The Art of Manliness - #369： When — The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast now when it comes

00:00:18.520 to planning for success we tend to focus on the what and the how for example when we set out our

00:00:24.060 workout goals we'll come up with detailed plans on what exercises we'll do or when we come up

00:00:28.480 with a debt repayment plan we decide exactly how we're going to pay down the debt but what a success

00:00:33.860 in any endeavor isn't only decided by the what or the how but also the when well that's what my guest

00:00:39.060 today argues in his latest book his name is daniel pink he's the author of several books including

00:00:43.020 drive a whole new mind and to sell as human in his latest book when he takes a look at how timing can

00:00:48.340 affect everything from the way we make decisions to how creative we are and even if a group will be

00:00:52.640 successful in a shared task daniel and i discuss how to use your internal clock to your advantage

00:00:57.260 why you shouldn't get surgery done at 3 p.m in the afternoon if there's really such thing as night

00:01:01.440 owls and why you should find more opportunities to sing in a group this is a fascinating discussion

00:01:05.860 that will provide plenty of cocktail party fodder but more importantly also has actionable points you

00:01:10.320 can put into practice today to make yourself more effective after the show's over check out the show

00:01:14.300 notes at aom.is slash win where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this

00:01:18.980 topic and now daniel joins me via clearcast.io

00:01:21.920 daniel pink welcome to the show thanks for having me bread great to be here so you got a new book out

00:01:33.860 when the scientific secrets of perfect timing you've got interesting career as a writer because

00:01:39.280 you've explored all sorts of things like you did a book to sell as human you talk about motivation

00:01:43.240 your book drive what led you to to research and write about the science of timing when we do things

00:01:49.680 well i realized that i was making all kinds of timing decisions myself about what literally about

00:01:55.200 when to do things so everything from when in the day should i work out morning or evening when should

00:02:00.740 i abandon a project that's not working all these kinds of when decisions and i realized i was making

00:02:05.440 them in a pretty haphazard way and i wanted to make him in a better way i started looking around for

00:02:10.100 a book that would allow me to be more informed about how to make those decisions that book unfortunately

00:02:16.320 did not exist so i had to write it um so i wrote this book largely because i wanted to read it

00:02:22.420 because i wanted to make better timing decisions myself well it's curious you talk about this you

00:02:26.140 make this point in the book that when oftentimes we're trying to look at how to improve ourselves

00:02:29.720 you always look at the how or the what and people never think about the wind why do you think that

00:02:34.400 is you know that's a great question i'm not sure for some reason we've always given it short

00:02:40.000 shrift we've always taken questions of what should i do very seriously where you know

00:02:45.060 understandably i am too obsessed with learning and improvement so we want to know how to do

00:02:49.020 things better we're very selective often about who we partner with so the the who but i don't

00:02:55.220 know for some reason the when question has been sitting at the kids table and it really belongs

00:03:01.000 at the grown-ups table and there's a huge amount of evidence even if you look at something like

00:03:05.160 time of day just you know probably the one of the most powerful but but relatively mundane

00:03:10.840 issues of timing when in the day should you do things it turns out that that time of day

00:03:17.020 explains about 20 percent of the variance and how human beings perform on tasks that involve brain

00:03:24.680 power so you know 20 percent i mean that doesn't mean timing is everything but it's a freaking big

00:03:29.660 thing yeah so let's get into that because you look at timing from different perspectives and the

00:03:33.020 first part you look at is the timing that our bodies have right we have this natural clock

00:03:38.420 tell us about this natural clock how it works what's its average what's the average what does

00:03:42.920 it look like throughout the day well it's great it's a really really great point because so much of

00:03:47.340 timing at a on a daily level is biological is physical is scientific if you if you look at certain

00:03:56.200 units of time seconds hours weeks those are things human beings have completely made up all right

00:04:02.160 they're not real but a day is a real thing because we're on this planet that you know makes one

00:04:06.740 spin around in in uh in 24 hours and our bodies also have not just a single biological clock but an

00:04:14.320 array of biological clocks some people believe biological clocks in every cell and that has a

00:04:19.600 big effect on our mood and our performance and the gist of it without getting too knee deep in the in

00:04:25.320 the actual biology is is the following that most of us progress through the day in three stages we have

00:04:31.400 a peak a trough and a recovery a peak a trough and a recovery most of us progress in that order peak

00:04:39.340 trough recovery about a fifth of us do it in the reverse order recovery trough peak but what the

00:04:45.180 science tells us is that there's certain kinds of work we should do in the peak certain kinds of work

00:04:49.920 we should do in the trough and certain kinds of work that we should do in the recovery and if you

00:04:53.720 simply reallocate what you do in these various time periods you're going to perform at a much higher

