Daniel Pink breaks down how two-thirds of people experience the same daily energy pattern: a morning peak for focused work, an early afternoon dip, and a late afternoon recovery best suited for creative thinking. Morning types and evening types should schedule accordingly.
15% of us are strong morning people. About 20% of us are strong evening people, owls. And about 2/3 of us are in the middle. For people who are in the 80%, it's basically morning peak, early afternoon, mid-afternoon trough, late afternoon recovery. So we know that our mood goes back up later in the day. This is for 80% of us. Our mood goes back up, but we are less vigilant. So you've got to pair those 2 things together. Higher mood, but less vigilant. That makes it a good time for things that require mental looseness, brainstorming, iterative kinds of things, solving problems with non-obvious answers. And so basically, there's a set of design guidelines that say, figure out, are you peak trough recovery or is your peak later in the day because you're an owl and do your analytic work during the peak, your administrative work during the trough, and your insight, iterative, creative work during the recovery.
