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Stress

The Truth About Work-Life Balance

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Bill Gates still doesn’t believe in taking breaks

This recent Bill Gates interview got a great deal of attention for what he considers his biggest regret—not working harder, and taking his eyes off the ball and allowing Google to develop Android, now the dominant phone operating system, which, according to Gates, “was a natural thing for Microsoft to win.”

Asked about work-life balance and if Gates’s opinions had changed from a past statement that he did not believe in holidays, Gates replied with a no. He reiterated that working without a vacation is one of the sacrifices a company has to make in its early years.

The vacation-free approach in Microsoft’s early years is legendary. In the memoir Idea Man (2011,) co-founder Paul Allen recalled,

Microsoft was a high-stress environment because Bill drove others as hard as he drove himself.

Bob Greenberg, a Harvard classmate of Bill’s whom we’d hired, once put in 81 hours in four days, Monday through Thursday. … When Bill touched base toward the end of Bob’s marathon, he asked him, “What are you working on tomorrow?”

Bob said, “I was planning to take the day off.”

And Bill said, “Why would you want to do that?” He genuinely couldn’t understand it; he never seemed to need to recharge.

In a 2016 interview for BBC’s The Desert Island Discs program, Gates revealed that he was so obsessed during the early years of Microsoft that he couldn’t help but keep tabs on which Microsoft troopers stayed vigilant along the frontlines and which ones had retired home for the night. “I knew everyone’s license plate so I could look out in the parking lot and see when did people come in, when were they leaving.”

For most overworked and overwhelmed people, life’s great tipping point is the moment they realize something’s got to give

The Truth About Work-Life Balance Hear any successful executive talk about work-life balance and you’ll recognize a pattern—they had an epiphany about the need for work-life balance. They were totally driven and single-minded for a long time, had difficulties in their personal life, and ultimately realized that they needed to have more balance in their life.

While this always makes for a stimulating narrative, the one aspect that is less emphasized is how much of their success was a direct outcome of single-minded focus. The truth is, most workaholics are successful.

Balance is Bunk: You can’t have everything—even if you work really, really hard

Some things are tough hard, and require an absolute commitment and high-level performance for sustained periods. Achieving distinction in any field requires extreme dedication, drive, and commitment to success—this is true of scholarship, business, art, music, sport, or parenting.

While it’s nice to extol the virtues of work-life balance, it must be acknowledged that balancing personal life with a career will inevitably lead to forgoing some advancement in the latter. Balance is sometimes about choosing between the two and setting priorities—it’s not just a matter of juggling on the way to “having it all.” This “balance” is something that each person has to decide for himself/herself.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Leave Work at Work
  2. Not Everybody Wishes to Climb the Corporate Ladder [Finding Work-Life Balance]
  3. When Can Your Loved One Become an Important Client? [Work-Life Balance]
  4. Work-Life Balance: “Accomplish What You Want, Not What You Think You Have to”
  5. The #1 Cost of Overwork is Personal Relationships

This May Be the Most Potent Cure for Melancholy

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Never Feel Sorry for Yourself or Engage in Self-pity

The American writer and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, who poignantly explored the African-American experience, passed away last week. Her best-known novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved (1987) is one of the few works of non-fiction that I’ve read. This captivating novel is much-admired for calling to mind of the inhumane violence of the institution of slavery. It’s a true story of a post-Civil War escapee-slave who, after she is recaptured, kills her infant daughter to liberate her from slavery and oppression. Read it (or watch its 1998 film adaption starring Oprah Winfrey.)

Morrison’s celebrated essay in the 150th-anniversary issue of The Nation suggested a potent antidote to suffering and loss. Here’s a précis:

On the day after Christmas 2004, I was in an extremely dark mood, feeling helpless. When a friend, a fellow artist, called to wish happy holidays, I told him, “I’m not well. Not only am I depressed, I can’t seem to work, to write; it’s as though I am paralyzed, unable to write anything more in the novel I’ve begun. I’ve never felt this way before, but the recent reelection of George W. Bush …” My friend interrupted me and challenged, “No! No, no, no! This is precisely the time when artists go to work—not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job!” I felt foolish the rest of the morning.

