How To Make the Most of Your Work Day (from Working It)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Coaching Real Leaders – "How To Make the Most of Your Work Day"

Episode Overview

In the August 12, 2024 episode of Coaching Real Leaders, host Muriel Wilkins delves into the intricacies of optimizing productivity throughout the workday. Drawing insights from the award-winning Financial Times podcast Working It, this episode features in-depth conversations with best-selling author Daniel Pink and Aaron Levy, CEO and co-founder of Box. The discussions center around understanding individual energy patterns, leveraging flexibility in work schedules, and fostering an environment where diverse chronotypes can thrive.

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Understanding Chronotypes with Daniel Pink

Chronotypes Explained

Daniel Pink begins by discussing the concept of chronotypes—the natural inclinations toward being a morning person (larks) or a night person (owls). He explains that while there is variability, most individuals experience a general pattern of high energy in the morning, a mid-day slump, and a recovery phase in the evening.

Daniel Pink [03:50]: "Most people seem to move through the Day in three stages. There's a peak typically early in the day. There's a trough typically in the middle of the day, and there's a recovery later in the day."

Larks vs. Owls

Pink elaborates on the distribution of chronotypes, stating that approximately 15% are strong larks, 20% are strong owls, and the remaining 65% fall somewhere in between, leaning towards being larks.

Daniel Pink [04:02]: "About 15% are very, very strong larks. About 20% are very, very strong owls. And most of us, about two-thirds, are in the middle, but we lean toward larkiness."

Impact of Remote Work

The conversation shifts to the impact of the pandemic and the rise of remote work, which Pink argues has been an "owl liberation movement." By allowing employees to have control over their work hours, organizations can better accommodate different chronotypes, enhancing productivity and job satisfaction.

Daniel Pink [04:55]: "Remote work can be an owl liberation movement... give people the freedom to do that."

Aligning Tasks with Energy Levels

Pink emphasizes the importance of aligning tasks with natural energy levels. High-focus analytical tasks should be scheduled during peak energy periods, while administrative or routine tasks are best relegated to energy troughs.

Daniel Pink [07:36]: "We should be doing our analytic work, heads down, focus work, during our peak and pushing administrative work to the trough period."

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Effective Strategies for Managing Energy Troughs

Optimizing Work During Low-Energy Periods

Pink suggests two main strategies to handle mid-day energy troughs:

1. Task Alignment: Assigning less demanding tasks, such as administrative work, to periods of low energy.
2. Taking Strategic Breaks: Encouraging regular, effective breaks to rejuvenate and maintain overall productivity.

Daniel Pink [07:36]: "Taking regular breaks... especially during that trough period is essential."

Principles of Effective Breaks

Pink outlines the key principles for taking effective breaks:

• Frequency Over Duration: Even short breaks (e.g., one minute) are beneficial.
• Movement: Physical activity is more restorative than remaining stationary.
• Social Interaction: Breaks with others are more refreshing than solitary ones.
• Full Detachment: Engaging in activities unrelated to work during breaks.

Daniel Pink [07:36]: "The best breaks are fully detached... a 15-minute afternoon walk break outside with someone you like, leaving your phone behind."

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Aaron Levy on Flexible Schedules at Box

Personal Chronotype as a Leader

Aaron Levy shares his personal experience as a night owl leading a multi-billion-dollar company. He outlines his daily routine, which extends late into the night, and how it aligns with his peak productivity hours.

Aaron Levy [13:46]: "When I'm at my best, it's usually the evening time... That takes me into about midnight, 1 am."

Balancing Flexibility and Team Productivity

Levy discusses the challenges of accommodating diverse chronotypes within a large organization. He stresses the importance of finding an equilibrium that maximizes productivity while ensuring employee satisfaction.

Aaron Levy [16:00]: "We're always sort of seeking what is that optimal equilibrium where you're getting the most amount of productivity with the most amount of employee satisfaction."

Managing Meetings Around Chronotypes

Aware of his team's varying energy levels, Levy strategically schedules meetings to align with individual productivity peaks. He acknowledges occasional deviations due to business demands but strives to respect personal rhythms.

Aaron Levy [17:34]: "There are absolutely some people where... we're doing a brainstorm at 12:30 am on Sunday. That's actually what he wants to do and that's what I want to do."

