Speaker 1: Guess what, mango, what's that? Will? Actually wait before we
Speaker 1: get started. Let's let's high five? Okay five? Oh and
Speaker 1: and fist bump and oh yeah and chess bump. I
Speaker 1: feel like you're just stalling. What's this all about? Well,
Speaker 1: there's there. This is actually very relevant. There there's research
Speaker 1: from the NBA that shows that a good predictor of
Speaker 1: team performance is how often the team high fives or
Speaker 1: fist bumps, chess bumps, and head slaps. So I feel
Speaker 1: like it might help us have a good show. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna draw the line of head slapping, but that is
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. I'm not a dent sure what the head
Speaker 1: slapping thing is, even though I watched a lot of basketball.
Speaker 1: But there's actually another basketball fact that I think is
Speaker 1: even more interesting. After looking at the results of tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of NBA and college games, these researchers found
Speaker 1: that teams trailing by a single point at halftime are
Speaker 1: actually more likely to win than the team's winning by
Speaker 1: a point. In fact, they found it was statistically equivalent
Speaker 1: to a two point halftime lead. That's crazy. So why
Speaker 1: is that? Well, it's all about amy. But the science
Speaker 1: of perfect timing is pretty fascinating and help us make
Speaker 1: sense of it. We've got Daniel Pink, the brilliant author
Speaker 1: of a brand new book called Win, The Scientific Secrets
Speaker 1: of Perfect Time, and he's here to explain it all.
Speaker 1: So let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to
Speaker 1: part time genius Samuel Pearson, And as always, I'm joined
Speaker 1: by my good friend Man Guesh Ticketer and the man
Speaker 1: on the other side of the soundproof glass playing Cindylopper's
Speaker 1: Time after Time very softly in our headphones. That's our
Speaker 1: friend and producer, Tristan McNeil. I didn't realize what it
Speaker 1: was until he slowly turned it off. Rascal. Anyway, Mango,
Speaker 1: are you ready to talk about perfect timing? I am,
Speaker 1: you know, I think what's so striking and reading Daniel's
Speaker 1: book was just how little science we've put behind our
Speaker 1: decisions on when to do certain things. Like we constantly
Speaker 1: analyze how to do things, how to take a test,
Speaker 1: how to organize a productive meeting, how to be healthier,
Speaker 1: But when it comes to the when decisions, we really
Speaker 1: leave that to a gut feeling. So I'm super excited
Speaker 1: to talk to Daniel Pink about his research because this
Speaker 1: book is really fascinating. I'm with you on that, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's not hold off any longer. Today we're joined by
Speaker 1: the author of several books, including the New York Times bestsellers,
Speaker 1: Drive to Sell as Human and A Whole New Mind.
Speaker 1: But his newest book that just came out yesterday actually
Speaker 1: is called When the Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. Daniel Pink.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius. Thanks great to be here. Now, Daniel,
Speaker 1: you open the book with a story about a study
Speaker 1: out of Cornell. There these two sociologists. They're doing a
Speaker 1: big data analysis of five hundred million tweets, you know,
Speaker 1: along with the other research that have helped find these
Speaker 1: patterns of the day. So can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that and how the heck do you do
Speaker 1: an analysis of five hundred million tweets? Well, fortunately I
Speaker 1: didn't do this analysis. Um, these guys that Cornell did it.
Speaker 1: And it's actually one of the interesting things about how
Speaker 1: research has done these days and how we can use
Speaker 1: giant amounts of data to find hidden insights. So essentially
Speaker 1: what they did was this, so tweets remember our actual text, right,
Speaker 1: so their words or letters, characters, and um, there is
Speaker 1: a piece of software called LUKE. That's the acronym l
Speaker 1: I w C for the Linguistic Inventory Word count. This
Speaker 1: software allows us to measure what essentially the emotional content
Speaker 1: of the work. So if you if I look at
Speaker 1: a word like like bummed out and say, okay, that's
Speaker 1: someone who is a little bit low emotion, excited high emotion.
Speaker 1: And so what you can do is that instead of
Speaker 1: going through these things one by one. This is the
Speaker 1: great thing about computers is ability to crunch these numbers.
Speaker 1: They throw all of these five million tweets into this
Speaker 1: program and their question is does people's mood as reflected
Speaker 1: by these tweets change over the course of a day.