00:04:59.240 level so what should you do during your peak okay so the peak the peak again which for most of us is

00:05:04.500 the morning basically the the morning to the to around noon one o'clock what we should do there are

00:05:10.960 analytic tasks those are tasks that require vigilance keeping out distractions heads down focus so you know

00:05:19.600 you're writing a legal brief if you're a lawyer you're auditing columns of figures you are trying to

00:05:26.280 you know find bugs in in software so heads down analytic work where you want to keep out distractions

00:05:32.360 that is best done during our peak now the trough is for almost everybody the early to mid afternoon

00:05:39.980 that's pretty much good for nothing if you look at it's actually kind of frightening i mean some of

00:05:45.460 these numbers that i uncover were pretty alarming you have a much greater chance of anesthesia errors and

00:05:52.840 surgery for surgeries that begin at three rather than at eight in the morning doctors and nurses

00:05:58.980 much less likely to watch their hands in the mid-afternoon than earlier in the day if you look

00:06:03.820 at and this is actually really blew me away the most common time period for auto accidents is between

00:06:09.680 four and six a.m not a big surprise the second most common time between two and four p.m that trough at

00:06:16.460 midday trough so the trough isn't good for much what you're better off doing is your administrative work

00:06:21.260 answering your email you know doing your tps reports whatever kind of nonsense that we have

00:06:27.600 to fill our days with and then the recovery is interesting because the recovery again which for

00:06:32.100 most of us occurs in the early after the late afternoon and early evening that's a time when

00:06:37.300 our mood is higher but our mood is better than during the trough but our vigilance isn't quite as

00:06:42.720 great as during the peak and that combination is actually really interesting because when we're slightly

00:06:47.320 less vigilant but in a somewhat elevated mood we're pretty good at creative stuff that's a good

00:06:52.300 time for for for brainstorming sessions and things that require greater creativity where you actually

00:06:57.900 want to let in a few distractions and to the extent it's possible if we can just alter our schedules a

00:07:03.660 little bit have a little bit more control over when we do what we do people are going to be able to

00:07:09.580 perform at a higher level with very little cost yeah i've i've done that with myself like sometimes

00:07:15.320 i'll stay up really late to to write sort of like the initial draft of something and then use the

00:07:20.780 morning the next day to edit because i feel like if i try to write create like you know right in the

00:07:25.020 morning i tend to be nitpicky and i just backspace a lot and delete no that's not right but if i just

00:07:29.580 if it's late at night i just let it let it rip and i'm surprised what i can get out yeah you're less

00:07:35.400 inhibited i happen to be i happen to be a morning writer only because for me writing is it it so rarely

00:07:42.160 flows that i have to be i have to shut out every kind of you know i i'm so easily distracted that

00:07:49.000 i have to go to my peak low distractibility period in order to get any writing done so you talk about

00:07:54.340 in the book these are the typical cycle is this peak trough recovery it starts in the morning goes

00:08:00.620 what do you do if like you're a night owl is there such a thing as night owl people say i'm a night owl

00:08:05.560 but is that really a thing totally it's a thing it's a it's actually it's an important thing what a

00:08:10.620 night owl is is what there's a whole field of research called chronobiology chrono meaning clock

00:08:16.780 biology meaning study of life and that is devoted to studying our daily mostly daily biological rhythms

00:08:24.700 and each of us has what's known as a chronotype that is our proclivity on how you know do we wake

00:08:32.720 early or have a lot of energy early and then fade as the day goes on or do we wake later in the day

00:08:39.380 and need a lot more time to ramp up and actually hit our peak in the evening and it's pretty

00:08:45.080 interesting area what it shows is that there's some big big differences based on age big differences

00:08:49.760 based on age that people between say 14 and 24 are generally very very owly it has to do with

00:08:59.240 largely with hormones that there's a period and it's often in a teenager's life that sometimes drives

00:09:04.740 parents nuts where their teen is suddenly sleeping really late and staying up really late that's not

00:09:10.020 a sign of they're being lazy people it's a sign that their biology is changing in a marked way

00:09:16.400 so people between 14 and 24 are quite owly but um there are a decent number of people you know let's

00:09:24.100 call it one-fifth of the population or so that regardless of their age are actually um have evening

00:09:29.820 chronotypes and they wake later and go to sleep later and for those kinds of people the the general

00:09:36.200 pattern is the opposite so they want to do their recovery first thing in the morning they want to

00:09:41.460 you know do the trough at the same time the trough is for everybody else but they hit their peak for

00:09:46.220 analytic work for work that requires focus diligence uh later in the day and i think one of the challenges

00:09:52.220 is that you know the truth is the distribution is is that some of us are larks really morning types some

00:09:58.520 of us are our owls really evening types the majority the vast majority of people are somewhere in

