Dan Pink (2:32)

Well, it could be for some reason, people. And here's the thing, there are a number of different variables here, but there's some good research on this. So what we know is that morning exercise is good if you have certain kinds of goals. Morning exercise seems to be better for habit formation, in part because you're less likely to get interrupted at 7 in the morning than at 5 in the afternoon. Morning exercise seems to be better for weight loss, although a lot of the research is showing that exercise is less effective for weight loss. Weight loss is really hard.

Jill (3:00)

Yeah, it's diet, sorry guys, you gotta shut your mouth.

Dan Pink (3:05)

But it's also just that. It's also like we're not prisoners of biology, but we live in a state governed by biology. And so people have a set point of weight, fairly narrow band, and they're unlikely to get too far on either side of it. And that's how you are. Blame your DNA. The one thing about morning exercise which I think is very effective though, is this, that exercise, aerobic exercise, certainly some interesting new research showing even strength training gives us a mood boost and a pretty enduring mood boost. 10 hours sometimes. And so if you exercise in the morning, you get that mood boost all the way through the day. If you exercise at say 6 at night or something like that, you might end up sleeping through some of that mood boost. Now, late afternoon and early evening exercise is better for other things. It's better for avoiding injury. And I think this is my guess, I think that's because of changes in body temperature. Our body temperature is highest at that moment, so we're literally more warmed up. It's better for performance. Lung capacity is higher, Hand eye coordination is better, speed is greater. And so there's some interesting research showing that a disproportionate number of world records and speed events were set between 4pm to and 7pm local time.

Jill (4:24)

That's wild.

Dan Pink (4:25)

It's crazy, right?

Jill (4:26)

Yeah, it's great.

Dan Pink (4:28)

And then also people report enjoying late afternoon and early evening exercise more.

Jill (4:33)

That's just because the hottest people are in the gym at that time.

Dan Pink (4:36)

Could be literally the warmest because everybody's body temperature is the highest. It could be that you're throwing off the stresses of the day. I actually believe. And it's weird. It's a weird thing like I never thought about is these changes in body temperature are actually more important than we realize. Changes in body temperature are one of the things that aid significantly in falling asleep and in wakefulness and even in certain kinds of physical performance. That period when your body temperature is higher does boost you just a little bit. It really depends on your goals. One is not better than the other. And so for me, since I'm a lark, I actually don't like exercising in the morning because I like doing my work then. And then by the end of the day, I'm so stressed out and miserable I actually enjoyed going for a run at five in the afternoon or six in the afternoon or something.

Jill (5:24)

That's interesting. I am the midday kind of person and I think that it has something to do with needing a boost, you know, because I wake up so early. If I finish this interview right now, which you know will wrap up and I eat a little something in an hour and a half, I'll go to the gym.

Dan Pink (5:40)

So about what time of day?

Jill (5:42)

Two.

Dan Pink (5:44)

Two in the afternoon. And that's about how far. So you Woke up at what, 5, 4:30 this morning? Oh my.

Jill (5:49)

Okay, so like 1:30 or 2 o'.

Narrator/Host (5:50)

Clock.

Dan Pink (5:50)

Okay, so 4 to. So that's nine hours after you've woken up. So for me that would be something like. It's interesting. So for me it'd be something like I wake up at around 7. If I went to the gym nine hours after I woke up, that would be 4 in the afternoon.

Jill (6:05)

Right? Pretty good.

Dan Pink (6:07)

Yeah.

Jill (6:07)

You know, and it's funny because it's.

Narrator/Host (6:09)

Sometimes it's just as you said, it.

Jill (6:11)

Has to be where you can form the habit. Sure. So I think that for many people it's like, when are you gonna actually get there? To me it's like, oh, it's this perfect time, morning's done. I mean, if the market blows up or does something weird in the middle of the day, I usually cancel, but whatever. I think that just being aware of your own body is fascinating to me. And that's why I love this book because so much of it felt like, yes, I could bring that into my life and make a positive change. So let us talk about my favorite word in the entire book. Napachino. By far the best word.

Dan Pink (6:46)

Are you a napper?