Speaker 1: And the answer was heck yeah, and how so. Well,
Speaker 1: what they found was this really intriguing pattern. There was
Speaker 1: a peak, a trough, and a recovery. And again it's
Speaker 1: obviously controlled for time zone. Uh. Early in the day
Speaker 1: where people had a more positive mood. That positive mood
Speaker 1: was fairly steady until about noon. Then in the early
Speaker 1: to mid afternoon it began to dip. It dipped considerably
Speaker 1: over the afternoon and then rose again in the late
Speaker 1: afternoon early evening. And what they found were essentially three stages,
Speaker 1: a peak, a trough, and a recovery that as we
Speaker 1: had positive mood in the morning, pretty strong dive in
Speaker 1: mood in the early to mid afternoon, and then recovery
Speaker 1: later in the day. It's very interesting. Yeah. So so
Speaker 1: obviously you know we're not all the same. And we've
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about like circadian rhythms and in
Speaker 1: our episode on sleep awhile back, but you talk about
Speaker 1: chronotypes and how do you use them to perform Can
Speaker 1: you tell us exactly what a chronotype is and how
Speaker 1: people identify themselves as whatever. So there's a whole field
Speaker 1: is study called chronobiology and chrono for time biology for
Speaker 1: study of life, and it looks at exactly as you say,
Speaker 1: are daily rhythms. What it finds is that people have
Speaker 1: certain type, certain propensities. Some of us rise early, fall
Speaker 1: asleep earlier, some of us rise late, fall asleep late.
Speaker 1: Some people are larks morning people, some people are owls
Speaker 1: evening people. But the truth is that most of us
Speaker 1: are kind of in between what I like to call
Speaker 1: third birds. And if you're a lark or a third bird,
Speaker 1: you generally go through the day in that in the
Speaker 1: order that I just mentioned, a peak, a trough, a
Speaker 1: recovery that you have. In the mornings, you're generally at
Speaker 1: your best, both in terms of mood and in terms
Speaker 1: of vigilance. In the early afternoons there's a pretty significant
Speaker 1: deterioration and then some kind of recovery later in the
Speaker 1: day for the but the one and five of us
Speaker 1: were very strong owls nighttime types. These are people who
Speaker 1: go to sleep just naturally very late and wake up late,
Speaker 1: people for whom eight o'clock staff meetings are just a
Speaker 1: form of torture um those folks. And to go in
Speaker 1: more or less the reverse order recovery truck peak, and
Speaker 1: that would probably be you, mango, Yeah, yeah, what time
Speaker 1: do you Well, here's a here's the test. Let's we
Speaker 1: can test you right now. All right, we'll do we'll
Speaker 1: do the basically back in the envelope chronotype test here. So,
Speaker 1: so let's say it's a day where you don't have
Speaker 1: to wake up to an alarm clock, which for many
Speaker 1: people as a weekend. Okay, so what time would you
Speaker 1: usually go to sleep? Yeah, I mean, I think kids
Speaker 1: have thrown everything off, but I think probably between three
Speaker 1: and four. Oh, my lord, four am. Yeah, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't even have to do the rest of this time.
Speaker 1: And what time would you usually wake up? I don't know, ten,
Speaker 1: I'd say ten. Okay. So so what we would do
Speaker 1: in this case was we would find your your midpoint
Speaker 1: of sleep. So if you if so your midpoint of sleep,
Speaker 1: if you can go to sleep at three and wake
Speaker 1: up at and your midpoint of sleep, would you, guys
Speaker 1: be six thirty am, which would make you a pretty
Speaker 1: strong owl. Strong about one out of five people are
Speaker 1: pretty strong owls um and I I like the designation
Speaker 1: of a strong owl. Yea's a very strong owl. Yeah
Speaker 1: or uh so, yeah, that's that's that's that's pretty alley.
Speaker 1: How are you You don't be asking, I'm oh man,
Speaker 1: oh man, you're a serious owl then, yeah, yeah, well congratulations.
Speaker 1: He's been that way for a long time. In college,
Speaker 1: he was paired up with another owl, and so we
Speaker 1: all had to be aware that they would just wake
Speaker 1: up at about what about two in the afternoon and
Speaker 1: talk about what they were going to get for breakfast. Well,
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that is that that that's one reason
Speaker 1: I asked to your age is that most of us
Speaker 1: go through a period between about age fourteen and twenty
Speaker 1: four when we become the owliest in our life. Um.
Speaker 1: And that has to do with hormones and whatever. So
Speaker 1: there's a pretty soon that they can shift, beginning basically
Speaker 1: post puberty, where people shift literally in some cases to
Speaker 1: three hours later into the day. Um. But then as
Speaker 1: time goes on, they go back to their earlier So
Speaker 1: to what you have is you have like little kids
Speaker 1: is I think magnis is discovered are pretty large, pretty long, um.