Origin Story Reflecting Flexible Work Habits

Levy recounts the early days of Box, where a 24/7 operational model was essential. This experience instilled a culture of flexibility that continues to influence the company's current work practices.

Aaron Levy [19:10]: "Our breaks were food breaks and somebody was always on call watching the site... we could all be up till 4 am working on something."

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Key Takeaways and Best Practices

1. Embrace Individual Chronotypes: Recognize that employees have different peak productivity times and allow flexibility in work schedules to accommodate these differences.

2. Align Tasks with Energy Levels: Schedule high-focus tasks during peak energy periods and reserve low-demand tasks for troughs.

3. Promote Effective Breaks: Encourage regular breaks that involve movement, social interaction, and complete detachment from work tasks to rejuvenate energy levels.

4. Model Flexible Behavior: Leaders should exemplify the importance of flexibility and breaks, fostering a culture that values employee well-being and productivity.

5. Measure by Results, Not Hours: Shift the focus from rigid work hours to the outcomes and results produced by employees, allowing them to configure their schedules optimally.

6. Continuous Balance: Strive to find an equilibrium between individual productivity and team collaboration needs, adjusting as the organization grows and evolves.

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Conclusion

This episode of Coaching Real Leaders underscores the significance of understanding and respecting individual work rhythms to enhance productivity and job satisfaction. By implementing flexible schedules, aligning tasks with energy levels, and promoting effective breaks, both leaders and employees can cultivate a more harmonious and efficient work environment.

Transcript

[Muriel Wilkins]

Hi everyone, it's Muriel. We're hard at work on our new season of Coaching Real Leaders and I'm excited to share that we'll begin dropping new episodes on October 7th. While we get these new episodes together, I have something special to share with you. It's an episode from an award winning podcast at the Financial Times that I think you'll like. It's called Working It. Every Wednesday, the FT's Isabelle Barrick speaks to experts on how to become a better manager and leader, helps people make sense of the trends shaping the world of work, and sources advice on how to improve productivity. There's one particular episode of Working it that I really love and I want to share it with you here. It's about why different people work better at different times of the day. We all experience peaks and troughs over the course of a working day and and knowing how to manage them can make us much more productive. In this episode, best selling author Daniel Pink explains why people work best at different times of the day and how we can harness those differences to do our best work. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Here it is.

[Daniel Pink]

I think the key is to give people greater sovereignty over the when of their work, measure people by the results, and allow them to configure their schedules in a way that works for them. Most people actually want to do a decent job and care about their work, so give them the freedom to do that.

[Isabelle Berwick]

Hello and welcome to Working it from the Financial Times. I'm Isabelle Berwick. If you're anything like me, your energy levels vary drastically throughout the day. I start strong, fuel myself with caffeine, then slump after lunch. Daily ups and downs are a fact of life, but that doesn't mean we can't work around them. In fact, learning how to manage changes in your energy levels could help you get more out of your day. So how can we use our natural rhythms to do better work? What should you do if you're a night owl in a company that favors early birds? And if you're managing people, how can you give them the flexibility to get the most out of their days? To find out, I spoke to Daniel Pink. Daniel's the author of several books, including the Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. I started by asking him whether most people's daily energy levels follow a similar pattern to mine.

[Daniel Pink]

In general, what we see there's some variation based on chronotypes, whether you go to sleep early and wake up early, or whether you go to sleep late and wake up late. But in general, people seem to move through the Day in three stages. There's a peak typically early in the day. There's a trough typically in the middle of the day, and there's a recovery later in the day. And that pattern seems to hold very strongly for mood. Performance is a little bit more complicated, but performance, particularly on heads down analytic tasks, seems to follow that pattern too. What we're trying to do here in general is we're trying to line up three things. We're trying to line up our type, our time and our task. Some tasks require heads down, analytic firepower and focus. Others require you to be slightly looser, things like iterating new ideas or brainstorming. And so what we want to try to do is line up those three things, our type, the time and our task.

[Isabelle Berwick]

Is there a kind of aggregate for humanity? Is there a. I mean, I think these types are sometimes called larks and owls. Are there, is there a sort of split down the middle, or are there more larks than owls? Or do we not know?

