Know Your Chronotype. It'll Change Your Life.

science shows there's not just one time a day where you're dramatically more productive that's a myth in reality everyone has an individual hardcoded Peak Performance window a set of hours within every day where your productivity and performance blow through the roof and if you can discover this and work within it your performance will Skyrocket now I'm ran darus co-founder and CEO of the flow research Collective and along with my partner Stephen Cutler we've taught thousands of professionals how to access Flow State at will now tell me if this sounds like you your first caffeinated hour or two of work is sharp you feel clear you feel creative you can think without constraint but as the hours go by your brain starts to lag fatigue sets in and you notice your mind isn't thinking as clearly and you're more susceptible to distractions checking your phone feels increasingly irresistible hour by hour your day devolves to the point that you're fraction as productive as you were when you first started work now it's easy to chalk this up to a lack of discipline or failing work ethic but in reality what you're struggling with here is not a character flaw it's a biological timing issue because our cognitive abilities don't stay static throughout the day we are smarter quicker dimmer slower and more or less creative at different times which means that certain tasks are best performed at certain times now what's driving these shifts in performance well herein enters chronobiology so imagine for a moment being lowered into a cave and submerged in darkness in the silence your only companion is the steady drip of water forming a stalagmite nearby now imagine living like this for 7 months well in the 1960s someone actually did observed by NASA scientists French geologist Michael cifra lived underground for 205 days similar experiments were run by the max plank Institute for Behavioral psychology and these experiments led to a startling finding with or without light or a sense of time our bodies keep a consistent Rhythm building on this discovery Drtill ronberg of Ludwig maximilan University embarked on a huge research project for over 10 years he tracked the Sleep patterns of 50,000 people when they went to bed when they woke up and how long they slept in analyzing this mountain of data ronberg discovered that just as each person has a unique fingerprint every individual has a unique chronotype now a chronotype is a biologically ingrained predisposition position that determines the fluctuations in your alertness your energy and accordingly your productivity within a given 24-hour period these chronotypes are determined by circadian rhythms the internal clocks regulating our sleep wake Cycles which are shaped by a blend of genetics lifestyle habits and environmental cues and your chronotype is the outward behavioral manifestation of your internal circadian rhythm three distinct chronotypes emerged from ronberg research ranging from morningness eveningness and something in between and his findings here have strongly challenged the conventional one size fits all approach to work schedules and to productivity but this was only half of what ronberg discovered by testing the cognitive skills memory reaction times and attention spans at all hours across a 24-hour span ronberg pinpointed the exact Windows where test subjects were prone to perform well or hit a wall of fatigue and perform port he had unwittingly discovered that within your chronotype lies your chronotype Zone a daily Peak Performance window that's coded into your biology your chronotype zone is the time within your physiology's 24-hour cycle where cognitive functions like memory recall attention span and reaction times are at their highest which makes our flow proness that is our likelihood of accessing Flow State that state of optimal Consciousness where we feel and function our best highest and this is a huge Advantage because flow does not work like a light switch either on or off it's part of a four-stage cycle that goes from struggle to release to flow and then recovery on the back end after the flow stage and this heightened energy and cognition that arises within our chronotype Zone enables us to shortcut the struggle phase plunging ourselves into flow faster and then sustaining the flow state for longer the trouble is most of us work outside of this window of peak cognition that we get from free from our biology within this chronotype Zone and we don't even realize it most organisms follow their innate chronotypes without resistance when tired the dog sleeps when fed the lion rests when night falls the owl hunts however humans possess big prefrontal cortices and high levels of self-consciousness as a result this comes with many blessings we can speak we can think we can use symbolic reasoning but also the curse of being able to defy our chronotype we can willfully delay sleep even when our body screams for rest or force ourselves to work even when our brain can barely function and fighting against our biology like this flies in the face of Peak Performance instead by building on centuries of chronobiology research we can arrange our days around our biological Peaks and troughs to consistently access flow States and Peak Performance and it starts with identifying your chronotype in synthesizing the research of Drtill ronberg others author Dan pink codified three chronotypes Larks these are morning people owls night people and third Birds most people if you're a lark you're naturally inclined to wake up early around 6:00 a. m. if you're an owl you tend to stay up late and wake at around 10:00 a.

m. if you're not an extreme morning person or a night owl you're most likely what Dan pink calls a third bird you tend to wake up around 8:00 a. m.

this is most common as a chronotype now remember your chronotype and sleep preferences aren't something you choose they're largely dictated by your genetics so contrary to what you've probably heard owls your late nights don't mean you're lazy third Birds you're not a slow starter keep this in mind whenever you are made to feel guilty or pressured by others or your workplace or Society to wake or sleep or function in certain ways at certain times what matters is that you stick to your schedule based on your chronotype so here's how to find your chronotype and youron type Zone in 5 minutes or less now for a second I want you to imagine you're on a month-long holiday on some beautiful island in Thailand where there are zero obligations no caffeine no work arrangements or recall a time when you've experienced something like this maybe on a sabatical the key is that during this time you're fully attuned to your natural Rhythm sleeping and waking exactly when your body feels like it now with this visual in mind just answer the following question when you control your schedule and you don't have obligations what time do you naturally end up going to bed and what time do you naturally end up waking up then determine the midpoint between these two times for example if you go to sleep at 1:00 a. m. and you get up at 9:00 a.

