The Secret to Finding Perfect Timing | Daniel Pink

Your most recent book, when, is all about the secrets and science behind perfect timing. In particular, one of the things you talk about a lot in there is like power of breaks and taking breaks and all that. Can you elaborate a little bit on that and why that really is so important?

Yeah, great. That's a great question. I'm glad to talk about that. So I guess the top line view of all of this is that if you look at. Well, let me take two steps back here. This work on timing, the mistake that we make is that when we make our timing decisions, we make them based on intuition and guesswork, and we should be making them based on evidence. And there's a lot of evidence out here on timing. And some of the evidence has to do with breaks. And what the evidence tells us about breaks is that breaks are woefully, woefully undersold. We should be taking more breaks and we should be taking certain kinds of breaks. And so at a very top level, there's this view. I think it's a very American view. It's a very somehow like Americans from all races and walks of life just simply stepping. I mean, it's true in Massachusetts, sort of you step on the soil of America and sort of through the bottom of your shoes, you begin to get these very puritanical values, even if your family has no connection to the puritans at all. And these puritanical values are like powering through is how you get more work done. Powering through is good for you. Powering through is morally virtuous. And what the evidence says is that is not true. And it's totally changed my view. And what the evidence tells us is that is that I used to think that amateurs took breaks and professionals don't. It's the exact opposite. Professionals take breaks, amateurs don't. And what we need to start thinking about is breaks as part of our performance, rather than a deviation from our performance as integral to our performance, rather than a kind of sort of a turn away from our performance. And you see this in a whole range of things. You see it in medicine where if you give doctors and nurses breaks, they actually perform better on surgery. They're more vigilant in their care. You see it in the work of certainly in athletes. Athletes build breaks into things. You see it in a whole range of different brain power tasks where if you give people. There's some really, really good research showing that kids do worse on standardized tests, if they take the test in the afternoon versus the morning, significantly worse. But you can get Those scores back up. If you give them 20 minutes to run around before they take that afternoon test scores go back up. So breaks matter to our performance. The other thing, forgive the long winded answer. Well, we need to take a break from this answer is that we know about the right kinds of breaks to take and this is really important, that all breaks are not created equal. What we know is we have a very good, from the evidence, a very good kind of set of design principles. We know that something is better than nothing. So even taking a one minute break is better than not taking a break at all. One thing I try to do, especially if I'm on deadline, is what people call the 20, 20, 20 break, which is that every 20 minutes look at something 20ft away for 20 seconds. Even that kind of thing can restore energy. We know that social is better than solo, so that brakes with other people are more restorative than brakes on our own. Even for introverts. We know that some amazing, I mean, I like to see all these folks outside here. We know that brakes outside are more restorative than brakes inside. We know that brakes where you're moving are better than brakes where you're sedentary. And we know that brakes where you're fully detached are better than when you're semi detached. So you actually have to take a break. Don't look at your phone, don't talk about work.

Well, I'm glad you mentioned the piece about like when you're on deadline, like that sort of, sort of short example of a break, because some of the things that strike me in this type of stuff is it all sounds great, but how do you practically do some of this stuff when maybe dictating your own break schedule isn't entirely in your control or you work with people who don't have that same mentality? And so do you have tips and advice for doing this but working within a larger construct that might not be bought in?

Absolutely. It's just a really, really great point. And it's so one thing would be these, what are called micro breaks, which are these very, very short breaks. They can be restorative. It's a lot of bang for the buck. The other thing is really just to start small. So if you're an individual in an organization that doesn't necessarily prize these kinds of things, just be smart about it. So don't say, oh, I'm going to take a two hour siesta today, everybody, see you later. Instead what you do is don't ask for permission. I'm convinced that if everybody in the workplace took each afternoon one 15 minute walk outside with someone they liked talking about something other than work, you would see gains in productivity. So just start small. And I think that the other point you make, Lauren, is really interesting too, about how in the maw of things going on, we sometimes neglect that. And so one of the things that I've started doing is actually literally scheduling a break. And you know, just even so, just like on your, like if you had a meeting on your calendar, you'd go to the meeting, right? Bing. Time to go to the meeting. And so if you schedule like 3:15, 15 minute walk break, you start adhering to that. So start, start small and schedule it.

Yeah, but I have a tip because I have those in my calendar. But if you do them at the same time every day, people figure it out. So you gotta do them at random times.

Good point. That's really good. That's really cool.

Cause then they just book right over there.

Here's the other thing. Don't do it on Outlook, just do it on your phone.

Well, that's true too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Similarly, in the book, there's also some science in there around like the cycles that we're all on and some people being morning people and being productive there, some people being evening people. There's ratios. The question though is again, like, how do you identify who you are and identify who somebody else is and work together?

