All else being equal, you’ll perform 20% worse on a task in the afternoon than you will on the same exact task in the morning (unless you’re a night owl-more on that later).Īs Pink puts it, “Timing isn’t everything, but it’s a big thing.” So what does that have to do with your quest to craft the perfect daily schedule? Studies suggest that the time of day you choose to do a task accounts for 20% of the variance in performance. In healthcare settings, workers were less likely to wash their hands and doctors were more likely to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics in the afternoon, and endoscopists found half as many polyps in afternoon colonoscopies as they do in morning ones.CEOs were more likely to use negative and irritable words on earnings calls held in the afternoon than those held in the morning regardless of the underlying numbers.Judges ruled in favor of prisoners about 65% of the time early in the day, but by late morning that rate dropped to nearly 0, regardless of the facts of the case.Those impacts range from the small to the concerning to the utterly life-changing.
In When, Pink explores a growing body of research on the impact timing has on our decisions, actions, and reactions. How your biological rhythms impact your productivity Here’s how I applied the science of timing to optimize my own daily schedule, getting more done, and creating more balance in my life at the same time. Not everyone has the luxury of setting their own schedules, but even if you work a traditional 9-to-5 job, there are ways you can time your tasks to get more out of your work hours. Reading Daniel Pink’s book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, was one of those eureka moments.
Most tweaks are small, incremental improvements to my day, but every once in a while I learn something that completely upends the way I approach my daily schedule. It’s a bit of a hobby of mine to gather data about my productivity in order to track progress, spot patterns, and uncover areas for improvement. I’ve always been a productivity optimizer.
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