Top Quotes: “When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing” — Daniel Pink

Background: Pink explains how many more things than we think can be impacted heavily by time or time of day — ranging from test scores to happiness to doctor’s appointments to marathon times. He offers great tips on how to use timing to be more successful at work in and in your personal life and I loved that he affirmed some things I already strongly advocate for — taking walking breaks during the workday and experiencing awe as often as possible. It’s a book that will challenge you to look at the world through a new lens aka the best kind of book!

Mood & Performance Throughout The Day

“Positive mood rises in the morning, dips in the afternoon, and rises again in the evening. People feel increasingly warm toward others throughout the morning, less warm in the afternoon, and warmer again in the evening.”

“Scientists have established that nearly all living things — from single-celled organisms that lurk in ponds to multicellular organisms that drive minivans — have biological clocks. These internal timekeepers play an essential role in proper functioning. They govern a collection of what are called circadian rhythms that set the daily backbeat of every creature’s life.”

“In a first-of-its-kind study, American business school professors analyzed more than 26,000 earnings calls from more than 2,100 public companies over 6.5 years using linguistic algorithms. They examined whether the time of day influenced the emotional tenor of these critical conversations — and, as a consequence, perhaps even the price of the company’s stock. Calls held first thing in the morning turned out to be reasonably upbeat and positive. But as the day progressed, ‘the tone grew more negative and less resolute.’ Around lunchtime, mood rebounded slightly, probably because call participants recharged their mental and emotional batteries. But in the afternoon, negativity deepened again, with mood recovering only after the market’s closing bell. Even when the researchers factored in economic news or firm fundamentals, afternoon calls ‘were more negative, irritable, and combative’ than morning calls. The time of the call and the subsequent mood it engendered influenced companies’ stock prices. Shares declined in response to negative tone.”

“Researchers asked participants to assess the guilt of a fictitious criminal defendant. All the ‘jurors’ read the same set of facts. But for half of them, the defendant’s name was Robert Garner, and for the other half, it was Roberto Garcia. When people made their decisions in the morning, there was no difference in guilty verdicts. However, when they rendered their verdicts later in the day, they were much more likely to believe that Garcia was guilty and Garner was innocent. For this group of participants, mental keenness, as shown by rationally evaluating evidence, was greater early in the day.”

“When our mental guards grow tired and disappear, interlopers — sloppy logic, dangerous stereotypes, irrelevant information — slip by. Alertness and energy levels, which climb in the morning and reach their apex around noon, tend to plummet during the afternoons. And with that drop comes a correlation. In a study of test takers, students scored higher in the mornings than in the afternoons. Indeed, for every hour later in the day the tests were administered, scores fell a little more. 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 the school year.”

“For most of us, mornings are when our mental guards are on alert, ready to repeal any invaders. Such vigilance — often called ‘inhibitory control’ — helps our brains to solve analytic problems by keeping out distractions. But insight problems are different. They require less vigilance and fewer inhibitions. That ‘flash of illuminance’ is more likely to occur when the guards are gone. At those looser moments, a few distractions can help us spot connections we might have missed when our filters were tighter. For analytic problems, lack of inhibitory control is a bug. For insight problems, it’s a feature. Because of the ‘inspiration paradox,’ innovation and creativity are greatest when we are not at our best, at least with respect to our circadian rhythms.”

“In the morning, during the peak of our mood and performance, most of us excel at analytic work that requires sharpness, vigilance, and focus. Later in the day, during the recovery, most of us do better on insight work that requires less inhibition and resolve. Midday troughs are good for very little.”

“All of us experience the day in three stages — a peak, a trough, and a rebound. And about 3/4s of us 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.”

“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. Do not let mundane tasks creep into your peak period.”

“If you’re not a night owl or very early morning person, do analytic tasks and make decisions in the early morning, make an impression in the morning, and do insight tasks in the late afternoon / early evening.”

“Simply knowing you’re operating at a suboptimal time can be helpful because you can correct for this in small but powerful ways. Suppose you’re a night owl forced to attend an early-morning meeting. Take some preventive measures. The night before, make a list of everything you’ll need for the gathering. Before you sit down at the conference table, go for a quick 10-minute walk outside. Or buy a colleague a coffee — which will boost your mood. During the meeting, be extra vigilant. For instance, if someone asks you a question, repeat it before you answer to make sure you’ve gotten it right.”

