoon than some people or your recovery may kick in later.
To track your responses, you can scan and duplicate these pages, download a PDF version from my website (http://www.danpink.com/chapter1supplement).
7 a.m.
What I’m doing:
Mental alertness: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NA
Physical energy: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NA
8:30 a.m.
What I’m doing:
Mental alertness: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NA
Physical energy: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NA
10 a.m.
What I’m doing:
Mental alertness: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NA
Physical energy: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NA
11:30 a.m.
What