[Daniel Pink]

Some of us, about 15%, are very, very strong larks. Some of us, about 20%, are very, very strong owls. And most of us, about two thirds of us are in the middle, but we lean toward larkiness. And so what you have is you have about 80% of the population moving through the day in those three patterns. Peak early, trough in the middle, recovery later in the day. About 80% of us go that way. For owls, they hit their peak, that is their peak of vigilance, their peak of focus, their peak of analytic firepower. Much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much later in the day. Sometimes at 6pm or 7pm or 8pm or midnight, the times that people like me are dead asleep.

[Isabelle Berwick]

So do you think the pandemic and flexible work has helped the owls? Are they being more vocal and explicit about their late blooming?

[Daniel Pink]

I do think that one of the things we're discovering about remote work is the where of the work might be less important than giving people some control over the when of the work so that people can configure their schedules that are best for them, both for things like taking care of kids or doing household chores. But also it allows the owls to be themselves. If you're being measured mostly on results, not on whether you're physically present in an office. You can configure your schedule to get the work done when you're best at getting that work done. So I think that at some level, remote work can be an owl liberation movement.

[Isabelle Berwick]

So let's say you're in a workplace where your Chronotype doesn't match those of your colleagues. Should you fight it or can you lean into it somewhat?

[Daniel Pink]

Fighting your chronotype is generally not a good idea only because it's an attribute of your physiology. There's some ma, there's, there's a limited malleability to it, but to me, like fighting your chronotype is like fighting your height. What you should be doing is, especially if you're a night owl working in a larky environment, talk to your manager, talk to your boss and explain when you do your best work and offer to do some kind of pilot or some kind of experiment that gives you a little bit more control over that. If you're a manager and you have people who are night owls, do not make them go to an 8 o'clock in the morning meeting. Do not require them to show up at the same time that everybody else shows up. Give people challenging assignments a lot of support and measure them based on the results. Measure them on output rather than on input.

[Muriel Wilkins]

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[Isabelle Berwick]

So for most of us, we have to struggle through the troughs in our day. Or do you think we should just get up from, leave our desks entirely and take a break? What's the best way to go? Or eat a chocolate bar in my case?

[Daniel Pink]

So what can you do? I think there are a couple of things, the two main strategies for addressing that trough. One of them is putting the right work in the right time of day. The trough to me is the ideal time for administrative work. Work that doesn't require massive analytic ability, nor does it require massive creativity. Things like filling out your expense reports, answering routine email. If you can push those into the trough, period, you're going to be better off. And the trouble is is that we often do not do that. There are people, including me, who get seduced into answering routine email first thing in the morning because it gives us the slight dopamine hit of getting something done. That is an enormous mistake. So what we should be doing is we should be doing our analytic work, heads down, focus work, Crunching numbers, writing reports during our peak. And we should be pushing as much of our administrative work to that, that trough period. So that's one thing. The second thing that we can do is we should be taking more breaks and we should be taking certain kinds of breaks. There's some very good research on breaks and what it tells us at a top level is that brakes are not a sign of weakness. Brakes are not a deviation from our performance, brakes are not, are part of our performance. And so taking regular breaks, especially during that trough period is essential. And we know a lot about the principles of effective breaks. We know that something is better than nothing. So even a one minute break is better than simply powering through. We know that outside is better than inside. We know massively that moving is better than stationary. We know. This is kind of interesting, I thought we that breaks with other people are more restorative than breaks on your own, that social beats solo. And this is true even for introverts. And finally we know that the best breaks are fully detached. That is you're not taking a walk outside looking at your phone. And so what this suggests for white collar workers really around the world is a kind of platonic ideal of the perfect break, which is go out on a 15 minute walk break outside with someone you like, leaving your phone behind, talking about something other than work.

[Isabelle Berwick]

I think that's brilliant and actually quite easy to implement.

[Daniel Pink]

It is what I have found is that especially hard chargers might nod their head at that but never actually do it. And so what I've done for myself is to put it in my calendar. I want people to have their calendars pop up, a 15 minute afternoon walk break and then abide by it. And I think we'll see much greater happiness and much greater productivity in the workplace.

[Isabelle Berwick]

Have you come across any managers who actually do that, who sort of insist on breaks for their workers?

[Daniel Pink]

No, but I haven't, unfortunately. But I think your underlying analysis is spot on, that this is really about managers. To my mind, the best thing managers can do is model it. So what I think would be a victory for workers everywhere would be in some company somewhere, somebody in the afternoon going around looking for the CEO and not being able to find her because she was out on a 15 minute walk break. And the reaction to that is, oh man, I want to be just like Maria. She's such a badass. She takes a break every day.