[All the trouble in the world makes it difficult to stay grounded and productive.] Still, I remember the shout of my friend that day after Christmas. This is precisely the time when artists go to work. [While being aware of the world’s plights and the struggles of people,] there is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom.

Acceptance Can Set You Free

Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity's Gate) by Vincent van Gogh When events have a downer-depressive effect, they can leave you in the throes of helplessness and depression. As Morrison suggests, acceptance and looking-forward is a compelling remedy to life’s many tribulations.

As I’ve stated in previous articles, even in the face of some of the worst misfortunes that could strike you, attempting to endure pain is a far superior choice than getting absorbed in feeling victimized and powerless.

After a reasonable period of grief, confronting your fears and facing up to the worst possible scenarios can bring about some tranquility.

You can deal with your troubles by diverting your mind with escapisms or cheering yourself up with distractive remedies, but these things can relieve suffering only for a short time. They do not alleviate grief but hinder it. You would rather end it than distract it.

In other words, it’s better to conquer your sorrow than to deceive it. If simply masked under self-gratifying pleasures and diversions, your haunted mind eventually comes back at you stronger than ever.

Idea for Impact: In facing life’s many troubles, acceptance can set you free. Perhaps the most potent cure for melancholy is to ask yourself, “What’s the one positive step I can take now?”

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Summary of Richard Carlson’s ‘Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff’
  2. This Trick Can Relieve Your Anxiety: “What’s the worst that can happen?”
  3. Learn to Manage Your Negative Emotions and Yourself
  4. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be
  5. Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue

Do Your Team a Favor: Take a Vacation

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Everyone understands that a manager should make time to check out and recharge. Yet, there’s an expectation that he remains available, plugged in, informed, and accessible while on vacation. Therefore, even when he does go away, he doesn’t truly get away.

Do Your Team a Favor: Take a Vacation Even the hardworking manager, when overwhelmed and overcommitted, can become a bottleneck. Refusing to take a break not only burns him out but also wreaks havoc on his team’s productivity—it hinders necessary skills building and succession planning. By butting in whenever he can, he subtly undermines his team by insinuating that his team members cannot run things on their own.

In 2012, the contact management company FullContact was in the limelight when it announced a “Paid PAID Vacation” policy. It offered its employees $7,500 every year to go on vacation with the stipulation that the employee totally disconnects. FullContact CEO Bart Lorang explained why employees and their teams can be better when they disconnect:

Once per year, we give each employee $7500 to go on vacation. There are a few rules:

  1. You have to go on vacation, or you don’t get the money.
  2. You must disconnect.
  3. You can’t work while on vacation.

If people know they will be disconnecting and going off the grid for an extended period of time, they might actually keep that in mind as they help build the company. For example:

  • They might empower direct reports to make more decisions.
  • They might be less likely to create a special script that isn’t checked into GitHub [software development repository] and only lives on their machine.
  • They might document their code a bit better.
  • They might contribute to the Company Wiki and share knowledge.

Get the picture? At the end of the day, the company will improve. As an added bonus, everyone will be happier and more relaxed knowing that they aren’t the last line of defense.

Idea for Impact: Take a vacation. Empower your team. When a smart manager goes on vacation, he leaves clear directions about the critical situations under which his team should contact him. While he mentally checks out, his team members get the opportunity to stretch and show their individual and collective mettle.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Advice for the First-Time Manager: Whom Should You Invest Your Time With?
  2. Self-Assessment Quiz: Are You A Difficult Boss?
  3. Four Telltale Signs of an Unhappy Employee
  4. How to Prevent Employee Exhaustion
  5. Don’t Lead a Dysfunctional Team

Could Limiting Social Media Reduce Your Anxiety About Work?

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Limit Social Media Participation, Reduce Envy and Anxiety In a recent article on “Facebook envy,” I wrote about how looking at the carefully curated lives of others on social media can provoke insecurities about one’s own accomplishments—or lack thereof.