m. with 8 hours of sleep the midpoint is 5 a. m.

once you identify your midpoint you'll have a rough sketch of your chronotype and you can see on screen here where your chronotype lands you based on your midpoint if your midpoint is 3:30 a. m. or earlier you're likely AR approximately 10% of people fall into this category if your midpoint is 5:30 a.

m. or later you're likely an owl around 25% of people if your midpoint is somewhere in between you're likely a third bird about 50 to 55% of people now once you know your chronotype Lark owl or third bird you can then determine your chronotype Zone which is when your energy levels and cognitive abilities are at their Peak for Larks the chronotype zone is typically in the early morning around 5 or even 4 a. m.

until about 8: or 9:00 a. m. a.

m. for owls the chronotype zone is usually in the late afternoon or evening around 400 p. m.

to 9:00 p. m. and for third Birds it tends to be 800 to 11:00 a.

m. roughly now here's why this is so important first trying to tackle certain tasks at the wrong time of day for your chronotype is like sprinting upstairs instead of taking the elevator you can still get where you want to go but compare to the elevator progress is painfully and unnecessarily slow and this period of the day outside your Chron type Zone it's got a name it's called the trough it's the point at which your cognitive resources are at their lowest and here's the tragedy most leaders most knowledge workers likely yourself included here spend most of your effort in the trough which is a huge waste working during the trough feels like slogging through mud tasks are hard effort required is high and output ends up being mediocre it's not just inefficient it's often counterproductive mistakes creep in your future self is to clean up the mess a mess that wouldn't have happened had you worked within your chronotype Zone and harness the peak cognition your body gives you for free in that period now in contrast when you allocate Focus during your chronotype Zone you get the opposite feeling it's like gliding on air tasks are easy perceived exertion is low output skyrockets work is efficient and rewarding everything goes smoothly and your future yourself thanks you a result of working within your chronotype Zone this is because your body naturally produces Alpha and Theta brain waves which are commonly associated with flow States during the same time frame two key neurotransmitters Peak cortisol boosting energy and serotonin helping you simultaneously relax so by aligning your tasks with these brain waves and neurochemical Peaks you're more likely to get into flow now here's a helpful analogy to illustrate this imagine your chronotype Zone as that perfect time at the beach when the waves are just beautiful for surfing paddling out you find yourself riding one incredible irresistible wave after another merging with the rhythm of the ocean then inevitably the waves go flat you find yourself paddling aimlessly Against the Wind your arms burning looking for that elusive wave to ride that's the trough that period where no matter what you do productivity is elusive just out of grasp you might as well get out of the water in this case and shift your focus elsewhere until the waves your energy returns so now that you know your chronotype Zone the second key is determining which activities should be scheduled during the trough and which activities you should place and focus on within your chronotype Zone I figured this out a number of years ago when I accidentally discovered that the hours of the 24-hour day can be wildly unequal I was living in Spain in Barcelona with a bunch of entrepreneurs in this crazy apartment in P the Gracia if you've been to Barcelona you might know that street days began late around 10 a. m.

filled with work spurts and frequent siestas random meetups would punctuate the day followed by a stretch of work sometimes until 10: or 11: p. m. food breaks often led to Quick naps only to be doted awake sometimes in the middle of the night around 1:00 a.

m. for another round of work or for a really late Spanish dinner and at times the Allure of Barcelona's nightlife would pull us into a club at 4:00 a. m.

only to crawl back to the apartment by Dawn and crash till late afternoon now despite the fun of living the Barcelona lifestyle I could feel that something was off my productivity and my cognition wasn't matching up to my potential what I knew it could be I wasn't progressing creating or thinking at nearly the level that I knew was possible and then I moved to LA thanks to the jet lag in moving over from Europe I started naturally waking up at 4:00 a. m. and I found that this time zone difference unexpectedly gave me productivity superpowers on a winw warning I jumped into work right after getting up instead of wasting time at about 410 a.

m. and I was shocked to get more done by 10:00 a. m.