“Exercise in the morning to lose weight — morning exercises may burn 20% more fat than later, post-food workouts because our blood sugar is low when we first wake up since we haven’t eaten for at least eight hours and morning exercises use the fat stored in our tissues to supply the energy we need. (When we exercise after eating, we use the energy from the food we’ve just consumed).”

“Also exercise in the morning to boost mood — cardio workouts can elevate mood and when we exercise in the morning, we enjoy these effects all day. If you wait to exercise until the evening, you’ll end up sleeping through some of the good feelings.”

“We’re more likely to adhere to our workout routine when we do it in the morning.”

“Our physiology changes throughout the day. One example: testosterone levels peak in the morning and testosterone helps build muscle, so if you’re doing weight training, schedule your workout for those early-morning hours.”

“I would never accept a doctor’s appointment that wasn’t before noon. One study of 1,000+ colonoscopies found that endoscopists are less likely to detect polyps — small growths on the colon — as the day progresses. Every hour that passed resulted in a nearly 5% reduction in polyp detection. At 11am, doctors found an average of more than 1.1 polyps in every exam. By 2pm, though, they were detecting barely half that number even though the patients were no different than the morning ones.”

“Doctors are much more likely to prescribe antibiotics, including unnecessary ones, for acute respiratory infections in the afternoon than in the mornings. As the cumulative effect of dealing with patient after patient saps doctors’ decision-making resolve, it’s far easier just to write the scrip than suss out whether the patient’s symptoms suggest a bacterial infection, for which antiobiotics might be appropriate, or a virus, for which they’d have no effect.”

“We expect important encounters with experienced professionals like physicians to turn on who is the patient and what is the problem. But many outcomes depend even more forcefully on when is the appointment. What’s going on is a decline in vigilance.”

Breaks

“When Danish students had a 20–30 minute break to eat, play, and chat before a test, their scores increased; this break caused an improvement that’s larger than the hourly deterioration. That is, scores go down after noon. But scores go up by a higher amount after breaks. Taking a test after a 20–30 minute break leads to scores that are equivalent to students spending three additional weeks in the classroom and having somewhat wealthier and better-educated parents. And the benefits were greatest for the lowest-performing students.”

“One problem with afternoons is that if we stick with a task too long, we lose sight of the goal we’re trying to achieve. Short breaks from a task can prevent this, help us maintain focus, and reactive our commitment to a goal. And frequent short breaks are more effective than occasional long ones. DeskTime, a company that makes productivity-tracking software, says that ‘what the most productive 10% of our users have in common is their ability to take effective breaks.’ High performers, their research concludes, work for 52 minute and then break for 17 minutes.”

“Sitting leaves us more susceptible to the dangers of the trough, which is why simply standing up and walking around for five minutes every hour during the workday can be potent. One study found that hourly five-minute walking breaks boosted energy levels, sharpened focus, and ‘improved mood throughout the day and reduced feelings of fatigue in the late afternoon.’ These ‘microbursts of activity,’ as the researchers call them, were also more effective than a single thirty-minute walking break — so much so that the researchers suggest that organizations ‘introduce physically active breaks during the workday routine.’ Regular short walking breaks in the workplace also increase motivation and concentration and enhance creativity.”

“Much of the research on restorative breaks points toward the greater power of being with others on these breaks. And continuing to think about job demands during breaks may result in strain. Consider a short walk outside with a friend during which you discuss something other than work.”

“A 2016 study looked at more than 800 workers in IT, education, and media from 11 different orgs, some of whom regularly took lunch breaks away from their desks and some of whom did not. The non-desk lunchers were better able to contend with workplace stress and showed less exhaustion and greater vigor not just during the remainder of the day but also a full one year later. ‘Lunch breaks offer an important recovery setting to promote occupational health and well-being. Eating together also enhances team performance.”

“The most powerful lunch breaks have two key ingredients — autonomy and detachment. ‘The extent to which employees can determine how they utilize their lunch breaks may be just as important as what employees do during their lunch,’ says one set of researchers. Detachment — both psychological and physical — is also critical. Staying focused on work during lunch, or even using one’s phone for social media, can intensify fatigue, according to multiple studies, but shifting one’s focus away from the office has the opposite effect.”

“‘Siesta’ derives from the Latin hora sexta, which means ‘sixth hour.’ It was during the sixth hour after dawn that these breaks usually began. In ancient times, when most people worked outside and indoor AC was still a few thousand years away, escaping the midday sun was a physical imperative. Today, escaping the midafternoon trough is a psychological imperative.”

“One Swedish town has proposed legislating a one-hour break each week for employees to go home and have sex.”