Speaker 1: And we basically are are strong larks earlier in our
Speaker 1: life and then later in life. The older you get,
Speaker 1: the larker you become in general. Well, you talk about
Speaker 1: this a little bit in the book when you're talking
Speaker 1: about those teenage years, and we've heard this before, the
Speaker 1: advocacy for a later start time, you know, in the
Speaker 1: American Academy of Pediatrics actually issuing a policy statement urging
Speaker 1: schools to start I think it was no no earlier
Speaker 1: than eight thirty, and yet fewer than one in five
Speaker 1: schools actually follow this, as you indicated the book. Well,
Speaker 1: why do you think that is? Because they don't take
Speaker 1: these time and questions seriously. They don't take questions of
Speaker 1: when seriously these schools. And I don't mean to pick
Speaker 1: on schools because I think it's true for all our institutions.
Speaker 1: We take very seriously, Okay, what are we gonna do? Alright,
Speaker 1: So they take curriculum very seriously. What are we gonna do,
Speaker 1: How are we gonna do it, How are we going
Speaker 1: to teach it? We have professional development days to improve
Speaker 1: our pedagogy. How are we going to do it? Who
Speaker 1: are we gonna do it with? They take hiring pretty seriously. Um,
Speaker 1: But then we take these questions of when, and we say, ah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't really matter. That's like we we we take
Speaker 1: these questions of when and when we sit them at
Speaker 1: the kids table rather than at the groun ups table.
Speaker 1: And that's a huge mistake. These questions of when, these
Speaker 1: questions of timing, as you're saying, with school star times,
Speaker 1: have a material effect on people's well being. School star
Speaker 1: times alone, Um, there is evidence that these early star times,
Speaker 1: again for people who are very ali who which teenagers
Speaker 1: tend to be starting school at seven thirty in the
Speaker 1: morning is ridiculous. They're barely even awake. And consequence of
Speaker 1: that is dire the You have higher rates of depression,
Speaker 1: higher rates of OBEs, the increased incidents of auto accidents,
Speaker 1: higher dropout rates, reduced performance on santidized tests, and schools
Speaker 1: that have done something about this, and again we're not
Speaker 1: we're not. We're not talking about like a Magnat schedule
Speaker 1: where you start school at three in the afternoon. We're
Speaker 1: talking about like starting it at like nine in the
Speaker 1: morning rather than seven thirty in the morning. Schools that
Speaker 1: have made those that that modest step that basically followed
Speaker 1: the recommendations of the American Accountmy of Pediatrics have seen
Speaker 1: low and behold higher test scores, lower dropout rate. If
Speaker 1: you just think about the workplace, time of day explains
Speaker 1: about twenty of the variance in our performance on cognitive tasks.
Speaker 1: So you know, so it doesn't mean the timing is everything,
Speaker 1: but it means it's a freaking big thing, right right right, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll speaking of that material difference as you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: not just affecting teenagers but adults as well. You you
Speaker 1: talk about this Bermuda triangle of our days in the afternoons,
Speaker 1: and and we we all know that there tends to
Speaker 1: be that afternoon. We've all experienced that, especially after man
Speaker 1: guess and I have been downstairs eating ramen for lunch
Speaker 1: and afternoon slump. But actually hearing from you and hearing
Speaker 1: the hard evidence of this, whether it's with standardized test
Speaker 1: or even results from juries, can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that impact. It's huge and it's terrifying. There's
Speaker 1: research from Denmark showing the kids score systematically lower if
Speaker 1: they take standardized tests in the afternoon versus they take
Speaker 1: them in the morning. Okay, so just think about that
Speaker 1: in terms of the extent to which standardized tests affect
Speaker 1: the kid's fate, where they affect education policy. Again, time
Speaker 1: of day is having this massive effect, but it's invisible
Speaker 1: to us. If you look at something like you make
Speaker 1: an interesting point about about juries or criminal justice system,
Speaker 1: there's some really good experimental evidence showing that if you
Speaker 1: have two defendants. That's a famous experiment, one one named uh.
Speaker 1: Some participants have a defendant name Robert Garner, some have
Speaker 1: one name ROBERTA. Garcia. And if you have the same
Speaker 1: set of facts juries that deliberate in the morning, treat
Speaker 1: those defendants the same juries that have the same set
Speaker 1: of facts and deliberate in the afternoon during this trough period.
Speaker 1: Guess what they are more likely to convict Garcia and
Speaker 1: exonerate Garner on the same set of facts. Right, but
Speaker 1: but but wait, there's more, Because now we can go
Speaker 1: into healthcare. Doctors and nurses are far less likely to
Speaker 1: wash their hands in the afternoons and in the mornings
Speaker 1: if you look at if you look at things like anesthesia,
Speaker 1: you're three times more likely to have an anesthesia error
Speaker 1: in an afternoon procedure than in the morning procedure. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole thing is terrifying and so over. Even even
Speaker 1: if we look at things like auto accidents, there's some
Speaker 1: good research out of the UK. You know, when do
Speaker 1: auto accidents peak? If you're just for how many cars
Speaker 1: are on the road? Big surprise, they peeked between like
Speaker 1: four and six am. Okay, because it's the middle of
Speaker 1: the night and it's really dark. But the second most
Speaker 1: common time is between two and four pm. It's perfectly
Speaker 1: light outside. Yeah. We don't take these kinds of time
Speaker 1: and day effects nearly seriously enough, and they have a big,
Speaker 1: big effect on literally in some cases of life and death.