Jill (6:47)

I can be because I wake up so early and so there are, you know, it can sort of happen in the mid afternoon. I've sort of been thinking like, oh, I should be meditating and actually napping feels better.

Dan Pink (6:59)

You know what? But it's interesting you say that because there are a lot of similarities in brain function and just in mood between napping and meditation. There really are. Here's what we know about napping. It's pretty good for us. Again, it goes against our puritanical ways, but the best naps are extremely short, between 10 and 20 minutes long.

Jill (7:21)

That was what amazed me.

Dan Pink (7:22)

That surprised me too because I began this pretty anti nap because my own experience napping was unpleasant because I would wake up and I would feel like crap and, and that's what something called sleep inertia, which happens when you nap beyond about 20 minutes. But a 10 to 20 minute nap is. There's a lot of research on this. It's very restorative. It's right in that sweet spot. Less than 10 minutes doesn't do you much good. More than 20 gives you sleep inertia right in that 10 to 20 minute window. It really just smooths things over and restores a lot of mental acuity, restores some physical energy.

Jill (7:55)

Okay, so now add in the caffeine part.

Dan Pink (7:58)

Okay, so here's. So this is something. I swear by now, I don't do it every day at all. But look at you.

Jill (8:02)

You're like, don't judge me. Yeah, yeah, I do it every day.

Dan Pink (8:04)

No, I don't do it every day. You know, I want to advocate this, but I'm not. I don't want to be like, you know, like a. You're not an evangelist, a pusher on the corner, like handing out the drugs. Here, here's what I do. So I have noise canceling headphones. And so I will set my timer for 25 minutes, put on my noise canceling headphones right before I press go. On my 25 minute timer. I will have a cup of coffee and I just guzzle it. In fact, I will often brew a cup of coffee, put like some chunks of ice in it just to cool it off, because I'm not enjoying the coffee, I'm just guzzling it. All right, seems weird, but stick with me. So then I close my eyes, have my noise canceling headphones on, and I can usually fall asleep in, say, 10 minutes. And one of the things that we know about napping is that the more you do it, the better you get at it. And in that sense, it's very much like meditation. If you just take somebody off the street and meditating, they're going to have a really hard time. But you bring them back day after day after day after day after day after day after day. At a certain point, they're going to be able to meditate from 10 seconds to 30 seconds to a minute to a minute and a half. So napping is that way. So I can usually fall asleep in 10 minutes. I fall asleep in 10 minutes. My alarm goes off in 25 minutes. That gives me 15 minute of actual nap right in that sweet spot. But here's the cool thing. Caffeine takes about 25 minutes to get into our bloodstream. So at that moment that I'm waking up, okay, ideal nap, no sleep inertia. I get this other boom, this boost of caffeine right there. And that's why it's called a napachino.

Jill (9:35)

I love that so much.

Dan Pink (9:37)

It's awesome.

Jill (9:38)

Why is the turn of a calendar. Why is Rosh Hashanah for Jews important? Why are these days. Why do they become important in terms of the timing of when you set goals?

Dan Pink (9:49)

Yeah, they're enormously important for a whole set of reasons. Because part of the science of timing is not only these daily patterns, but how do beginnings of any kind affect us? That's what we're talking about here. How do midpoints affect us? How do endings affect us? And there's some really, really beautiful, interesting research on what social psychologists call temporal landmarks. That's what you're talking about, temporal landmarks. And there's certain dates that stand out in time the way that physical landmarks stand out in space. So if I were directing somebody to my house in Washington, D.C. there's. There's certain landmarks that I would tell them to look for to find my street. I'd have a smallish street. It's not one of the. But it's off of a really big street. And it's. Anyway, it's complicated because Washington has certain streets that are on diagonals and certain streets that are parallel. And I'm on a diagonal and it's small and blah, blah, blah. So my view is like, look for Cactus Cantina Restaurant.

Jill (10:40)

There you go.

Dan Pink (10:40)

All right.

Jill (10:41)

Get a margarita and come over.