“Even breaks that last a minute or less — micro-breaks — can pay dividends. Use the 20–20–20 rule — Before you begin a task, set a timer. Then, every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. If you’re working at a computer, this micro-break will rest your eyes and improve your posture, both of which can fight fatigue. Get a smaller water bottle so you have to get up and refill it more often. And every once in a while, stand up for 60 seconds, shake your arms and legs, flex your muscles, rotate your core, sit back down.”

“Do two push-ups a day for a week. Then four a day for the next week and six a day a week after that. You’ll boost your heart rate, shake off cognitive cobwebs, and maybe get a little stronger.”

“Have 45 seconds? Then, as the New York Times explains: ‘Take a deep breath, expanding your belly. Pause. Exhale slowly to the count of five. Repeat four times.’ It’s called controlled breathing, and it can tamp your stress hormones, sharpen your thinking, and maybe even boost your immune system.”

Fresh Starts

“Some dates on the calendar are more significant to people than others. People use them to ‘demarcate the passage of time,’ to end one period and begin another with a clean slate: this is called the ‘fresh start effect.’ To establish a fresh start, people used two types of temporal landmarks: social ones that everyone shared (Mondays, the beginning of a new month, a holiday) and personal ones that were unique to the individual: birthdays, anniversaries, job changes.”

“These time markers served two purposes. First, they allowed people to open ‘new mental accounts.’ This new period offers a chance to start again but relegating our old selves to the past. It disconnects us from that past self’s mistakes and imperfections, and leaves us confident about our new, superior selves. Fortified by that confidence, we ‘behave better than we have in the past and strive with enhanced fervor to achieve our aspirations.’ The second purpose of these time markers is to ‘interrupt attention to day-to-day minutiae, causing people to take a big picture view of their lives and thus focus on achieving their goals. Temporal landmarks slow our thinking, allowing us to deliberate at a higher level and make better decisions rooted in reason.”

“Individuals who get off to a stumbling start — at a new job, on an important project, or in trying to improve their health — can alter their course by using a temporal landmark to start again. People can, as the researchers write, ‘strategically [create] turning points in their personal histories.”

“Suppose a company’s new quarter has a rough beginning. Rather than waiting until the next quarter, an obvious fresh start date, to smooth out the mess, leaders can find a meaningful moment occurring sooner — perhaps the anniversary of the launch of a key product — that would relegate previous screwups to the past and help the team get back on track. Or suppose some employees are not regularly contributing to their retirement accounts or failing to attend important training sessions. Sending them reminders on their birthdays rather than on some other day could prompt them to start acting. Consumers might be more open to messages on days framed as fresh starts too. If you’re trying to encourage people to eat healthier, a Meatless Mondays campaign will be more effective than one advocating Vegan Thursdays.”

“The fresh start effect allows us to use the same technique we use on New Year’s Day of opening a new book on our lives with awareness and intention, on multiple days.”

Beginnings

“Those who entered the job market in weak economies earned less at the beginning of their careers than those who started in strong economies — no big surprise. But this early disadvantage didn’t fade. It persisted for as long as 20 years. It took unlucky graduates who’d begun their careers in a sluggish economy two decades to catch up to luckier ones. The wage difference was 20%; the total cost of graduating in a bad year was about $100,000.”

“Beginnings set off a cascade that proved difficult to restrain. Starting with a higher salary put people on a higher initial trajectory. But that’s only the first advantage. The best way to earn more is to match your particular skills to an employer’s particular needs. That rarely happens in one’s first job. So people quit jobs and take new ones to get the match right. However, if the economy is listless, changing jobs is difficult. People who enter the labor market in a downturn are often stuck in jobs that aren’t a good match for their skills. They can’t switch employers easily, so it takes longer to locate a better match and begin the upward march to higher pay.”

“The best way to recover from a false start is to avoid one in the first place and the best technique for doing that is called a ‘premortem.’ Suppose you and your team are about to embark on a project. Before the project begins, convene for a premortem. ‘Assume it’s 18 months from now and our project is a complete disaster. What went wrong?’ The team, using the power of prospective hindsight, offers some answers. Maybe the task wasn’t clearly defined. Maybe you had too few people, too many people, or the wrong people. Maybe you didn’t have a clear leader or realistic objectives. By imagining failure in advance — by thinking through what could cause a false start — you can anticipate some of the potential problems and avoid them once the actual project begins.”

Order

“You should go first if you’re on a ballot, if you’re not the default choice, if there are relatively few competitors (going first can help you take advantage of the ‘primary effect,’ the tendency people have to remember the first thing in a series better than those that come later), or if you’re interviewing for a job against several strong candidates (interviewers who encounter several strong applicants early in the process might more aggressively look for flaws in the later ones).”