Speaker 1: So these are so scary statistics. Now, we have several
Speaker 1: more questions for you. But before we get to those,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 1: We're talking to Daniel Pink, the author of When The
Speaker 1: Scientific Secrets of Perfect Finding. Daniel, I, I know we
Speaker 1: talked about the fact that I'm not a morning person,
Speaker 1: but I was curious about morning exercise because that's something
Speaker 1: you talk about in your book. Can you tell about
Speaker 1: the benefits of doing it then versus afternoon and what
Speaker 1: it means for your body. Yeah, this is something that
Speaker 1: I was really interested in because I was trying to
Speaker 1: figure it out for myself. Um and so um. It's
Speaker 1: pretty easy to figure out whether you should exercise in
Speaker 1: the morning or the afternoon. It all depends on what
Speaker 1: your goals are. So if you're also to lose weight,
Speaker 1: exercise in the morning, you're gonna burn up more calories
Speaker 1: than typically. If you actually in the morning, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get a mood boost for a bigger period of the day.
Speaker 1: Exercise later in the day you might sleep through some
Speaker 1: of that mood boost. There's some good evidence showing that
Speaker 1: morning exercise makes us slightly more likely to stick to
Speaker 1: the routine and to stopster and levels actually peak in
Speaker 1: the morning. If you're doing some strength based training, mornings
Speaker 1: can be good for that. On the other hand, afternoon
Speaker 1: late afternoon is good for other types of things. So
Speaker 1: one of the big things that affects our physiology over
Speaker 1: the course of the day is a change in body temperature,
Speaker 1: believe it or not. And when our body temperature tends
Speaker 1: to rise to its highest point in the late afternoon
Speaker 1: in early evening UM, that makes our muscles warmer and
Speaker 1: so we're more likely to avoid injury. So if you're
Speaker 1: prone to injury, you're concerned about injury, afternoon exercise is better.
Speaker 1: There's some really intriguing evidence showing that you might actually
Speaker 1: perform at a higher level during afternoon and early evening
Speaker 1: activity UM because mine function is the highest, your strength
Speaker 1: is higher, your reaction time is higher. There's some very
Speaker 1: intriguing evidence about athletic records, particularly in speed events, disproportionately
Speaker 1: being broken at between about four and seven local time.
Speaker 1: Really fascinating, and it's all about our you know, basically
Speaker 1: about a bye temperature is also again this is related
Speaker 1: up and this has actually ended up sealing the deal
Speaker 1: for me is that because we're doing a little bit better,
Speaker 1: we're you know, our our lung function is a little
Speaker 1: bit higher muscles are warmer, we're not risking exercise, we're
Speaker 1: not risking injury as much. That people tend to um
Speaker 1: enjoy the workouts a little bit more in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: even if they're doing the exact same thing in the morning,
Speaker 1: they feel a little less taxing UM. And so for me,
Speaker 1: I am an uh an afternoon early evening exerciser, and
Speaker 1: I think it's for that last reason. When I when
Speaker 1: I go do exercise in the morning, I hate it.
Speaker 1: It feels like it feels like torture. When I do
Speaker 1: it in the afternoon, I actually enjoyed a little bit more.
Speaker 1: And so if I were trying to lose a lot
Speaker 1: of weight, I might change I might change things. But
Speaker 1: I exercise just so I don't go crazy. And so afternoon, um,
Speaker 1: afternoon works for me. And I think it's because of
Speaker 1: just that my body has warmed up. I'm performing a
Speaker 1: little bit of higher level and it's just it's less
Speaker 1: unpleasant than it is in the mornings. Yeah. Well, back
Speaker 1: to the idea of productivity and things that we can
Speaker 1: do to to be more productive. You talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: the importance of or the value of of napping, can you,
Speaker 1: And I think we we've we've heard that before, but
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about, you know, what
Speaker 1: the ideal nap is and what we're looking for in
Speaker 1: that and and trying to be more productive. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: ideal nap is a less shorter than I ever realized
Speaker 1: I was. You know, I'm not. I haven't been a
Speaker 1: big napper. And the reason is that when I woke
Speaker 1: up from a nap, I felt, I felt terrible. I
Speaker 1: felt you know, groggy and cobwebs in my head. Um.