00:10:02.860 between but most of the workplace is designed for people who are larks or in between and it really

00:10:09.640 disadvantages the one out of five of us who are night owls so what do you do if you're night owl

00:10:13.860 and you work at a job that has the you know the lark schedule can you adjust is it possible to adjust

00:10:18.580 your schedule do you go to your boss and say look hey i have a chronotype that will allow me that'll

00:10:22.860 allow me to perform better and this will help the bottom line is that the pitch i think that's

00:10:26.980 actually a good pitch and i think that enlightened bosses will respect that there's some there's

00:10:31.740 some research done there's a very famous chronobiologist named or as famous as a

00:10:36.140 chronobiologist can be named till ronenberg who has done some work with companies in germany

00:10:40.580 to help them adjust their schedules so that it fits people's chronotypes and geez not surprisingly they

00:10:47.260 have fewer accidents greater job satisfaction higher productivity so i think that's one way to do i think

00:10:54.220 that's one way to do it and you have to pitch it in terms of what's in it for the boss what's in it

00:10:59.220 for the company to have this different kind of schedule on the other hand you know we have to be

00:11:05.240 realistic that a lot of people can't simply dictate what their schedule is going to be and so

00:11:10.480 there there's some opportunity to work the margin so let's take let's take night and let's take a

00:11:16.400 night owl who has to go to a an 8 30 a.m meeting now that's miserable for some of these people

00:11:22.120 understandably i have a lot of empathy for that and yet there's a meeting at 8 30 and they still

00:11:27.100 have to do their job and perform what can they do well there are a few things number one is that

00:11:32.560 the night before while they're in their peak they should maybe make a list of what they want to

00:11:37.720 accomplish at the meeting what they need for that meeting and so put basically a checklist so they

00:11:43.120 don't space out in the fog of the morning the other thing that we can do is there are ways to

00:11:50.180 increase our focus and boost our mood and a lot of those happen through various kinds of breaks so

00:11:55.840 what i would advise a night owl who's going to an 8 30 meeting is to before you go into the meeting

00:12:01.640 you've got your checklist take a walk outside beforehand there's a lot of good evidence that

00:12:06.860 movement and and nature can be very restorative another thing that actually is fairly restorative is

00:12:13.300 doing a good deed for somebody so maybe on your way into that meeting if you stop at the local

00:12:19.660 coffee place you know buy a cup of coffee for the person behind you and you know doing good boosts

00:12:24.600 our mood a little bit so there are some things we can do to night owls can do to you know work the

00:12:29.320 margins of it but i actually prefer that they do exactly what you suggested which is go to their boss

00:12:34.200 explain what's going on and put it in terms of the company's interest yeah and you've also seen

00:12:38.700 a movement with schools knowing you know recognizing that teenagers are tend to be night owls

00:12:43.840 and they're you know adjusting the school day starting later and ending later absolutely and

00:12:48.900 and that's a huge issue and if you look at the effects of of i mean starting school for at 7 15 a.m

00:12:58.300 for teenagers is such an unbelievably bad idea it goes against everything we know about science

00:13:05.000 and indeed everything we know about chronobiology at least in fact you have the american academy of

00:13:10.220 pediatricians has issued a policy statement saying please school districts of america do not start

00:13:17.140 school for teenagers before 8 30 in the morning and yet the average school start time in america is

00:13:23.760 8 03 which again goes to your earlier point about hey we're just not taking these when issues seriously

00:13:29.200 enough and then the schools that have adjusted like they've seen an increase in test scores and things

00:13:33.740 like that i mean just making that adjustment that that can do a lot because there's all these schools

00:13:38.000 are like you know they're they're strapped for cash they think we got to hire more teachers like just

00:13:41.560 start your day later and that can do a lot it does a huge amount i mean it's such a great i mean

00:13:46.380 first of all what what it shows is that you that that started the school later for teenagers we're not

00:13:51.180 talking about for little kids but for teenagers starting the school later for teenagers the school

00:13:56.700 districts that have done it have seen incredible results higher test scores lower dropout rates some

00:14:02.840 really interesting evidence about a reduction in teenage auto accidents which is which is really

00:14:08.640 important reduced uh depression i mean uh reduced obesity it's really quite extraordinary and to your

00:14:15.840 point though there is there's a study out of out of wake forest that showed that or it's not out of

00:14:22.340 wake forest but out of the wake county north carolina school district that showed that this is actually

00:14:26.860 a very cost-effective remedy that other things that that school districts do to try to reduce the dropout

00:14:32.760 rate or improve test scores you know end up being more costly and simply start school at nine you know

00:14:39.400 don't start school for teenagers at 7 24 a.m all right so our bodies have this daily clock this peak