“Don’t go first if you are the default choice (judges are more likely to stick with the default choice later in the day when they’re fatigued), if there are many competitors (judges hold an idealized standard of excellence in the beginning and a new, more realistic baseline develops which favors later competitors), if you’re operating in an uncertain environment (letting others proceed could allow the criteria to sharpen into focus for both the selector and you), and if the competition is meager.”

Starting a New Job

“At the outset of a new job, concentrate on accomplishing a few meaningful achievements, and once you’ve gained status by demonstrating excellence, feel free to be more assertive.”

“Wins needn’t be large to be meaningful. When you enter a new role, set up small ‘high-probability’ targets and celebrate when you hit them. They’ll give you the motivation and energy to take on more daunting challenges further down the highway.”

Midpoints

“Happiness climbs high early in adulthood but begins to slide downward in the late 30s and early 40s, dipping to a low in the 50s. But we recover quickly from this slump, and well-being later in life exceeds that of our younger years.”

“In the middle, we relax our standards, perhaps because others relax their assessments of us. At midpoints, for reasons that are elusive but enlightening, we cut corners. Researchers had people cut shapes out of paper with scissors as carefully as possible and the result was people’s scissor skills rose at the beginning and end but slumped in the middle. Participants were more likely to literally ‘cut corners’ in the middle of the sequence.”

Evolution

“The evolution of species sometimes advanced sluggishly; but at other moments, it exploded. Species experiencing long periods of stasis that were interrupted by sudden bursts of change. Afterward, the newly transformed species remained stable for another long stretch — until another eruption abruptly altered its course once again; this is called ‘punctuated equilibrium.’”

“A scholar tracked small groups of people working on projects — a task force at a bank developing a new type of account, hospital admins planning a retreat, etc. — from their very first meeting to the moment they reached their final deadline. She found that teams did not progress steadily through a universal set of stages. They used wildly diverse and idiosyncratic approaches to getting work done. What remained the same across the groups was the timing of when groups formed, maintained, and changed. Each group went through a phase of prolonged inertia as they got to know one another but didn’t accomplish much. They talked about ideas but didn’t move forward. Then came a sudden transition. In a concentrated burst of changes, groups dropped old patterns, reengaged with outside supervisors, adopted new perspectives on their work, and made dramatic progress. Each group experienced its transition at precisely halfway between its first meeting and its official deadline.”

“Call it the ‘uh oh effect.’ When we reach a midpoint, a mental siren alerts us that we’ve squandered half of our time. That injects a healthy dose of stress that revives our motivation and reshapes our strategy.”

“In analysis of 18,000 NBA games, researchers found that teams that were behind by just one point were more likely to win — 58% of the time! Trailing by one point at halftime, weirdly, was equivalent to being ahead by two points.”

“The best hope for turning a midpoint into a spark involves three steps: Be aware of midpoints. Use them to wake up rather than roll over — an anxious “uh-oh” rather than a resigned “oh no.” At the midpoint, imagine you’re behind, but only by a little. This will spark your motivation.”

“Set interim goals. To maintain motivation, break large projects into smaller steps and concentrate on getting to the next step, rather than the completion of the project.”

“Once you’ve set your subgoals, enlist the power of public commitment. We’re more likely to stick to a goal if we have someone holding us accountable. Tell someone else how and when you’ll get something done. Send out a tweet saying you’ll finish your current section of your thesis by a certain date. With so many people expecting you to deliver, you’ll want to avoid public shame by reaching your subgoal.”

“End a writing session not at the end of a section or paragraph but smack in the middle of a sentence. That sense of incompletion lights a midpoint spark to help you begin the following day with immediate momentum. We tend to remember unfinished tasks better than finished ones. When you’re in the middle of a project, experiment by ending the day partway through a task with a clear next step.”

“Work on something every day and physically mark off each day you work on a calendar — you’ll like seeing the chain and won’t want to break it.”

“If you’re feeling stuck in the middle of a project, picture one person who’ll benefit from your efforts. Dedicating your work to that person will deepen your dedication to your task.”

Endpoints

“People whose age ends in 9 are overrepresented by first-time marathoners by a whopping 48%. The age at which people were most likely to run their first marathon was 29. 29-year-olds are twice as likely to run a marathon as 28-year-olds or 30-year-olds. Someone who’s 49 is 3x more likely to run a marathon than someone who’s just a year older. What’s more is nearing the end of a decade seems to quicken a runner’s pace. People who’d run previous marathons posted better times at age 29 and 39 than during the two years before or after those ages.”