Great. Another great question. Yeah. So what you're talking about for the folks who haven't looked at the book is what's called a chronotype, which is basically a morning person or an evening person. It sounds a little like folklore is actually science. There's a whole field of chronobiology that studies this. Some of us naturally wake up early and go to sleep early. Some of us wake up late and go to sleep late. A lot of us are in the middle. And for yourself, there are instruments out there you can find online. There's something called the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire, the mctq. There's something called the Morning Eveningness Questionnaire, the meq. There's also a very simple back of the envelope way to figure out your chronotype. And I could do it with somebody right here in 30 seconds if you wanted. Anybody want to have their. Okay, yeah, so. Well, I saw. I'll go to this guy right here. And I just happened to see him first. Sorry about that. We can, we can do you afterwards. Tell me your first name. Drew. Drew. Okay. So, Drew, I want you to Think about this is what chronobiologists call a free day. A free day is a day you don't have to wake up to an alarm clock. You're also not exhausted in trying to catch up on sleep. You can just like, wake up and go to sleep when you feel like it. So on a typical free day, when would you typically go to sleep? 10:30. Okay, so let's say 11. And then. And when would you typically wake up again on a free day? You know, alarm clock, you get up whenever you want. 7:30. Okay, so I'm gonna go with 10:30, just so I don't have to do the halves. So 10:30 to 7:30. So that's nine hours of sleep. Four and a half. So what I'm trying to do is figure out your midpoint of sleep. So your midpoint of sleep would be 3:00am, is that right? Yeah. Midpoint of sleep would be 3:00am and here's what we know. If your midpoint of sleep is before 3:30, you're probably a lark. If your midpoint of sleep is after 5:30am you're probably an owl. And if your midpoint of sleep is between 3:30 and 5:30, you're in the middle. So you would be a lark, not a super strong lark. Does that seem logical to you? Yeah. Yeah. So you're better off doing like your more analytic work early in the day and your more insight work later in the day. Now, when it comes to other people, it's harder, but. But I actually think that knowing people's chronotypes can be really useful. So if I'm a boss, I'm not. Okay, first of all, how do you feel about working all nighters? How do you feel? Yeah. Or how do you feel like having a boss who's like, okay, yeah, we're going to be here till 11 o' clock at night. Okay, so. Okay. So. Okay, so, Drew, you're the boss. Okay, so, so here's the thing. So suppose that you have somebody who is anybody. Tests much more later in the day. More of an owl. Okay, so tell me your first name.

Karna.

Karna. Carla. Carla. Sorry. So Carla's an owl. So suppose that Carla's in your organization. All right, she's an owl. All right? Don't make Carla come to an 8:00am strategy meeting. All right, so it's that kind of thing. So just knowing a sense of people's chronotypes, you can make some adjustments based on that. How do you feel about 8 o' clock? In the morning meetings, Carla show up. Right, right. But Carla might be good at like maybe at 9 o' clock at night you're feeling pretty good about stuff. So that's it. So it's just a matter of just knowing that is, you know, allows us to make small decisions to do a little bit better.

How did you come to this research? Like how did you get on the topic of timing and when and writing that book?

You know what? I was actually, I was actually, believe it or not, I actually had written a proposal for an entirely different book. And then I realized how personally frustrated I was because I was making all kinds of decisions myself. Like when should I'm a writer? When in the day should I write? One of the things that I was really concerned about or interested in, when should I exercise? Is it better to exercise in the morning? Is it better to exercise later in the day? And I found myself, I was making these decisions and I was doing it in a totally half assed way. And I said the, there's gotta be a better way to do it. And so I started looking around for some guidance and it didn't exist. And so then I started looking at the science and said, wow, there's a lot of science here. And I was like, this is a book that I wanted to read. No one had written it, so I had to write it myself.

Is it possible?

I basically had to write this so I could read it.

Love it.

Yeah.

Is it possible to get too bogged down in the science of like I have to work out at this time because that's when the only time it's going to be good for me and like all of that. Do you have advice, I guess to not fall into that trap?

Yeah, I mean I think that what you want to do is you. I mean I think in general when it comes to how we lead our lives and this is, it's, it's interesting that we want a mix of kind of loose and tight. So we do want to have some kind of structure in our schedule. But so for me it's like I know that I'm better off, I know that I'm better off, you know, for me getting to my office in the morning, morning and maybe like at 8:30 or so because I'm not as, I'm a little bit, I'm larky, but not as strong of a lark as say Drew. So 8:30. But if I get to my office at 8:40, it's like I'm not going to spend the next 20 minutes beating myself up on that, you know, it's like, okay, yeah, we're going to aspire to do that. And you don't want to be overly rigid, but you want to have some, you know, you want to have. So if you think about, let's say, let's take exercise. So if you're better off, exercise in the late afternoon and early evening. You know, if you miss a day or two.