00:14:45.520 trough recovery throughout the day does it have a similar rhythm throughout the week uh yes and no

00:14:52.320 what you see is that when when people on weekends typically people who work during the weekend have

00:14:58.420 the weekends off people who work during the week and have the weekends off they end up essentially

00:15:03.980 rising uh falling asleep and awakening true to their chronotype because they don't have to get up to an

00:15:08.680 alarm clock so so so figuring out what time you wake up and what time you go to sleep on weekends which

00:15:14.120 are which are typically for people what are called free days um is a good way to figure out your

00:15:18.760 your chronotype there's some other evidence to show though in in terms of behavior change

00:15:23.600 that we're more likely to engage in behavior change say i'm going to finally go to the gym i'm going

00:15:30.740 to start a new diet i'm going to buckle down at work we're more likely to pursue that and succeed at

00:15:36.100 it if we do that say on a monday rather than a thursday it's something called the fresh start effect

00:15:40.400 so and it goes beyond the week it goes to we're more likely to succeed if we do it on the first of the

00:15:45.700 month rather than the 14th of a month if we do it on the day after a holiday rather than the day

00:15:51.080 before a holiday so but again a week is a made-up thing a week is not a natural phenomenon just

00:15:57.140 something that human beings came up with to try to corral time gotcha and but how about seasons

00:16:02.580 right that's not a made-up thing right the we go through different seasons oh no not at all that's

00:16:07.680 for real because that's for real because because we're we're we got we're on this little ball moving

00:16:11.980 around the sun right so i mean do the seasons affect our you know our performance like do we

00:16:16.080 behave in a different way during the winter than we say during the summer that's a yeah it's a really

00:16:21.660 interesting question and some of the evidence on that is mixed i was a little bit skittish about

00:16:26.300 pulling the trigger because i wasn't sure about some of those things one of the things that's really

00:16:30.340 interesting though is that whether you're a night owl or a lark correlates to the season in which

00:16:37.880 you're born if you can believe that so the season in which you're born seems to have a

00:16:43.560 uh seems to have an effect on what your eventual adult chronotype is going to be which is kind of

00:16:53.520 peculiar that is weird okay so we got this this rhythm throughout the day and there's things we

00:16:57.800 can do to leverage that or work in the margins of that you'd mentioned this fresh start stuff and

00:17:03.240 you talk about this in the book a section about you call them temporal landmarks yeah monday is a

00:17:08.580 temporal landmark holidays can be temporal lot and landmarks tell us a little bit more about this idea

00:17:12.980 of temporal landmarks and how we can use those to boost our performance yeah so that's not temporal

00:17:18.820 landmarks isn't isn't my term it's a term that from some of the mostly social psychologists who have

00:17:23.720 studied some of these issues and what it is is this it's really important i think it's a really

00:17:27.900 important concept that is there's certain dates and here we're talking about days of the year

00:17:33.920 there's certain days of the year that operate as landmarks in the same way that certain settings

00:17:41.860 certain buildings or certain parks or whatever operate as physical landmarks and that is that let's

00:17:50.100 say you're trying you know you're trying to drive to my house and i say look for there's a certain i live

00:17:55.680 in washington dc and there's a restaurant near my house that everybody seems to know about called

00:18:00.600 cactus cantina okay that's like the landmark to say hey you're close to my house and so what will

00:18:05.960 happen is people will drive to my house they probably if i were to ask them what what did you pass by they

00:18:10.940 have probably have no idea what they passed by but as soon as they see cactus cantina like oh oh i know

00:18:15.640 you know so it's a landmark that gets us to do two things number one slow down and pay attention

00:18:20.700 number two it has this really peculiar effect on the way we account for time in our heads that is

00:18:28.680 we have a form of of temporal accounting too so on certain dates we feel like we're opening a fresh

00:18:36.900 ledger in the same way a business would open a fresh ledger at the beginning of a fiscal year or at the

00:18:43.340 beginning of a new quarter we say oh you know what i was a lazy i was a lazy slob during the month of

00:18:51.980 march but on the first day of april i'm opening a fresh ledger and making a fresh start so and those

00:18:59.140 end up being like the dates that i talked about so mondays are fresh start dates the day after your

00:19:04.820 birthday is a good fresh start date the day after a federal holiday the first day of a semester

00:19:10.060 the first day back from vacation that there are a bunch of dates that have this that operate like

00:19:16.300 that those physical landmarks again they get us to slow down pay attention and open up a fresh ledger

00:19:23.080 right and right now it's yesterday was new year's day for for us and uh that's a great landmark day

00:19:29.260 that people take advantage of that is the king of fresh start day uh and it's one reason why we have

00:19:35.360 you know it's one reason it's the it's the thinking behind new year's resolutions okay