Speaker 1: And what I discovered essentially is that I was doing
Speaker 1: it wrong. That the ideal nap is is very very
Speaker 1: short maybe you know, usually no more than twenty minutes
Speaker 1: or so. Um. And what happens if we knap longer
Speaker 1: than that is that we begin to accumulate what's called
Speaker 1: sleep inertia. That's that boggy, groggy feeling that we have,
Speaker 1: and it takes us some time to dig out of
Speaker 1: that to get the benefits of the nap. So you
Speaker 1: basically start with a deficit and then have to climb
Speaker 1: out of the deficit. If you have a nap of
Speaker 1: twenty minutes or so, you get a lot of the
Speaker 1: benefit without any of the deficit. And so the super
Speaker 1: short naps literally between ten and twenty minutes, seemed to
Speaker 1: be the maximum bank for the buck when it comes
Speaker 1: to napping, which I I love because I'm from a
Speaker 1: sistic culture. Yeah, but you know, there's something to be
Speaker 1: said for you know. What's what's interesting is that in
Speaker 1: the the blaze of westernization and American style capitalism, we've
Speaker 1: obliterated cs IS, when in fact, there's actually some pretty
Speaker 1: good scientific evidence for restoring some kind of modern the Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not talking about taking three hours um
Speaker 1: for lunch every single day, but basically taking breaks and
Speaker 1: pauses much more seriously than we take them. Right now. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: one of the things, because I'm so focused on mornings now,
Speaker 1: I want to ask about is breakfast and how important
Speaker 1: it really is and where meals play a role in
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, having the most productive days. Um,
Speaker 1: is breakfast is important? I think the answer from the
Speaker 1: research is a clear and conclusive maybe, um, some of
Speaker 1: the some of the and this has to do with
Speaker 1: some of the methodologies, which are observational studies rather than
Speaker 1: randomized control experiences. So you know, these observational studies found
Speaker 1: that people who breakfast are healthy but we don't know
Speaker 1: whether breakfast is causing their healthiness. It could just be
Speaker 1: the healthy people like the breakfast, um, people who are
Speaker 1: already healthy, or eating breakfast and has no causal effect, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Some of these pro breakfast studies are actually funded by
Speaker 1: cereal companies, so that should make us raise our eyebrows
Speaker 1: a little bit. In terms of time of day and eating,
Speaker 1: there's some very interesting research, pretty new stuff right now
Speaker 1: on what's called time restricted feeding. The showing that you
Speaker 1: could you might be able to get a certain greater
Speaker 1: weight loss if you restrict you're eating to a certain
Speaker 1: ten or twelve hour period um, and that weight gain
Speaker 1: could be a factor in weight gain, could be eating
Speaker 1: too late in the day. Um, that's it's it's as
Speaker 1: early stages now. It's pretty intriguing. I actually looked at
Speaker 1: some of the research on lunch and it turns out
Speaker 1: that lunch is a pretty powerful Again here I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about physiology, I'm talking about psychology. The lunch ends
Speaker 1: up being a pretty powerful restorative for us, much more
Speaker 1: than I would have expected. There's a very strong argument
Speaker 1: in the research for taking a lunch break. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: not just having a tune of salad sandwich dripping onto
Speaker 1: your computer while you're trying to answer you know, but
Speaker 1: but but but you know, being intentional and taking a
Speaker 1: lunch break. It doesn't have to be massive, you know,
Speaker 1: taking half an hour and going outside and you know,
Speaker 1: if the weather is right, you know, eating a sandwich
Speaker 1: on a bench and not working. Um, the evidence is
Speaker 1: showing that that is where stories are. Energy can boost
Speaker 1: our mood, can actually improve our productivity and creativity. And
Speaker 1: the larger point here is that this is something where
Speaker 1: I've changed my own behavior, is that just in general,
Speaker 1: we haven't taken breaks seriously enough. Um. We have thought
Speaker 1: of breaks as you know, soft or deviations from performance.
Speaker 1: I am as guilty as anybody about this. I I've
Speaker 1: never been a big break taker. I've always thought it
Speaker 1: was better just to power through. And it's actually not,
Speaker 1: um that that breaks all. We have to start thinking
Speaker 1: of breaks as not a deviation from performance, but actually
Speaker 1: part of performance and recognize that part of being a
Speaker 1: professional means taking a break every once in a while.
Speaker 1: So when I was reading the book, one thing I
Speaker 1: wasn't clear about, and I was just curious, from your
Speaker 1: own perspective, where does social media plan to that, Like
Speaker 1: when you're on a break and eating a sandwich on
Speaker 1: a you know, in nature at a park. How how
Speaker 1: does like looking at your phone influence that? The real answers.