Dan Pink (10:43)

So they see Cactus Cantina Restaurant, and what do they do? They start slowing down, becoming more aware. And that's what happens with these temporal landmarks. But they also do something else. They trigger this very peculiar form of mental accounting. So what we do on certain of these dates is that we essentially open up a fresh ledger on ourselves. So think about ledgers in the old days when they're made of paper. They're not spreadsheets.

Jill (11:08)

They're not young people listening. Go Google Ledger so you can see what we're talking about.

Dan Pink (11:12)

They're actually kind of beautiful.

Jill (11:14)

I know.

Dan Pink (11:14)

I love that they're beautiful in a way.

Jill (11:15)

I know.

Dan Pink (11:16)

And so. So what you're doing is you're opening up a fresh ledger on yourself the way that a small business 80 years ago would open up a fresh ledger on a new quarter or a new year. And you basically say, old me had a drink every day. New me reborn on the first day of January is going to be dry for the next 30 days. And so I think one of the interesting things about New Year's resolutions is that when you look at the Numbers on New Year's resolutions. Let's say the numbers are all over the place, but let's say that by February, two thirds of people are not keeping their New Year's resolutions. Let's just stipulate that that's the right thing. To me, it's like that's bearing the lead to me that says, wait a second, one third of people are keeping their resolutions. That's pretty amazing when you think about how hard it is to change our behavior. And so what this means, and this is some great research on what's called the fresh start effect, done by three researchers at Penn, Katie Milkman, Heng Chen Dai, and, and Jason Reese. And what they found is that certain dates are fresh start dates. We're more likely to start behavior change and therefore more likely to have a fighting chance of continuing it. So you're better off starting, let's say, I'm finally going to go to the gym regularly. Start that on a Monday rather than on a Thursday. Start it on the 1st of the month rather than the 23rd of the month. Start it on the day after your birthday rather than four days before your birthday.

Jill (12:38)

And you say there are 86 chances to have fresh starts.

Dan Pink (12:41)

There are all kinds of fresh starts. Every Monday is in some ways a fresh start. Every first in the month of the fresh start, there are both personal and social fresh start dates. So personal one would be like the day after my wedding anniversary. So that would be July 3rd. Not a meaningful date for most people, but a meaningful date for me. The day after your birthday, the day after your kid was born, but also things that we share or things at small groups. So the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, that's a fresh start date. And actually, if you look at what's interesting is that the way that certain religious traditions welcome in the new year, it has all of the trappings of fresh start. Right. We announce it. There's some talk sort of at least tangentially about a clean slate and starting over the first of the month. There's the first day after spring for students, the first day of a semester. So whatever. So there's certainly in our religious traditions, they're fresh start dates. In our schools, they're fresh start dates in our personal lives and just on our regular shared calendar.

Jill (13:44)

All right, now let me just show you something I marked up in your book.

Dan Pink (13:47)

Yes.

Jill (13:48)

Do you see that midlife thing?

Dan Pink (13:50)

Yes.

Jill (13:50)

Do you see what I circled there? Do you see what my age is? I'm right smack in the bottom 53 age 53, well being slumps in midlife.

Dan Pink (14:04)

I am 54, so I feel your pain.

Jill (14:07)

We are there. What is up with this?

Dan Pink (14:10)

This is some really, really interesting research based on two dimensions. First, we talk about this idea of a midlife crisis. That's complete bunk. There is no evidence of a midlife crisis. It's one of. It drives me nuts that people actually even use that term because there's zero evidence of that. But something else I think more interesting happens in midlife is basically what researchers call a U shaped curve of well being. It's not a crisis. The bottom doesn't fall out, but there's a dip. And the dip is around in general around our age. And the chart you're pointing to is a chart from Angus Deaton, who's a Nobel prize winning economist at Princeton. But the U shaped curve of well being that he and his team found is similar to what researchers around the world have found. This is not an American phenomenon, this is a international phenomenon. This U shaped curve of well being in midlife. That is, we're happier in our 20s and 30s. We'd be into dip in our 40s, really, you know, hit the bottom of that gentle U in our 50s and then generally start going back up. Has been found in something like 70 countries. If I were to show you that chart and then say, if I were to show you that chart and not identify it and then show you the chart of well being over the lifespan in France and then say, here's the well being over the lifespan in United Arab Emirates, you would not be able to tell the difference among those interesting.