than what I used to get done in an entire day in Barcelona and I realized that these early morning hours were my Peak productivity times my biological chronotype Zone I could concentrate intensely and annihilate tasks within those few hours and this explains why I felt something was so far off when I was living in Barcelona it was because a large chunk of my work hours nearly 90% sat outside my chronotype zone in the trough and I'd learned a hard lesson here when you work is even more important in many cases than how much you work who you're working with or even how hard you work and this is counterintuitive because we tend to over index on the variables of effort and time when it comes to work while under indexing on the variables of energy and timing a simple example is that we schedule meetings based on time availability instead of optimal energy availability after moving from Barcelona to La I began to consider the difference between these two questions rather than asking when do I have time to do this task which prioritizes the Cal calendar arbitrarily I would start to ask when do I have optimal cognitive resources to do this task which prioritizes your chronotype Zone and your biology and this brings us to a key concept that we call mastering energy Arbitrage now energy Arbitrage is about leveraging the peak biological resources available only during your chronotype Zone it means you never squander this high energy sharp minded period on tasks that don't significantly benefit from it for example in your chronotype Zone tasks like EXT exercise running errands or picking up kids won't benefit from your chronotype Zone cognition but high impact cognitively demanding work will like building a financial model writing a book chapter or coding for 3 hours the quality and creativity of your work on these tasks will be unmatched at any other time of day for example as a lark an evening workout would be just as effective as a morning workout give or take doesn't make a huge difference it's just exercise but an evening work session would be dramatically less effective a third bird could do a 10 out of 10 work session in the early to midm morning in their chronotype Zone but routines like yoga and having a sauna or whatever it is would be done more or less as effectively at any other time even in the trough likewise a night owl May struggle with detail oriented tasks in the morning but Blaze through these tasks easily in the evening so the Mantra here is don't squander optimal biology now once you master the fundamental idea of energy Arbitrage you need to know what to put in the trough versus your chronotype Zone put anything that doesn't benefit from or require Peak cognition in your trough which is about 8 hours after waking for Larks and third Birds instead of doing difficult cognitive work you can socialize work out or take a nap don't bother powering through with cognitively demanding work instead recharge for the final push at the end of the day and it's certain cases the trough actually counterintuitively can be useful for creative work that requires Divergent thinking if a task benefits from this kind of open-ended thinking like idea generation mind mapping or reviewing feedback then even if it's cognitively demanding you can experiment with doing it during the trough outside your chronotype zone now next up you want to extend your chronotype Zone when the going gets tough once you train yourself to stop squandering optimal biology you can learn to leverage optimal biology for example when you are facing big deadlines you're stacked with work that you're on the brink of overwhelm or burnout extend your chronotype Zone even if this means you have to get up earlier as a lar or stay up later as an owl this is worth it because in our experience and worked with thousands and thousands of clients on this one hour spent working during your chronotype zone is worth up to 4 hours spent working during the trough in terms of output what you actually accomplish so think about that for a second that means for every hour you work in the chronotype zone you would have had to work 4 hours in the trough to get the same thing done that's a 4:1 Roi on your productivity so to ward off burnout during times of stress it's non-negotiable to use every hour you have of your chronotype Zone and cram all of your most important work into it then what we want to do is we actually want to start to rework our lives around our chronotype Zone because once we get a taste of how well our body and Physiology works at its biological Prime you'll see why it's crucial to rework your daily routine to protect this sacred chronotype Zone at all costs this means not letting distractions or even important activities encroach on your chronotype zone for example let's say you're an owl and your kids need to be brought to school at 6:00 a. m. instead of sleeping through your chronotype Zone to wake up early have your partner handle the early morning routine in exchange for you handling household chores or hire an Annie if you have to whatever it is if you're a lark and your job requires you to finish work at 10: p.

m. so you have to wake up late sleeping through your chronotype Zone you may want to completely renegotiate with your boss or your team to make sure that you can finish at 5:00 p. m.

get to bed at 9:00 and wake up at 4:00 a. m. knowing that's when you're going to harness Peak cognition if you're a third bird and meetings are cutting into your chronotype Zone aim to get the meetings rescheduled to the afternoon you also may need to adjust your meal times to avoid a post lunch slump or to increase the hours in which you fast with these adjustments made here's a playby play of what an ideal day might look like for each chronotype as a lark personally I go to bed around 9:00 p.

m. and I wake up around 5:30 a. m.

to ride that early chronotype Zone wave doing my most challenging work then around 11:00 a. m. I'll hit an energy dip and I'll go and do a workout then another wave hits and I get back into work from 2: to 4:00 p.

m. I'll eat nap walk or do low priority tasks during the trough at 4:30 p. m.

my chronotype zone is now far behind me so I just wind up work and any of the remaining tasks I have to do given that I've been able to accomplish so much earlier during the Day In the chronotype Zone it's easy to stop earlier now if you're a third bird your chronotype zone is between 8:00 a. m. and 10:00 a.

m. so in this case you can dive into major work right away use 10:00 a. m.

to 12:00 p. m. for key meetings or work that demands sharp analytical thinking and once you hit the afternoon trough around 300 p.

m. transition to less cognitively demanding tasks replying to emails scheduling or brainstorming if you're an owl Embrace waking up at around 10:00 a. m.