Speaker 1: It depends, So it depends on what you're looking at
Speaker 1: in your phone. In general, though, what the research shows
Speaker 1: is that the best breaks you're fully detached, particularly from work.
Speaker 1: So social media is a big part of your work.
Speaker 1: If you're looking at things, oh, what are they saying
Speaker 1: about my product or um, you know what's in the news,
Speaker 1: and that it's going to affect my business, then it's
Speaker 1: actually not that great of an idea. There's a lot
Speaker 1: to be said for full detachment as breaks rather than
Speaker 1: semi detachment. So so for me, for instance, I've changed
Speaker 1: my ways on this is that when I have lunch,
Speaker 1: I will literally not bring my phone, um, you know,
Speaker 1: just you know, I don't take a long lunch break
Speaker 1: at all, maybe five minutes, but I will leave my
Speaker 1: phone in my office and so so I don't risk
Speaker 1: being semi detached. Um. On the other hand, believe it
Speaker 1: or not, and it's gonna sound crazy, but um, if
Speaker 1: you're using social media and as a form of detachment,
Speaker 1: that is, you're looking at hilarious of videos or something
Speaker 1: like that, I have nothing to do with your work,
Speaker 1: then it's not the worst thing in the world to
Speaker 1: have that kind of a break. There's actually some evidence,
Speaker 1: I mean, believe it or not, there's some evidence that
Speaker 1: people who take breaks watching it's gonna sound like it's
Speaker 1: made up, It's totally not made up. People who take
Speaker 1: breaks and watch dog videos during their breaks end up
Speaker 1: coming back from the breaks a little bit more restored.
Speaker 1: So that's probably not true for people who run kennels.
Speaker 1: So it really depends on, you know, how you're using
Speaker 1: social media. I find it, well, social media is very complicated,
Speaker 1: and I'm squarely in the middle. I don't consider it,
Speaker 1: you know, the devil's technology in order. I consider it
Speaker 1: the you know, the panacea for all that ails the world.
Speaker 1: It's obviously somewhere in the middle of that. What I
Speaker 1: have found personally, and again this is just a complete
Speaker 1: personal experience and observation, not based on any research or
Speaker 1: anything like that. I find that Twitter raises my stress level,
Speaker 1: uh increases my cortisol level because on Twitter it seems
Speaker 1: like everybody's always complaining about something or becoming alarmed by
Speaker 1: something or yelling at somebody. So for that I find
Speaker 1: it's not that for me personally, it's not that useful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense. I know. We have
Speaker 1: a few other big questions for you, Daniel. Before we
Speaker 1: get to those, let's take a quick break. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Part Time Genius. We're talking to Daniel Pink, the
Speaker 1: author of When the Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing and Daniel,
Speaker 1: before you came on, Mango and I were actually talking
Speaker 1: about some of the studies that were done around the
Speaker 1: game of basketball and that fact about being behind at
Speaker 1: the half is actually more advantageous than being ahead by
Speaker 1: a point. And so well, why is this and and
Speaker 1: and and what does this mean for us in other
Speaker 1: areas of our lives. Yeah, I love that piece of research.
Speaker 1: And again it's another um one of those insights that
Speaker 1: scholars have been able to uncover using big data. That
Speaker 1: particular piece of research, I think it was somewhere around
Speaker 1: eighteen thousand NBA games. Just to take a step back,
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things it's important to understand
Speaker 1: is how bizarre this finding is, because in general, a
Speaker 1: team that's ahead at halftime has a better chance of winning. Now,
Speaker 1: that shouldn't be a shocker, okay, because they have more points, right,
Speaker 1: you know, they already have more points, right, and the
Speaker 1: game's half over all, right, and they have a lead,
Speaker 1: so you know, mathematically it's not that complicated. The other
Speaker 1: thing is is that their halftime lead could be a
Speaker 1: proxy that they hate they have better players, or they
Speaker 1: have a better coach or something like that. What's interesting
Speaker 1: is is, you, guys, point out is the exception to that,
Speaker 1: which is the teams that are down by one are
Speaker 1: more likely to win? Why is that? And it goes
Speaker 1: to some of the science of midpoints. Um. Midpoints have
Speaker 1: two effects on our behavior. They either bring us down
Speaker 1: or they fire us up. And one of the cases
Speaker 1: where midpoints fire us up is that if we're slightly behind.
Speaker 1: There's something about being slightly behind at the midpoint that
Speaker 1: is galvanizing. Now because if you're if you're way ahead
Speaker 1: at the midpoint, you can become complacent. If you're way behind,
Speaker 1: you say okay, it's over, it's you know, you give up.