[Isabelle Berwick]

I love that. So for just to wrap up for slightly more, I don't know, forward looking managers or companies, are there any sort of more slightly out there things they could do to help workers, you know, match work to their chronotypes.

[Daniel Pink]

I think the key is to give people greater sovereignty over the when of their work, measure people by the results and allow them to configure their schedules in a way that works for them both biologically their chronotype and also socially what their family situation is.

[Isabelle Berwick]

As so often in the world of work, there is a simple solution out there that people often ignore it.

[Daniel Pink]

I think that's right. Most people actually want to do a decent job and care about their work. So give them the freedom to do that.

[Isabelle Berwick]

Daniel, thank you so much. It's been absolutely illuminating.

[Daniel Pink]

It's a total pleasure. Thanks for having me on the show.

[Isabelle Berwick]

Dan's wisdom is dead simple. If people work best at a certain time, give them the freedom to work at that time. What people do, not, not when they do it, is what matters. The next guest on today's show shares that philosophy. Aaron Levy is the CEO and co founder of Box, a content management and file sharing company based in California. But unlike some Silicon Valley CEOs, Aaron is more likely to be dozing at 6am than meditating or going for an ice bath. He is what Daniel Pink would call a night owl. How does Aaron run a multi billion dollar company when he hates getting up early? Our producer Misha Frankel Duvall spoke to him to find out.

[Misha Frankel Duvall]

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[Aaron Levy]

Aaron Levy, welcome to Working It.

[Daniel Pink]

Thanks.

[Aaron Levy]

Yeah, good to be here.

Could you please start off by telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

[Daniel Pink]

Sure.

[Aaron Levy]

So I'm the CEO and co founder of Box and we're an enterprise software company that helps companies manage their most important data.

What do you do in your day to day? What does it look like both kind of from a personal perspective and a business perspective?

Yeah. So you know, most days are a little bit different so there's never, never exactly a typical week. But ideally if, if I can see the kids in the morning and then right out of the gate I'm just in basically meetings throughout the day with customers, building products, designing software. And then the sort of typical workday ends around 5 or 6ish. You know, if I'm in town, go home, you know, have dinner with the kids, put them down, try and spend a little bit of time with, with my wife and, and then it's sort of back to work again from 7:38pm onward. And that takes me into about kind of midnight, 1am and then sort of just rinse and repeat that.

So what time do you get started if you're working till 12?

1 on the work side probably don't totally kick off until about 9:30, 10:00am.

Fair to say you're not a 5:00am kind of guy then. I mean, is this something that marks you out or do people kind of leave you alone about it?

I think that there's an even divide probably in the, in the tech community. I have many friends who can get up at 5am and go on a run and probably before I've even woken up they've done, you know, about 35 more, more things than myself, you know, answered every email and gone on a, you know, 60 minute run. That is, that is not, not me. I not only wouldn't be able to do the run in the first place, but just for some reason my brain cannot turn on before like 9 or 10 in the morning. It's just like not possible. So at nighttime is when I really get kind of most of my energy. So you know, when I'm at my best, it's usually the evening time thinking about problems to solve, responding to issues in the business. So definitely I'm a bit more nocturnal in that sense.

I'd be really interested to know, you know, we're speaking about flex in schedules and how people work best at different times of the day. How has your view of that changed? As kind of a manager and as a leader, are you quite permissive of very flexible schedules? Where's the line? I mean, how do you balance knowing that people need to do things at different times with kind of common good and collaborative hours?

Yeah, it's definitely a sort of a never ending tension to figure out what is sort of, what's the shared kind of agreement of how we all work versus what is the most optimal way that any one individual can be productive and have their impact. If everybody had the same commute, had the exact same level of in person experience of working, I would argue that everybody working five days a week in an office would be optimal. But that's not reality. People are different. They live in different places, they have different schedules, they have different kind of family dynamics. So then you have to kind of find what is that equilibrium where you're getting the most amount of productivity with the most amount of, you know, employee satisfaction? You know, it's, it's a little bit of this push pull on every dimension. That could be hybrid work, that could be hours a day working, that could be, you know, how distributed our teams, all that kind of stuff. And so we're always sort of seeking what is that optimal equilibrium. How do we kind of make the most of everybody's newfound flexibility, but also make sure that there's a kind of clarity to how we're going to execute as a collective. And that's always this balance we're trying to find.