00:19:39.520 i was a complete slob during 2017 but in 2018 i'm gonna be you know i'm gonna have a vegan diet

00:19:47.800 and go to the gym three times a day yeah so besides uh these temporal landmarks and this rhythm throughout

00:19:54.380 the day that we have you also discuss the research behind how when we start things can have a huge

00:20:02.640 impact on the outcome whether it's success or failure so give us some examples of when starting

00:20:08.640 things can determine the outcome of something yeah and and this is one of those areas of timing that

00:20:13.500 is often beyond our control and it's it's pretty alarming so we talked a little bit about school

00:20:18.380 start times and and how much that has an effect on literally whether a kid is going to graduate from

00:20:23.900 high school or not and and obviously the difference in life outcomes between a high school graduate and

00:20:28.560 someone who's not a high school graduate is vast but one of the most alarming pieces of research that i

00:20:33.540 uncovered was from uh yale university and what it showed is this imagine you take two people okay

00:20:39.720 let's take well use you and me okay brett and dan we're gonna say you and i graduated from college

00:20:44.500 let's say we graduated from the same college but the only difference is that you graduated in a

00:20:50.800 recession you graduated in a boom time and i graduated in a recession okay so maybe we're five

00:20:55.920 years apart but the circumstances into which we launched our career were different again through

00:21:02.260 no fault of my own of our own you graduated in a boom time i graduated in a recession well this

00:21:08.220 research from yale shows that that now not surprisingly you're probably going to earn more your first year

00:21:14.240 because the economy is stronger i don't think that's a shocker to anybody i think what's a shocker is that

00:21:19.660 that difference shows up in people's wages 20 years later so you graduate from college and you're 22

00:21:30.040 when you're in your early 40s you might still be out earning me only because you graduated you began

00:21:38.700 your career at a better and more suspicious moment that's just one of the dramatic ways that beginnings

00:21:43.320 can can affect us that beginnings can often matter to the end and it's one of those situations where

00:21:49.080 it's not like hey i can you know the other situation you mentioned where it's all go to my

00:21:53.620 boss and explain that i'm a night owl it's like what do you do in that kind of circumstance that's a

00:21:57.660 case where we need to reckon with the basically the unfairness of people starting at different points

00:22:03.920 so and what what can are there any ideas of interventions you can do for that let's say you

00:22:08.500 graduated in 2008 2009 i graduated i graduated from law school in 09 and that's when there was just this

00:22:15.540 bloodbath in the legal field there's firms just laying things off it was like my can the uh the

00:22:19.860 dean when she gave the uh commencement speech it was like so depressing which is like we know it's a

00:22:24.440 tough time to graduate and even my parents they're like that was the most depressing commencement speech

00:22:28.680 i ever heard in my entire life wow but i mean what do you what do you do uh are there any ideas of how

00:22:34.520 we can counter that um i think what you have to do is you have to make it you have to make that kind of

00:22:39.220 situation not your problem but but essentially everybody's problem and there's actually some

00:22:43.540 interesting research from mba programs about that so so so somebody who graduates somebody who gets

00:22:48.840 an mba in a down year versus an up year first of all someone who gets an mba in an up year is going

00:22:54.180 to likely to out earn over the course of his or her lifetime someone who graduates in a down year

00:22:58.660 what's also interesting is that the people who graduate in a in a down year those people are they do

00:23:06.260 become ceos from once they graduate once they get their mba eventually after they get their mba degree but

00:23:11.440 they become ceos of smaller firms i mean so it's pure happenstance so what do you do in that

00:23:15.560 situation to get to your question you know i i think that it requires a a more of a kind of a group

00:23:21.160 solution so let's let's take this at some level let's take 2008 as an example at some level that is

00:23:27.120 akin to a natural disaster to me and so when there's an earthquake or something like that we don't say

00:23:34.240 oh sorry bad luck earthquake nothing you can do about that we say hey wait a second that's unfair

00:23:39.480 they had an earthquake no one else had an earthquake we're going to provide some loans

00:23:43.200 we're going to provide some kind of assistance so what i think is an idea in that case is that if

00:23:47.040 the unemployment rate goes above a certain level national unemployment rate or local unemployment

00:23:52.000 is above a certain level in college graduation or or business school graduation or law school

00:23:56.500 graduation or whatever then i think it should trigger perhaps some emergency funds or some

00:24:01.400 loan payback programs so that people who through no fault of their own they've done everything right

00:24:07.380 they've gone to school they've gotten good grades and just through circumstance have started their

00:24:11.160 career in a in a downturn they shouldn't be necessarily disadvantaged on that it hurts all of

00:24:16.160 us when those people suffer and you see a little bit i'll give you an example of this you see this a

00:24:19.780 little bit in medicine where you had um for a long time in medicine you had what was called the