Speaker 1: But both in terms of the research on basketball games
Speaker 1: and also some experimental research, which is a better way
Speaker 1: to get at causation is showing that when people feel
Speaker 1: like they're slightly behind at the midpoint, they work a
Speaker 1: little harder. And one of the things that you can do,
Speaker 1: and you know you can at some level. You can
Speaker 1: trick yourself, you can trick your team, or it can
Speaker 1: be the actual honest account of what's going on. I
Speaker 1: do this all the time, is like, Okay, I'm at
Speaker 1: the midpoint of something, I'm slightly find I gotta get
Speaker 1: my button gear. Um. And so, if you're managing a
Speaker 1: project and you're hit the midpoint, team, hey we're doing
Speaker 1: pretty well, but we're a little bit behind. That's really galvanizing.
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty fascinating. So and so is that represented
Speaker 1: in why people do so many marathons at like twenty
Speaker 1: nine or thirty nine in those nine years. That's a
Speaker 1: different phenomenon that has to do with endings. You know,
Speaker 1: as you point out people who run merit first time marathons,
Speaker 1: their age is disproportionately ends and nine, say, forty nine
Speaker 1: year olds or three times more likely to run a
Speaker 1: marath first time marathon than fifty year olds. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Twenty nine year olds or twice as likely to run
Speaker 1: a first time marathon is twenty eight year olds or
Speaker 1: thirty year olds a right, it makes no sense physiologically.
Speaker 1: What what's happening is that when we get to the
Speaker 1: end of something, endings also have a galonizing effect. So
Speaker 1: when we can see the end, we sometimes kick a
Speaker 1: little harder. And that's particularly true when it comes to
Speaker 1: things that are sources of meaning. Um So people have
Speaker 1: bucket lists, and people have things they want to accomplish
Speaker 1: in their lives, and people have these these purely arbitrary
Speaker 1: markers of decades. They say, Oh, my gosh, time is
Speaker 1: moving fast. I gotta get going. I'm gonna to run
Speaker 1: a marathon. That's pretty amazing. And that's why you're holding
Speaker 1: off MAGO. You're thirty eight now and next year is
Speaker 1: you're big here. So ten years from now, start training,
Speaker 1: start training. So I know. One thing I was curious
Speaker 1: about is, uh, what's the best time to deliver bad news?
Speaker 1: Do you have any thoughts on that The best time
Speaker 1: to deliver bad news? Well, I think the best the
Speaker 1: best time, in the best way. The best time to
Speaker 1: deliver bad news in general is when the recipient's mood
Speaker 1: is higher that you know, more positive than negative. And
Speaker 1: what we know in general for most people is that
Speaker 1: their moods are slightly better in the mornings and in
Speaker 1: the late afternoons in early evenings than in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: So that is I think that's generally a good In general,
Speaker 1: it's a good time to do it. In terms of
Speaker 1: the classic formulation that everybody on the planet has used,
Speaker 1: I've got some good news and some bad news, there
Speaker 1: is a very clear answer. If you have good news
Speaker 1: and bad news to deliver, always give the bad news first. Um.
Speaker 1: And the reason for that is that people has to
Speaker 1: do with the science of endings. People prefer endings that elevate.
Speaker 1: They prefer rising sequences to declining sequences, and so um um.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting about that. And this is again another
Speaker 1: area where I've changed my own behavior. I used to
Speaker 1: be Mr, Okay, got good news and bad news. Let
Speaker 1: me give you the good news first, you know, try
Speaker 1: to lay down that cushion. And but when you ask
Speaker 1: people what do you want to hear first, the good
Speaker 1: news or bad news? Four to five people say I
Speaker 1: want the bad news first, and so you better off
Speaker 1: to give you the bad news first, uh, and ending
Speaker 1: with the good news. Um. Again, it has to do
Speaker 1: with our preferences about endings that elevate rising sequences over
Speaker 1: declining sequences. Well, and I like that you offer a
Speaker 1: few tips on this, whether it's you know, how to
Speaker 1: end vacations or how to end our work days. You know,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, people like an elevated ending. Can you
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about some of these
Speaker 1: suggestions that you've given in the book. I think the
Speaker 1: most important thing is to be intentional about endings and
Speaker 1: to recognize that they're the endings disproportionately affect how people
Speaker 1: remember entire experiences. So if you look at something like
Speaker 1: customer transactions, um, I think that businesses should be much
Speaker 1: more uh, much more attention to how a purchase experience ends,
Speaker 1: um um. So you can see this anecdotally and Yelp
Speaker 1: reviews of restaurants. If you if you actually read the
Speaker 1: help reviews of restaurants, you find that a disproportionate number
Speaker 1: of these reviews talk about how the meal ended. You know,
Speaker 1: they screw up the check and they were jerks about it.