You miss a day.

Yeah, you miss a day or two. So, you know.

So what's the next question that you're looking for? The answer for that you're going to need to write a book to answer?

Oh, good question. I don't know. I'm trying to figure out that right now. I mean, writing a book is. Some of you probably have written books. Some of the millions of us watching at home have probably written books. Writing a book's a giant pain in the ass. It's really, really, really. I mean, it is. It's really, really hard. It's really, really hard. So you have to find a topic that you really are really, really, really, really interested in. So I've actually gone down the road to research two topics, one of which I was wrong about. So I had an idea and it turned out to be not true. And then another one, it was like, oh my God, if I have to spend three years working on this, I'm going to bang my head against the wall.

Is that the normal time frame? Three years? Three years?

Yeah, it depends. Yeah, basically I figured it out. I like to have a year to research in, a year to write generally, and then I build in another year just for what writers do best, which is procrastination and self loathing. So.

Rachel Botzman was up here yesterday and she was talking a little bit about her process. And I found it really interesting. She said that as she's researching a topic and writing a book or anything, she draws the ideas. Is there anything in your sort of writing process that helps you materialize what your. What you're thinking through?

Yeah, there are. I tend to be pretty. I tend to be pretty analog, even though I use, you know, I use Evernote and all that kind of stuff and da da da. And I use dry. I rely on Dropbox. Like if, if the main Dropbox server ever got attacked by North Korea, my life would be over. I mean, I would basically have nothing to do. And so, but that said, I don't. I like to. I like to see stuff, you know, So I will write out like just lists of words. I wonder what this word has to do with anything or questions. And I'll either. I have a big thing of whiteboards in my. A big kind of whiteboardish wall in my office. I also will often use giant. What do you call them?

Like stick notes.

Yeah, yeah, like post its but like the poster sized ones. And we'll write stuff on there and plaster those up and I will like, I literally sometimes will turn in my chair and look at an array of those giant stickies and just literally spend 45 minutes just looking at them. My family thinks like, oh my God, there he is again. He's been day drinking and. And so that, that helps me process things. I also am. I also use a lot of paper, believe it or not. I mean paper files and things like that. Yeah.

Why, like, why paper? What does it do for you? Hard to put into work.

You know, for me, I think it goes back to being able to being able to see stuff. I also feel like, I mean, maybe I'm completely delusional. I feel like I read better on paper than I do on a screen. I feel like I process and understand more. It could be because it could be a generational thing, you know, because when I like when I was a kid learning how to read and whatnot, there weren't that weren't very many screens, you know, But I feel like I just. And maybe there's some kind of weird psychological thing where I just find it comforting to be able to touch it. Touch something.

Yeah, I understand. You've been up here with us, you've been doing your spotlight talk. If you could leave this inbound audience with just one thing to take hold onto and take away from your time here, what would that be?

I think on the question of timing and even on your first question about breaks would be to be. I feel like everybody could up their. I hate this word. It's a little clumsy intentionality that a lot of times we're doing things, you know, based on default settings, based on kind of just stumbling through things. There's a great line from William James, taught at Harvard, father of psychology, started off as a philosopher, basically founded the field of psychology. And he has this great line and one of the things that he wrote called. He says most of us go through life only half awake. And I feel that by myself sometimes I'm like, I'm only half awake. And if you just sort of say, hey, wait a second, certain moments in the beginning of the day or somewhere in the day saying, okay, am I half awake or am I fully awake? Am I intentional or not? I Just think it's just more interesting. You learn a lot more.

Elizabeth Gilbert was here night one, and I think she set everybody off on a good intentionality path.

Oh, good.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, we have one.

But she has this great thing where the other thing that I would leave you with, borrowing on Liz Gilbert stuff is just showing up. If you want to do work, show up. She has this whole thing where it's like, if you sit around waiting for the muse to visit you, you're never going to get any work done. But if you show up every once in a while, the muse will come knock at your office door.

Absolutely. One final question. What does inbound mean to you?

You know what? I'm a big HubSpot fan. I've been to Inbound Inbound before. I think that what's interesting is the overall approach of HubSpot and inbound and the whole world of, say, content marketing is really interesting because it's really. It's about education, all right? We're not trying to hoodwink people. We're not trying to deceive people. We're basically saying, hey, I found out some interesting stuff. Let me share it with you. What do you think? And to me, that's really engaging. And I think that that's one reason why you have these ginormous armies of people from all over the world coming here. I was here a few years ago as well, and now it's like, holy moly. Like, what the hell is going on here?

I know, I know. It's more than doubled since the last time you were here. Yeah, it's crazy. Well, thank you so much for coming back and thank you for having me. Thank you for stopping by the studio and thank all of you for being here.

Thanks a lot.

Thanks, everybody.