Jill (15:34)

So I mean, you attribute this one possibility, the disappointment of unrealized expectations. So I would just say that, look, when I looked at this chart, I was fascinated by it because first of all, there's a huge drop down as you get to be sort of like in your 20s. And I think that a lot of kids in their 20s are like, I should be at the top of the world. Why don't I feel better? So I feel like it's like a nice explanation for like, you don't have to feel so good because you're learning a lot. But you know what, after going through two divorces, I can tell you that my well being shifted because of those experiences early on. I'm wondering what your advice might be to navigate if someone is sort of feeling that unrealized expectation or just feeling like my kids are out of school, out of my house, I've lost my purpose. Maybe you were the stay at home parent. Or whatever. What is the advice for getting through the trough?

Dan Pink (16:31)

It's a great question. And as you say, we're talking about large population samples. So people. Not everybody. This is not like, oh, there's a cold front is meeting a warm front. Therefore, inevitably it's gonna rain. This is, you know, large populations and general patterns, and everybody doesn't abide by it. But I think there are a few things that people can do is. And we don't know the reason why. Actually, we can speculate about that, but we don't know exactly the reason why. I think one thing to do. There are all kinds of things that we can do. One of them is gratitude. There is enormous, as you know, there's enormous research on gratitude. And so what you can do is you can say, well, you know, okay, I'm not the CEO, but what am I grateful for? Oh, I have a happy marriage.

Jill (17:13)

Oh.

Dan Pink (17:13)

Or I have these great friends, or I'm in perfect physical health, or, pooh, pooh, pooh.

Jill (17:17)

You would never say that out loud if you were Jewish. I challenge the gods to get you.

Dan Pink (17:22)

But, you know, it's like, what am I grateful? There's actually this really, really interesting technique built on a lot of research, which I really like. It's an interesting mental exercise called mental subtraction of positive events. And so what you do is you think about your life, something good that happened to you, and then you pretend it didn't happen.

Jill (17:41)

Oh, this is like that Christmas It's a Wonderful Life, right?

Dan Pink (17:46)

Totally, totally. That's a very important movie psychologically. So anyway, leave that aside for now. The. So you mentally subtract a positive event. So let's say I don't know what's a positive event in the first 35 years of your life?

Jill (18:00)

Whatever. Like, you know that, like, I had a job, I had success, I had nieces and nephews, whatever.

Dan Pink (18:05)

Okay. Okay, so let's say you had a. You. You know what? You had a, you know, whatever your first great job in journalism was. Imagine if that didn't happen.

Narrator/Host (18:11)

Right?

Dan Pink (18:12)

You would not be. Might not be here sitting with me. And that would be a. That would be a deep, deep disappointment.

Jill (18:17)

I'm already disappointed considering that it could have happened that way.

Dan Pink (18:20)

Well, but I think about, you know, I think about it. You. I got three kids. It's like, geez, what if one of my kids wasn't born? I know. It's like, okay, suddenly every niggling little irritation goes away, so I do it differently. And you also can wait. Here's the Other thing is that if you're at the bottom of this, if you're at the bottom of this U shaped curve of well being, some people, people who are the glass half full type will say, hey, you got nothing but up.

Jill (18:52)

That's right. I got my upside. Yeah, well, I mean, so I think that I look at it as when I'm starting to get wrapped up in something. Like somebody, you know, said something about the, you know, whatever change is going on at work. And I looked at him and he was like all down and out and he's like, so depressed. I'm like, dude, you get paid to be on tv. That's like kind of the greatest thing ever. Absolutely. And I said, I get paid and they do my hair and makeup perfect. I mean, really, I don't want to.

Dan Pink (19:19)

Be Pollyannaish about this.

Jill (19:20)

Let's come on.

Dan Pink (19:21)

When we think about this, and this is a challenge in the workplace I think, is that when you have a lot of people who are in that period where they're slightly less happy with their lives, less happy, people in general are not as productive, don't do as great work. And I've always thought that one thing that we could be doing inside of organizations is mid career mentoring. We do mentoring for people in their 20s. Why not do mentoring for people our age? Because, you know, it's like, okay, hey, you're a great contributor, you're not going to be CEO, but you're 53 years old and I don't know, you might have 30 good working years in you. 30 years, 35 years of great contribution. It's like, let's help you find that path.