00:24:24.420 july effect the july effect is when new residents started in teaching hospitals so they they leave

00:24:32.300 medical school in june and they start their residency in july and they're taking care of patients these

00:24:38.140 are people who are a month out of medical school and lo and behold there were a lot of problems with

00:24:43.900 that like people dying and getting sick because they're treated by people who are just at the

00:24:48.880 beginning of their career as a physician and so what the what the met teaching hospitals did is say okay

00:24:54.880 wait a second we can't just say oh that's just bad luck for those patients who are dying what they did is

00:24:59.760 they say let's start together let's make this more of a collective solution so instead of having

00:25:04.480 the doctors treat the patients individually they became part of teams they had greater monitoring and so

00:25:11.380 i think that when people have through no fault of their own a bad beginning we as a society as a matter of

00:25:17.580 fairness have to take collective action but the other thing is it's good for all of us like you know it's good

00:25:24.060 for me if you're not if you're earning a decent living but what we don't do is we don't recognize

00:25:29.740 how much these starts matter significantly to outcomes even two decades later right okay so if

00:25:35.880 it's a if it's a bad start because of no fault of your own because there's bad timing group solution

00:25:41.020 but if it's a bad start based on you know you just you didn't do well that's that's when you leverage

00:25:46.700 things like temporal landmarks and say i'm gonna get a fresh start okay gotcha okay precisely perfect

00:25:51.980 let's talk about the midpoint right i think you know it's too it's the new year everyone sets

00:25:57.540 goals the new year they're always really excited you have that dopamine hitting your brain it feels

00:26:02.800 good this is the this is the year everything changes and then about i mean i mean even like in

00:26:08.320 the middle of january the motivation fizzles what what's what's going on there whenever we reach a

00:26:13.740 midpoint with a goal or some task where that drive just seems like it just goes away yeah that's a

00:26:20.540 it's another great question and it's it's very characteristic of midpoints what happens when

00:26:24.560 we hit the mid midpoints are weird in that two very different things can happen when we reach a

00:26:30.200 midpoint sometimes they bring us down other times they fire us up so if you look at middle age there's

00:26:38.080 this whole you know notion of a midlife crisis which turns out not to be true at all but there is this

00:26:42.960 kind of midlife sag where people are generally happy in their 20s and 30s they start to dip a little

00:26:49.220 bit in their 40s by the early 50s they're at the bottom and then in their late 50s 60s 70s 80s they

00:26:54.940 start rising back up again and they're actually surprisingly they're surprisingly happy you see

00:27:00.160 it sometimes in terms of people's compliance with certain kinds of tasks that they're very compliant

00:27:05.160 at the beginning and at the end but they fade in the middle on the other hand there's also some

00:27:09.940 really good evidence about uh in teams where if you look at group projects we have this notion

00:27:15.920 that when people engage in a group project they start and they follow this linear progress

00:27:21.520 from the beginning to the end and what connie gersick who was at ucla and now as at yale has

00:27:27.520 found is that that's not how it is at all basically what happens is that during the first half of a

00:27:31.900 first part of a project people don't do anything they posture they waste time and it's really only at

00:27:38.720 the exact midpoint that they look up and say oh my god we've squandered half of our time we have to

00:27:43.760 get going and so um so the midpoint has these two different effects so what can you do about it i

00:27:50.220 think there are a couple of things number one is that you have to recognize that there are midpoints

00:27:54.180 something that was completely a mystery to me until i started doing this research i never even thought

00:27:58.620 about midpoints the second thing is that you do have a choice about when you hit a midpoint you can

00:28:03.640 say oh no or you can say uh-oh and you're better off saying uh-oh and one of the good ways to say uh-oh

00:28:09.300 is to imagine that at the midpoint you're a little bit behind there's some really interesting evidence

00:28:15.440 from the nba big data analysis of i think 20 000 or so nba games that showed that at halftime a team

00:28:24.620 that is ahead at halftime is more likely to win the game which makes sense because they have more

00:28:28.880 points i mean it's not you know complicated math but there's the exception is is that teams that are

00:28:34.380 down by one point at halftime are actually more likely to win the teams that are up by one point

00:28:40.740 there's something about being a little bit behind that is galvanizing so recognize midpoints use them

00:28:46.980 to wake up rather than roll over and then imagine you're a little bit behind and that's that's a way

00:28:51.820 to use a midpoint as a spark rather than let it bring you down i think that's what happened last

00:28:56.440 night with the rose bowl with the uh the soon my sooners in the in georgia they were georgia was like

00:29:02.160 behind or they tied it at halftime and then they just came out just decimated well you know what's

00:29:07.420 interesting is it's funny you said that because i i watched that game and i was thinking about that