Speaker 1: They gave me a deserted and expect and that affects
Speaker 1: their home. In terms of vacations, pick one of the
Speaker 1: what do you think is gonna be one of the
Speaker 1: best moments and put it towards the end. The end
Speaker 1: of an experience disproportionately affects our memory of it. I've
Speaker 1: got some great examples from teachers around the country about
Speaker 1: how teachers have marked the end of a semester or
Speaker 1: the end of a year. One one of my favorites
Speaker 1: is this fellow who's an economics teacher at a high
Speaker 1: school outside of Chicago, and what he does is that
Speaker 1: at the end of people senior years, he has them
Speaker 1: write a letter to themselves that he mails to them
Speaker 1: five years later. It's an awesome thing. There's another college
Speaker 1: teacher who at the end of a semester, she takes
Speaker 1: her students out to a local pub and they make
Speaker 1: toasts to each other. And so just being intentional about
Speaker 1: endings and giving them a little bit of lift can
Speaker 1: dramatically shape how people remember an entire year, long, semester,
Speaker 1: long experience. That's really good, and you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how we might end our work days. I
Speaker 1: thought there were some great suggestions there as well. Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I again, I think it's a lot.
Speaker 1: I think it's a lot about being intentional about how
Speaker 1: we end our work day. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that you can do at the one of the things
Speaker 1: you can do at the very end of your work day,
Speaker 1: and something that I do is that I actually mark
Speaker 1: my progress. I actually use an app called I'd done
Speaker 1: this that sends me an email at the end of
Speaker 1: every day. It says what you get done today, and
Speaker 1: I make sure the ritualize, Okay, here's what I got
Speaker 1: done today, So I have a sense of progress, so
Speaker 1: I mark that progress. Um. There's some great research from
Speaker 1: Teresa Amabulae at Harvard Business School about how making progress
Speaker 1: is the single largest day to day motivator on the job.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the things that I myself do.
Speaker 1: You can also do things like there's something about a
Speaker 1: sense of completion. So one of the things I try
Speaker 1: to do I don't always do a good job of
Speaker 1: this is layout what I'm gonna do the following day,
Speaker 1: so I have a sense of completion and I can
Speaker 1: kind of close the door on the day, take a
Speaker 1: break detached from work to the extent that's possible. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are also things at the end of the day
Speaker 1: as as mood boosters. One of the you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's really remarkable the research I'm doing something good for
Speaker 1: somebody else boosts our moods. It ends up being doing
Speaker 1: something good for someone else can be a profoundly selfish
Speaker 1: act in terms of its benefit to us. So you know,
Speaker 1: maybe at the end of the day thank somebody you
Speaker 1: hadn't thank before. But again, it's really about being aware
Speaker 1: and being intentional, um and and these these small things
Speaker 1: can make a big difference. Well, before we end here,
Speaker 1: I did want to ask you a little bit about
Speaker 1: the sinkers high and uh, the tips on sinking with
Speaker 1: other people, because I really like that that in your book,
Speaker 1: you can you talk a little bit about that, sure,
Speaker 1: you know, I also have a chapter on how groups
Speaker 1: synchronize in time, So whether they are people who are
Speaker 1: delivering lunches, whether they're rowers, whether they're choral singers, and um,
Speaker 1: there is something about synchronizing with other people in time
Speaker 1: that makes us feel really, really good. There's some good
Speaker 1: evidence on rowers High that that when we synchronize with
Speaker 1: other people, actually are pain thresholds increase, our immune response
Speaker 1: improves at a physiological level, we do better. There's some
Speaker 1: incredible effects to our mood and even to our propensity
Speaker 1: to do good. Deeds afterwards. So it's really quite fascinating.
Speaker 1: I don't have a great explanation for it. I just
Speaker 1: noted the phenomenon and some of the research behind it.
Speaker 1: But there's something about synchronizing with other people in time,
Speaker 1: like choral singing that makes us feel really, really good
Speaker 1: that could be somehow evolutionarily programmed to feel good because
Speaker 1: it has some kind of advantage to us. That's really interesting. Well,
Speaker 1: as we said at the top of the show, this
Speaker 1: is uh, it's interesting that's been We've gone this long
Speaker 1: without really thinking about the win of all these questions.
Speaker 1: As we've talked about before. You know, we've focused so
Speaker 1: much on the how and the why. But this has
Speaker 1: been so fascinating to learn these things and listeners, I
Speaker 1: hope you'll check out this new book When The Scientific
Speaker 1: Secrets of Perfect Timing. Daniel Pink thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining us today. Thanks to you guys both for a
Speaker 1: great interview with a lot of fun. Thanks again for listening.
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