In response, a blog reader directed me to journalist Keith Breene’s writeup about a study on why millennials aren’t happy at work. Here’s a précis:

Much of the stress and anxiety reported by twenty-somethings is caused by ruthless comparison with peers. Emerson Csorba, director of the consultancy Gen Y, reported one millennial describing the challenge like this: “If we are not doing something exceptional or don’t feel important and fulfilled for what we are doing, we have a hard time.”

Where is the pressure coming from? With millennials more connected than any previous generation, opportunities to compare levels of success are ubiquitous, creating anxiety and insecurity. The accomplishments of peers, shown on social media, are a constant prompt to examine millennials’ own successes or failures. The problem is made much worse by the fact that only positive achievements are posted—you only ever see the good stuff.

Even though everyone knows that social media is a kind of PR feed of people’s lives, when you spend so much time online, these messages can easily become overpowering.

Idea for Impact: Resist the Envious Consequence of Social Media

Everyone’s lives are far from perfect, notwithstanding the dreamy pictures they’re posting on social media.

Protect yourself and your own internal goodness from self-sabotage. Rejoice in your real accomplishments without needing to show off to anyone else or seek external validation. Care less for what other people think.

Life isn’t a competition. There isn’t a race to the finish lines.

Furthermore, making others envious should never be a motivation for curating your social media posts. Nothing good comes from trying to be the envy of others.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Cope with Anxiety and Stop Obsessive Worrying by Creating a Worry Box
  2. Doesn’t Facebook Make You Unhappy?
  3. Group Polarization: Like-Mindedness is Dangerous, Especially with Social Media
  4. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal
  5. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be

Make Friends Now with the People You’ll Need Later

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Addison Schonland of the commercial aerospace consulting firm AirInsight describes how the 737 MAX hullabaloos have exposed shortfalls in Boeing’s crisis communications and public relations:

The MAX crisis demonstrated to everyone in aerospace media how poorly Boeing was prepared for the recent crashes. More importantly, Boeing was unprepared for the onslaught of information that started to flow freely after the crashes. … In the absence of communications from Boeing, subject matter experts, whether highly qualified or not, become media stars overnight. An information vacuum cannot exist in today’s 24-hour news cycle and the Internet. The demand for information is great, and somebody will fill the vacuum.

The fact that Boeing had to clam up about the crashes for legal reasons is well understood. But the lack of transparency about design decisions, how the company made trade-off choices when creating the MAX, and issues related to the certification process left Boeing exposed.

Boeing Crisis Management and Public Relations Shortfalls: Leadership Lessons from the 737 Max Disaster Rival Airbus has traditionally reached out and established relationships with the aerospace media:

Airbus spends a lot of money once per year inviting the media to an event it calls “Innovation Days”. A week ago, at the most recent event, there were 130 media members from almost every country. Airbus briefed the media on both their products and plans …. Airbus provided access to the key leaders so attendees could speak with them and ask questions, with unrestricted Q&As with C-Suite executives who stayed for a substantial period of time.

Airbus clearly has an ROI. From the perspective of an attendee, and having attended several, is that the media comes away from the event informed. But more importantly, attendees feel they understand what Airbus is doing.

Airbus, through these events, communicates with the trade and news media. This communication provides attendees with, de minimis, a sympathetic view. If Airbus had suffered the two crashes, we believe the press would not have attacked the company the same way it has Boeing.

Schonland highlights how such a web of relationships becomes indispensable during a crisis, whether the crisis is self-inflicted or caused by external events:

By not being more open Boeing has helped create a gap between itself and much of the media. … Boeing has lost any control of the [737 MAX disaster] story. Whatever Boeing does provide now is seen as biased and self-serving—there is little goodwill from the media. When [Boeing CEO] Dennis Muilenburg goes on television for the rare interview, he does not come across as well as he might. Why is that? Because everything he says is now filtered through a non-sympathetic, hyper-critical lens.

Boeing needs to invest in the small army of trade and press media that cover the industry—not just a handful of selectees. This small army provides crucial perspective en masse during a crisis and fills the vacuum with educated views and perspective.