00:29:11.200 and i was and they had an interview with the the freshman quarterback at georgia after the game

00:29:16.960 who was talking about what was going on at halftime and how they were behind and he kept saying well

00:29:22.340 we're a fourth quarter team we're a fourth quarter team so it is it is pretty interesting and again

00:29:28.440 with sports what we have is we have these very clearly delineated midpoints halftime or at least

00:29:35.560 in like basketball football and things like that but in other kinds of projects we often don't but

00:29:40.580 if we have a beginning and we have a deadline there is obviously a midpoint and what connie gersick found

00:29:46.760 weirdly and looking at a lot of these team projects is that you give a team 34 days to do something

00:29:52.120 they don't really get started until day 17 you give a team 11 days to do something they don't get

00:29:57.000 started until day six so the more we think about are conscious of midpoints the more we can use them

00:30:02.740 um do a little bit better than the sooners did in the rose bowl right right so i mean students can

00:30:07.800 take advantage of this um you know you might have a deadline for a paper that's you know months away

00:30:12.440 but like create your own artificial deadline that will create an artificial midpoint for you to have

00:30:16.800 that uh-oh moment to get started so you don't have to worry about turning your paper the last minute

00:30:22.080 great idea i like that all right so we talked about midpoints what about endings so we talked

00:30:27.800 about the beginning talked about midpoints how do endings influence you know the outcome of an event

00:30:33.140 yeah well endings have a huge effect on our behavior and i think in a pretty interesting way so there

00:30:38.300 are multiple things that endings do one of the things that they do is they they can galvanize us to

00:30:43.880 kick a little harder so there's some fascinating research from adam alter at nyu hal hershfield at ucla

00:30:50.580 about the age at which people are likely to run their first marathon and it turns out that the

00:30:56.720 most common age at which people are likely to run a first marathon is age 29 which is kind of a weird

00:31:03.080 age right 29 where did that come from and then you start unpacking it and you realize well wait a second

00:31:08.300 people who are 29 are twice as likely to run a marathon first marathon as people who are 28 and people

00:31:13.840 who are 30 okay that's kind of weird it's like there's not much of a physiological difference between

00:31:18.500 29 year olds and 28 year olds between 29 year olds and 30 year olds what's going on then you realize

00:31:23.300 hey people are likely to run marathons at age 39 age 49 age 59 and so this this artificial marker of a

00:31:30.520 decade when we get to the end of it getting to the end of something can can focus our attention it can

00:31:37.040 increase our motivation and it can also spark a pretty interesting search for meaning so one thing

00:31:44.680 endings do is they get us to kick a little harder get us to um pursue meaning more robustly gotcha and

00:31:52.920 you also talk about we typically remember things on by how they ended and the famous colonoscopy

00:31:59.080 oh yeah example talk about that one the famous colonoscopy because because i love talking about

00:32:04.980 colonoscopies in fact yeah yeah who doesn't yeah yeah actually there's some there's some interesting

00:32:09.320 research if you really want to go deep in colonoscopies no pun intended there's some interesting

00:32:13.640 research on um for those of your your your listeners who are 50 and older do not get a colonoscopy in the

00:32:19.660 afternoon afternoon colonoscopies find half as many polyps as morning colonoscopies i mean it's

00:32:25.800 terrifying so but anyway but but there is a there is as you said a famous piece of research in social

00:32:30.800 psychology from daniel kahneman barbara frederickson on colonoscopies that we found that a colonoscopy that

00:32:37.380 was that lasted a long time was seen as less uncomfortable than a colonoscopy that lasted a short

00:32:43.280 amount of time but that had a painful end and they and that phenomenon in behavioral economics is

00:32:50.020 known as duration neglect that is we don't focus so much on the duration of an event but often focus

00:32:56.360 on how it ends there's some other interesting evidence of that i mean really cool interesting 0.98

00:33:01.400 stuff about you know how we look at people the lives that somebody led so somebody who was a jerk 0.63

00:33:08.220 for most of their life but suddenly became a good guy his final year and then died is often remembered 0.92

00:33:14.700 as well as someone who was a good guy most of his life but became a jerk in his last year that is that

00:33:21.260 ending has this disproportionate effect on how we how we remember things you see it anecdotally in 0.93

00:33:26.460 something like yelp reviews i mean it's just uh you know you want to kill 15 minutes go on yelp look at

00:33:33.240 restaurant reviews and you'll see a disproportionate number of them evaluate the restaurant by what 0.98

00:33:38.800 happened at the end of the meal they gave me a check and it was wrong and they were jerks about 0.96

00:33:43.120 it they gave me a free dessert woohoo you know oh i left my keys and they ran after me in the parking 0.87

00:33:48.440 lot to retrieve my keys i love this place so um so it's i think it's really important in our personal

