Following our previous post ‘How We Can Choose The Best Timing for Certain Activities‘ and the excellent book by Daniel Pink ‘When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing‘, one of the issues which come out is the dramatic influence of our daily rhythm on our activities.
In particular, Daniel Pink exposes several dramatic examples of poor decision-making in the afternoon. And that many cognitive tasks should better be done in the morning. “Afternoons are the Bermuda Triangles of our days . Across many domains , the trough represents a danger zone for productivity , ethics , and health.”
“In short , 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 . 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 .”
Of course I was aware of the effect of our circadian rhythm, but what struck me is how significant that can be: “these daily fluctuations are more extreme than we realize . The performance change between the daily high point and the daily low point can be equivalent to the effect on performance of drinking the legal limit of alcohol“. Food for thought!