Businesses that fail to develop such goodwill or simply lose their way with regard to public relations become vulnerable to condemnation and backlash. This can result in a wide-ranging loss of credibility, as has transpired with Boeing and its leadership.

Idea for Impact: Invest in formal and informal relationships with key external constituents who can help your business—and personal—interests. The Guanxi tradition in the Chinese culture has it just about right in placing a huge emphasis on building social capital through relationships. From Wikipedia,

At its most basic, guanxi describes a personal connection between two people in which one is able to prevail upon another to perform a favor or service, or be prevailed upon, that is, one’s standing with another. … Guanxi can also be used to describe a network of contacts, which an individual can call upon when something needs to be done, and through which he or she can exert influence on behalf of another.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How A Single Point of Failure Became The Boeing 737 MAX’s Achilles Heel
  2. No Boss Likes a Surprise—Good or Bad
  3. Any Crisis Calls for Constant, Candid Communication
  4. How to Prevent a Communications Breakdown During Crisis
  5. Could Limiting Social Media Reduce Your Anxiety About Work?

How to Prevent Employee Exhaustion

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How to Prevent Employee Exhaustion Feeling exhausted, irritated, unhappy, and lacking in control are all signs of burnout—a temporary decline in an employee’s well-being.

If you notice a drop in energy, motivation, or productivity, try these simple ways to help combat employee exhaustion:

Employee stress and problems at work that are not dealt with effectively can quickly spill out into other parts of an employee’s life. In fact, many marriages go bad when stress at work is at its worst: people use up all their willpower on the job; their home lives suffer because they give much to their work.

Make employee welfare a key area of focus to promote better work environments and keep employees engaged.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Seven Real Reasons Employees Disengage and Leave
  2. Email Tips: Delegating to Another’s Employee
  3. How to Combat Burnout at Work
  4. Four Telltale Signs of an Unhappy Employee
  5. To Inspire, Pay Attention to People: The Hawthorne Effect

When Stress is Good

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Stress and Anxiety Can Lead to Improved Performance

Why Some Stress Is Good for You Many people claim that they work best under pressure. There’s some truth to that. Stress is a natural response in highly competitive environments. Before an exam, important meeting, or contest, your heart rate rises and so does your blood pressure. You become more absorbed, alert, and efficient.

However, this favorable relationship applies only up to a certain level of stress. Past this level, stress impairs your performance—and eventually your heart.

In 1908, Harvard psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dodson first described the beneficial and harmful effects of stress (“psychological arousal”) on performance in a graph the shape of an upside-down U. According to the Yerkes-Dodson Law, the ascendant curve reflects the energizing effect of arousal. The descendant curve reflects the negative effects of stress on thinking and learning, or performance in general.

Too Much Anxiety and Stress Impairs Performance, but so Does Too Little: The Yerkes-Dodson Law

Many physiological studies have demonstrated that stress enhances your performance by causing your brain to use more of its capabilities, improve memory and intelligence, and increase productivity. Without stress, athletes, performers, executives, and students are likely to underachieve.

There is an optimum level of arousal for every kind of task. So how do you find the right balance? How do you get yourself into the performance zone where stress is most helpful? How much stress is good? The answers depend on individual disposition, the types of stressors, the nature of the task itself, and perceptions of what is stressful to you.

When Stress is Good: The Yerkes-Dodson Law

Idea for Impact: Stress at Work May Be Inevitable but it Doesn’t Have to Be Detrimental

Stress can be a motivator. But don’t seek out stress—less of it is better. Make the stress you do have work for you. Becoming conscious of stress as a potential positive can reduce the harm it causes.

  • Develop an awareness of when you hit the limits beyond which working longer or harder is counter-productive (sportsmen tend to choke under intense pressure.) When you feel overwhelmed, look for ways to reduce or eliminate the stressors so you can become more productive again. Ask for help.
  • Performance deteriorates when your stress level is either too high or too low for a given task. Seek the optimal level of anxiety that can impel you forward without causing you to fight back or give up.