Jill (20:05)

Mentoring is such a great two way street that when I help someone out who's younger, I always find that I learned something either about myself or, or about that person or it feels quite nourishing. And I think that that's a wonderful thing. As we get older, speaking about beginning, middle and end, there is a great deal of evidence that we tend to be happier. But then I was reading your book and thinking about all that other strain of research, which is older people are isolated and lonely and that so bring that together for me.

Dan Pink (20:37)

Well, I mean, I actually think that the preponderance of evidence is that older age is a much happier time than we realize for a couple of reasons. And there's some great work done on this by Laura Carsonson at Stanford and she looked at friendship networks and what we typically see in the size of people forget, not like Facebook, but like real friends. So if you look at the size of friendship networks, they grow in the 20s, 30s, they grow, 40s, 50s, they grow. But around age 60, they start to drop, and sometimes significantly. And she was puzzled by that because that is superficially the story of isolation and despair and loneliness. And what she instead did is she unpacked that and she had the people. As she examined their friendship network, she said, okay, divide people into groups. Inner circle, middle circle, outer circle, inner circle, people you can't live without. Next circle out. People you really like. Next circle. Yeah, they're cool, too. And what you found is that all of the decline was in the middle and outer circles. And then in some instances, that inner circle actually grew a little bit. Because at the end, you know, toward the end, if you're like, say in, you know, I'm in the final third of this book here, I got to get rid of some of these characters because they're boring me. They're not doing anything for me. And you're more. You're more willing to shed there. You're more willing to shed those friends because you focus on these things. And what we know is that intimate social connections is one of the things that makes us most satisfied. There's a famous grant study from Harvard where they had it's all men, it's all white men, where they followed these men for decades and decades and decades from the time they were undergraduates, they did another one of some working class people in Boston. And as you follow them through it, basically, who's happy and who's not? And Robert Waldinger, the Harvard guy who's running this program now, says it's basically happiness is love, full stop.

Jill (22:37)

That's it.

Dan Pink (22:39)

You have people who you care about, you have people who care about you. Boom.

Jill (22:43)

That's it.

Dan Pink (22:44)

That's it.

Jill (22:44)

It ain't money.

Dan Pink (22:45)

Oh, it's not money. It's not even. Money is good, all right? And professional accomplishment is good, and making a contribution to the world is good. But at the center of it all is, do you have people you love and do you have people who love you?

Jill (22:58)

And that is a good way to end this interview, because I'll tell you something that is. It's true. That's really what.

Dan Pink (23:05)

It's empirically true. This is not like I'm not preaching, you know, I'm not like, I don't have a philosophy about this. I'm basically, you know, you look at the evidence, and the evidence tells us that's what it's all about.

Narrator/Host (23:16)

If you've got a question, after listening to Dan Pink Part one and Part two, Yesterday and today. And maybe it conjures up some questions for you and the kind of goal setting that you are considering for the year ahead. Get in touch with us go to jillonmoney.com, click the contact Us button. Write us a note if you'd like to join us live. Check the box. Mark will do everything else while you're on the website. Start the new year off on a really strong footing. Sign up for the free weekly newsletter which comes out on Friday. And check out our subscription service. It's called Jill on Money Live. That's where you have access to quarterly live webinars, the back catalog of those webinars, as well as bonus audio and video content. It will cost you free $45 for the next 12 months. Very exciting. You can subscribe to us on the Odyssey app or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. It is Friday, the first Friday of the New Year and we'd like to thank the folks who make this show possible. Number one is you, of course, and Joel Goodman. He composed our music. Mark Tularsio, the best executive producer in the whole wide world as well as the web king here at jill on money.com and the fine folks folks at Odyssey. Please try to do something nice for someone else today. Maybe put your hands metaphorically on someone's back who needs a little bit of a boost. Change your work, Change your wealth, change your life. Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you on Monday.

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