Are you conscious of other people's kind of circadian rhythms? To an extent. Do you know that if I speak to person X at this hour, I'm going to get less out of them than at this hour?

Yes. I'd say of the 20 to 30 people that I most actively work with, I generally know their sleep patterns in as least of a creepy way as possible. Sure.

How does that manifest itself with when you plan their meetings or how does it kind of work from a managerial perspective?

Yeah, I mean, there are absolutely some people where. And this will probably make some people kind of pass out listening to this, but are cto, who's the chief Technology officer and I spent a lot of time brainstorming. It's not uncommon that we're doing a brainstorm at 12:30am on Sunday. So think about that as sort of Saturday night bleeding over into Sunday morning. And that's actually what he wants to do and that's what I want to do. We're both deeply interested in the topic and both of our sleep patterns are kind of wired to being able to do that. And then there are people where on a weekday at 10pm I just know that they really are going to go to bed because they're one of these 6am going to go workout people. And so I'm pushing the limits on either how much productivity I'm going to get from them and or just now encroaching into health on their side. So I try and be somewhat responsive to that. There's always exceptions because of something demanding in the business, but I wouldn't get the sense that there's hundreds of people doing 10pm meetings every single day across the company as a result of my sleep pattern. This is, you know, small clusters when there's really important work that Just has to be complete.

I'm interested in kind of the origin story, which I know you've talked about before. You started this with friends from kind of middle school and high school. And I've read that you did these kind of rotational shifts at points to kind of make sure your, your site stayed up in kind of early days of working together. Do you think there's any element of that that was kind of either an early sign of how you work best or has somehow kind of had an impact on the way you work now? I mean, in terms of hours in the day and the kind of get the job done at the hours that suit you best kind of mentality.

Yeah. So certainly the origin story is correlated with how the company has developed on this dimension. I mean, we were working out of one garage, sleeping in the other garage, and it was just literally 24 7. Like our breaks were food breaks and somebody was always on call watching the site. Three of us had extreme nocturnal patterns. We could all be up till 4am working on something. One of our co founders, my CFO and still CFO, he's the kind of go to bed at 10pm going to go on a run in the morning type personality. And so what would be funny is he'd go to bed at 10pm, we'd all be up till 2, 3am, he might wake up and literally our business model might have actually evolved. It's sort of a funny concept. You go to bed and you wake up and your company has meaningfully changed in direction. That was just the early days of how we operated and that is not fully sustained, but the kind of people that we work with and certainly I haven't changed that much from that standpoint.

So do people wake up to big changes in strategy now or is that a thing of the past?

I'm a little bit more thoughtful about the thrash that can create. But the past two chief operating officers and our current chief operating officer will be jamming on strategy at 11pm and so it's not totally impossible that somebody wakes up to a different strategy the next morning. But now with 2,700 employees or so, it's much more important to make these decisions with the right level of research and thinking and judgment applied to it, as opposed to when we were just starting out, working and sleeping in the same place, we would literally pivot the business in the middle of the night and we don't do that anymore.

Aaron, thank you so much.

Thank you.

[Isabelle Berwick]

Aaron sussed out a schedule that works for him. What he said about his work and sleep pattern brought me back to something Daniel said earlier. You can't fight your chronotype as far as possible. You should lean into it. Match the type of task you're doing to the time you're doing it. Don't schedule your hardest task for a time of day when you know your energy levels will be low. It sounds simple, but it could make a big difference if you manage. People try to be conscious of when they do their best work too. Don't call a 9am meeting with someone who doesn't start firing until mid morning. You won't get the best out of them.

[Muriel Wilkins]

I hope you enjoyed that episode of Working it from the Financial Times. You can listen to more episodes for free wherever you get your podcasts. Coaching Reel Leaders will be back on October 7th with our next season. We've been working hard on our new episodes and I'm so excited to share them with you. Thanks to my producer Mary Dew, sound editor Nate Krinko, music composer Brian Campbell, my assistant Emily Sofa, and the entire team at hp. From HBR Presents, I'm Muriel Wilkins. Until next time, may you be well.