Idea for Impact: The Right Level of Anxiety Can Be a Positive Force for Driving Employees Forward

Anxiety and optimal performance is an individual affair. The Yerkes-Dodson Curve shifts as the performers become established and experienced with the undertaking.

Astute managers repeatedly assess and re-assess where their team members land on the Yerkes-Dodson Curve. Managers can identify over-stressed or under-motivated circumstances with employees and intervene quickly to tailor the level of stress.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Why People under Pressure Choose Self-Interested Behaviors
  2. Writing To-Do Lists Can Help You Sleep
  3. How to Prevent Employee Exhaustion
  4. Zeigarnik Effect: How Incomplete Tasks Trigger Stress [Mental Models]
  5. What Airline Disasters Teach About Cognitive Impairment and Decision-Making Under Stress

Summary of Richard Carlson’s ‘Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff’

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Stress follows a peculiar principle: when life hits us with big crises—the death of a loved one or a job loss—we somehow find the inner strength to endure these upheavals in due course. It’s the little things that drive us insane day after day—traffic congestion, awful service at a restaurant, an overbearing coworker taking credit for your work, meddling in-laws, for example.

It’s all too easy to get caught up in the many irritations of life. We overdramatize and overreact to life’s myriad tribulations. Under the direct influence of anguish, our minds are bewildered and we feel disoriented. This creates stress, which makes the problems more difficult to deal with.

'Don't Sweat The Small Stuff' by Richard Carlson (ISBN 0786881852) The central thesis of psychotherapist Richard Carlson’s bestselling Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff… And It’s All Small Stuff (1997) is this: to deal with angst or anger, what we need is not some upbeat self-help prescriptions for changing ourselves, but simply a measure of perspective.

Perspective helps us understand that there’s an art to understand what we should let go and what we should concern ourselves with. As I mentioned in my article on the concept of opportunity cost, it is important to focus our efforts on the important stuff, and not waste time on the insignificant and incidental things.

I’ve previously written about my favorite 5-5-5 technique for gaining perspective and guarding myself against anger erupting: I remove myself from the offending environment and contemplate if whatever I’m getting worked up over is of importance. I ask myself, “Will this matter in 5 days? Will this matter in 5 months? Will this matter in 5 years?”

Carlson stresses that there’s always a vantage point from which even the biggest stressor can be effectively dealt with. The challenge is to keep making that shift in perspective. When we achieve that “wise-person-in-me” perspective, our problems seem more controllable and our lives more peaceful.

Carlson’s prescriptions aren’t uncommon—we can learn to be more patient, compassionate, generous, grateful, and kind, all of which will improve the way we feel about ourselves and the way that other people feel when they are around us.

Some of Carlson’s 100 recommendations are trite and banal—for example, “make peace with imperfection,” “think of your problems as potential teachers,” “remember that when you die, your ‘in-basket’ won’t be empty,” and “do one thing at a time.” Others are more edifying:

  • Let others have the glory
  • Let others be “right” most of the time
  • Become aware of your moods and don’t allow yourself to be fooled by the low ones
  • Look beyond behavior
  • Every day, tell at least one person something you like, admire, or appreciate about them
  • Argue for your limitations, and they’re yours
  • Resist the urge to criticize
  • Read articles and books with entirely different points of view from your own and try to learn something

Carlson’s succinct insights have hit home with legions of the hurried and the harried. He became a bestselling author and a sought-after motivational speaker. Before his tragic death in 2006 at age 45, Carson followed up “Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff…” with some 20 tacky spinoffs intended particularly for spouses, parents, teenagers, new-weds, employees, and lovers.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. What the Buddha Taught About Restraining and Dealing with Anger
  2. Anger Is Often Pointless
  3. Learn to Manage Your Negative Emotions and Yourself
  4. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be
  5. Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue

Writing To-Do Lists Can Help You Sleep

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Sleeplessness Can Both Cause Anxiety and Be Caused by Anxiety

Writing To-Do Lists Can Help You Sleep - Zeigarnik Effect If you have recurrent difficulty with falling asleep or staying asleep, making a to-do list may help.