“Instead of fleeing work when the workday ends, we’re better off reserving the final five minutes of work for a few small deliberate actions that bring the day to a fulfilling close. Begin by taking 2–3 minutes to write down what you accomplished since the morning — making progress is the single largest day-to-day motivator on the job and this step can encode the entire day more positively. Now use the other 2–3 minutes to lay out your plan for the following day — this will help close the door on today and energize you for tomorrow. If you’ve got an extra minute left, send someone a thank you email — gratitude is a powerful form of elevation.”

The History of Time

“In the 1500s, Galileo Galilei, a 19-year-old med student was inspired by a swinging chandelier to conduct a few makeshift experiments on pendulums. He discovered that what most affected a pendulum’s motion was the length of its string — and that for any given length of string a pendulum always took the same amount of time to make one full swing. His insight led to the invention of pendulum clocks a few decades later. And pendulum clocks, in turn, produced the relatively new concept of ‘the time.’”

“Life without time would be cumbersome and inefficient in ways we can scarcely fathom today. Pendulum clocks, which were far more accurate than their predecessors, remade civilization by allowing people to synchronize their actions. Public clocks appeared in town squares and began establishing a single standard of time. 2:00 for me became 2:00 for you. And this notion of public time — ’the time’ — greased the wheels of commerce and lubricated social interaction. Before long, national time standardization came into being, giving rise to predictable schedules.”

“‘Time’ can function as a noun, an adjective, or a verb — it’s one of the most expansive and versatile words we have. It can be a proper noun, as in ‘Pacific Standard Time.’ The noun form can signify a discrete duration (‘How much time is left in the second period?’), a specific moment (‘What time does the bus arrive?), an abstract notion (‘Where did the time go?’), a general experience (‘I’m having a good time’), a turn at doing something (‘He rode the roller coaster only one time’), a historical period (‘In Churchill’s time…’), and more. ‘Time’ is the most common noun in the English language. As a verb, it also has multiple meanings. We can time a race, which always involves a clock, or time an attack, which often does not. We can time, as in keeping time, when playing an instrument. And we can time our actions with others. The word can function as an adjective, as in ‘time bomb,’ ‘time zone,’ and ‘time clock.’”

Coordination & Belonging

“In experiments, children who first played synchronous games were far more likely than others to say that if they were to come back for more activities they would be interested in playing with a child who wasn’t in their original group. Operating in synch expands our openness to outsiders and makes us better people — and being better people makes us better coordinators.”

“Email response time is the single best predictor of whether employees are satisfied with their boss.”

Nostalgia

“Nostalgia can increase physiological feelings of comfort and warmth. We’re more likely to feel nostalgic on chillier days. And when experimenters induce nostalgia — through music or smell, for example — people are more tolerant of cold and perceive the temperature to be higher.”

Delayed Gratification

“Strong-future languages such as English, Italian, and Korean require speakers to make sharp distinctions between the present and the future. Weak-future languages like Mandarin, Finnish, and Estonian draw little or often no contrast at all. Speakers of weak-future languages in a study (which accounted for confounding variables) were 30% more likely to save for retirement and 24% less likely to smoke. They also practiced safer sex, exercised more regularly, and were both healthier and wealthier in retirement. This was true even within countries such as Switzerland, where some citizens spoke a weak-future language (German) and others a strong-future one (French). The researcher didn’t conclude that the language a person speaks caused this behavior; it could merely reflect deeper differences. Nonetheless, other research has shown that we plan more effectively and behave more responsibly when the future feels more closely connected to the current moment and our current selves. For example, one reason some people don’t save for retirement is that they somehow consider the future version of themselves a different person than the current version. But showing people age-advanced images of their own photos can boost their propensity to save.”

Awe

“Awe lives in the upper reaches of pleasure and on the boundary of fear. It’s central to the experience of religion, politics, nature, and art. It has two key attributes: vastness (the experience of something larger than ourselves) and accommodation (the vastness forces us to adjust our mental structures).”

“Researchers found that the experience of awe — the sight of the Grand Canyon, the birth of a child — changes our perception of time. When we experience awe, time slows down. It expands. We feel like we have more of it. And that sensation lifts our well-being.”

“Experiences of awe bring people into the present moment, and being in the present moment underlies awe’s capacity to adjust time perception, influence decisions, and make life feel more satisfying than it would otherwise.”