00:33:54.320 encounters and in our professional encounters uh that we're conscious of endings and and and try to get

00:34:00.840 endings to end on a positive i mean not only on a positive note but in a way that that elevates

00:34:06.000 uh human beings prefer endings that elevate we prefer rising sequences to declining sequences

00:34:11.140 and being conscious and intentional about that can improve our interactions gotcha so we've been

00:34:16.200 talking a lot about uh timing on the individual level a little bit of group level but let's talk

00:34:20.980 more about uh you know timing of a group because that seems i don't know like you said we talked

00:34:26.000 about earlier people think about the how of group dynamics the what of group dynamics but we never

00:34:30.120 think about the win everyone's got their own timing or their perception of of how the timing of of an

00:34:36.600 activity or a task they're trying to accomplish as a group how uh how can we how do we sync each other

00:34:41.500 up whenever we're working on a task together yeah there are certain um there are certain kinds of

00:34:47.840 endeavors where we want to be synchronized with other people and i looked at that by looking at

00:34:53.740 uh some lunch deliverers in mumbai india by looking at choirs by looking at rowing teams

00:35:00.440 and and there are some rules to how groups synchronize one of them is is that groups synchronize better when

00:35:06.700 they have a very clear boss so if you look at something like choirs choirs have a you know a chorus

00:35:15.120 master who stands in the front who is the clearly the person who everybody looks to and is in charge

00:35:23.600 and that seems to have a foster greater synchronization if you look at rowing rowing teams have a coxswain

00:35:30.100 the person that person's not even holding an oar but he or she is an essential part of that team

00:35:35.100 because that person is in charge of synchronization so having a boss uh people end up synchronizing

00:35:41.440 better when they have a sense of belonging when they feel uh which is one reason why very effectively

00:35:47.180 synced teams groups have sometimes sort of secret language gestures uh there's some interesting

00:35:54.240 research on touch that one piece of research shows that if you simply watch nba that they simply watch

00:36:01.900 nba games at the beginning of the season looked at how many how often players were touching each other

00:36:08.620 high fives low fives chest bumps whatever that that ended up being a fairly strong predictor of

00:36:13.680 whether the team was going to succeed because those groups seem to be synced up and also um you know

00:36:18.640 having a sense of purpose and mission helps synchronization too so some really interesting

00:36:23.200 things about and i think that for me the interesting part about the synchronization research is how much

00:36:30.300 synchronizing with others makes us feel good and do good there is something about being in sync with

00:36:36.880 others that is different uh that is that brings us to a higher level of satisfaction that is

00:36:44.840 somehow innately human i love it yeah you talk i love the example you talk about and i'll let people

00:36:50.680 buy the book so they can read this but the navy seals and why they carry logs and the power of log

00:36:56.720 carrying did you have that there was that another that's a difference that's that but it's the same

00:37:00.020 principle it's the exact same it's the exact same principle i i did something a little bit more tender

00:37:03.900 when talking about talk about about choirs uh if you look at like everybody knows physical exercises

00:37:09.140 incredibly good for you for your body for your soul for your heart whatever like you're crazy if you

00:37:14.100 don't exercise choral singing if you look at the research on choral singing not just singing but

00:37:21.300 singing in groups singing in groups is pretty much as good for you as physical exercise that's

00:37:26.340 awesome so we should sing what's the next time you're at the baseball game and they're singing take me

00:37:29.820 out the ball game instead of rolling your eyes you should sing i always sing take me out to the

00:37:35.340 ball game it's sacrilegious it's sacrilegious not to exactly well daniel this has been a great

00:37:41.080 conversation there's a lot more we could talk about where can people go to learn more about the book

00:37:44.980 and uh your work well you can find the book uh it's called when the scientific secrets of perfect

00:37:49.240 timing at any bookstore online or offline i also have a website which is dan pink

00:37:53.820 d-a-n-p-i-n-k.com dan pink thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thanks for having

00:37:59.020 me i enjoyed it my guest today was daniel pink he is the author of the book when the scientific

00:38:03.300 secrets of perfect timing it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere also check

00:38:07.640 out his site danpink.com where you can find more information about the rest of his work also check

00:38:12.220 out our show notes at aom.is slash when where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper

00:38:17.020 into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips

00:38:26.840 and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you

00:38:30.440 enjoy the podcast i've gotten something out of it i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us

00:38:33.940 review on itunes or stitcher helps out a lot and if you've done that already thank you please share

00:38:37.720 the show with your friends and family word of mouth is how this show grows in the more the merrier

00:38:41.680 around here as always thank you for your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay

00:38:45.700 telling you to stay manly

00:38:47.180 you

The Art of Manliness - January 09, 2018

#369： When — The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

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