The authors of a Baylor University study suggest that not only can anxiety about unfinished tasks affect your sleep, but improving your sleep problem can also help symptoms of anxiety.

The authors’ experiment asked 57 students to spend a night in a sleep lab with no gadgets or distractions. Five minutes prior to an enforced sleep time, one half of the volunteers created a list of things they wanted to do over the upcoming days and the other half recorded tasks that they had completed during the previous few days. The researchers examined the participants’ brain activity during the night and established that those who wrote their to-do lists fell asleep nine minutes sooner on average.

How Ruminating about Unfinished Tasks Can Keep You Awake

The beneficial effects of a humble to-do list on your sleeplessness can be explained by the Zeigarnik Effect, the tendency for interrupted tasks and thoughts to be evoked better than completed tasks.

As I’ve written previously, Psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, who studied this phenomenon, theorized that incomplete tasks can incite “psychic tension” and can inundate you with a constant stream of reminders. Just the modest act of capturing how you’re going to deal with the unresolved tasks in a to-do list can achieve a sense of completion and respite.

According to Michael Scullin, the lead researcher of the aforementioned Baylor study, “there’s something about the act of writing, physically writing something on paper, that helps us hit the Pause button.”

When you have a task that’s unfinished, it’s on your mind more than any task you have completed. If you test people’s memory for things that were unfinished versus things that were completed, people remember the things that were unfinished a lot better. It seems that unfinished tasks rest at what we call a heightened level of cognitive activation. We think that’s the key ingredient. With our day-to-day lives and work schedule, unfinished tasks pile on one another and create this cognitive activation that’s difficult to set aside—unless, of course, you write about it.

Idea for Impact: Write a to-do List Before Hitting the Sack Every Night

Some folks I know create a ‘brain dump’ just before bedtime—they not only jot down any worries or unfinished tasks from the day, but also create a plan for resolving their worries and stressors.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Zeigarnik Effect: How Incomplete Tasks Trigger Stress [Mental Models]
  2. The Art of Taking Action: Use The Two Minute “Do-it-Now” Rule
  3. Cope with Anxiety and Stop Obsessive Worrying by Creating a Worry Box
  4. [Getting Organized #2] Prepare Tomorrow’s To-Do List as You Wrap-up Today
  5. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal

Elevate Timing from Art to Science // Book Summary of Daniel Pink’s ‘When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing’

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Daniel Pink’s When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing (2018) explores how the quality of the decisions we make are correlated with their timing.

Pink is an expert on motivation and management, and an author of such best-selling books as Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (2009) and To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others (2012.) He describes When as not so much a “how-to” guide for making the most of our lives, but as a “when-to” manual for individual and group work.

The Best Times of the Day to Make Optimum Decisions

'When Perfect Timing' by Daniel H. Pink (ISBN 0735210624) Pink’s principal theme is chronobiology—the science of how the body’s biological clocks can influence our cognitive abilities, moods, and attentiveness.

Drawing on scientific research on the science of timing, Pink concludes that the mental acuity, creativity, productivity, temper, and frames of mind for most folks follow an identifiable “peak-trough-rebound” template. Most people get their best work done in the mornings, suffer a trough of mental weariness in the afternoon, and experience a late-evening burst:

Our cognitive abilities do not remain static over the course of a day. During the sixteen or so hours we’re awake, they change often in a regular, foreseeable manner. We are smarter, faster, dimmer, slower, more creative, and less creative in some parts of the day than others. … [R]esearch has shown that time-of-day effects can explain 20 percent of the variance in human performance on cognitive undertakings.

Needless to say, this “peak-trough-rebound” phenomenon is fairly universal but differs among individuals. There are “larks” who do remarkably well in the mornings and “owls” who tend to embrace their late night productivity habits.

Optimizing Your Day with Daily Rhythms

According to Pink, “peak-trough-rebound” is attributable to the body’s relatively low temperature when we wake up. The increasing body temperature gradually boosts our energy level and alertness, which consequently “enhances our executive functioning, our ability to concentrate, and our powers of deduction.” As the morning evolves, we become more focused and alert until we hit a peak. Then our energy level wanes and our alertness declines, only to be restored in early evening.

Pink concludes that mornings are good for decision-making and that errors increase in the afternoons. Studies recommend that we schedule surgery in the mornings when surgeons tend to make fewer mistakes and avoid petitioning a traffic ticket in the afternoons because judges tend to be less considerate than in the mornings.

“Breaks are Not a Sign of Sloth but a Sign of Strength”

Pink emphasizes the risks of clouded judgment that characterizes the afternoon “trough.” As an example, Pink speculates that the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in 1915 was about the time of day—it’s captain’s ill-fated decisions were made in the afternoon following a night of no sleep.

With case studies of error-reduction in hospital operating rooms, Pink suggests “vigilance breaks” (quick team huddles for reviewing checklists and verifying courses of action) and restorative breaks (naps, short physical activities, or mental diversions) during troughs to “recharge and replenish, whether we’re performing surgery or proofreading advertising copy.”

“Timing is Everything” and “Everything is Timing”

Based on the mentioned studies’ correlations and causations, Pink offers advice further than daily scheduling—from marriage to switching careers and sports:

  • The best time to perform a specific task depends on the nature of that task. Identify your chronotype (Pink offers an online survey,) understand your task, and decide on the most suitable time. Do not let mundane tasks sneak into your peak period. Additionally, if you’re a boss, understand your employees’ work patterns and “allow people to protect their peak.”
  • The Best Times of the Day to Make Optimum Decisions: Daniel Pink's 'When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing' Tasks that need creativity and a flash of insight (rather than analytical perspicacity) are best done during the late-evening recovery period when the mind tends to be less inhibited and more open to inventive associations.
  • Harness the psychological power of beginnings—New Year’s Days, birthdays, and anniversaries are all natural times to make resolutions and start working on goals. Other opportunities for fresh starts include the first of the month, the beginning of the week, and the first day of spring.
  • “Lunch breaks offer an important recovery setting to promote occupational health and well-being”—especially for “employees in cognitively or emotionally demanding jobs.”
  • Afternoon coffee followed by 10- to 20-minute naps and leisurely daily walks are “not niceties, but necessities.” Drink a cup of coffee just before a nap—the 25 minutes it takes for the caffeine to kick in is the optimal length of a restorative siesta.
  • Morning workouts are best for people aiming to burn fat, lose weight, or build sustainable exercise habits. Folks trying to reach personal bests should seek out the afternoons, when physical performance tends to reach its zenith.
  • Studies suggest that people are most likely to run their first marathons at ages ending in 9—but those ages are also when people are most prone to cheating on their spouses.
  • According to one survey, switching jobs every three to five years in your early career can lead to the biggest pay increases.

Recommendation: Skim Daniel Pink’s ‘When’ for the Life Hacks

Daniel Pink’s When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing offers little fresh substance. Many of the cited studies’ implications, causations, and correlations are open to debate.

A speed-read of When, especially of the takeaway points at the end of each chapter, can offer some practical tips about when you are likely to be creative, focused, and least error-prone.

Parenthetically, the third and the final section on “Synching and Thinking” is out-of-place to Pink’s principal theme of timing, even if the case study of the synchronized effort that constitutes the Mumbai Dabbawala lunchbox delivery system is interesting. Pink explains that the importance of “syncing up” with people around you through a collective sense of identity and a shared purpose is “a powerful way to lift your physical and psychological well-being.”

Complement skimming Daniel Pink’s When with Michael Breus’s The Power of When (2016; Talk at Google.)

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Thinking Straight in the Age of Overload // Book Summary of Daniel Levitin’s ‘The Organized Mind’
  2. Books I Read in 2018 & Recommend
  3. How to Boost Your Willpower // Book Summary of Baumeister & Tierney’s ‘Willpower’
  4. Wednesday Afternoon Time-off: Recharge Mid-week
  5. How Mindfulness Can Make You Better at Your Job // Book Summary of David Gelles’s ‘Mindful Work’
Here’s a prayer to help you deal with annoying people. Learn from the Stoics!