From Larks to Owls: The Surprising Link Between Body Clocks and Personal Success
Mastering the body clock may be the key to success.
Timing is everything. Whether you are an early riser or a night owl, listening to your body clock may be the key to success. From the classroom to the courtroom and beyond, people perform best when they perform difficult tasks at times that match their circadian rhythms.
Circadian rhythms are powerful internal clocks that keep a person’s physiological and intellectual functions running throughout the day. The peak of this circadian rhythm varies from person to person.
Some people, called lark or morning chronotypes, peak early and are at their best in the morning. Others, called Owl or Evening Chronotypes, peak later in the day and perform at their best in the late afternoon and evening. Others prefer a neutral chronotype, neither a morning nor an evening chronotype.
As a researcher exploring ways to improve cognitive function, I have been investigating whether chronotype affects mental performance. By understanding what mental processes are variable or stable throughout the day, we may be able to schedule our work in a way that optimizes performance.
Why is chronotyping important?
Chronotyping can be measured with a simple questionnaire, which can assess wake-up time, wake-up time, leaving time, and daily performance. Without taking a survey, most people can sense whether they are a lark, an owl, or somewhere in between.
Do you wake up early without an alarm and are you clear-headed? If so, you are most likely a morning person. You sleep late at night and wake up sluggish and dazed. Late at night, you feel more energetic. If so, you are most likely a night person.
People perform best in many difficult mental tasks, such as attention, learning, problem solving, and complex decision making, when their behavior is in sync with the peak of their personal circadian rhythm. This is known as the entrainment effect. Whether an air traffic controller is scanning radar, a CFO is reviewing a financial report, or a high school student is studying chemistry, the entrainment effect affects a person’s performance.
Much of the evidence for the entrainment effect comes from laboratory studies that tested both larks and owls early in the morning and late at night. Strong chronotypers are more attentive off-peak than on-peak and have a greater ability to sustain attention. They have sharper memories, recall lists better, and remember “things to do,” such as taking medications.
They are also less likely to let their minds wander or become distracted at optimal times. For example, in my study, participants were given three weakly related cue words (e.g., “ship,” “outside,” and “crawl”). Participants were given the task of finding another word (e.g., “space”) that connected the three words.
When my team and I presented the misleading words along with the cue words (e.g., “sea” for “ship,” “inside” for “outside,” and “baby” for “crawl”), those who took the test at synchronized times performed better than those who did not and ignored the misleading words to find the target They were able to do so. These results indicate that synchrony is also important for persuasion, reasoning, and inference.
Synchrony also affects higher-level cognitive functions such as persuasion, reasoning, and decision making. Studies with consumers show that people are more discriminating, skeptical, and analytical during peak periods. Consumers spend more time and effort on a given task and are more likely to search for important information. As a result, people make better investment decisions, are less susceptible to bias, and are more likely to detect fraud.
During quieter times, people are more likely to fall for flashy marketing schemes because they take longer to solve problems, are less cautious, and tend to rely on mental shortcuts. Ethical behavior can also be compromised during less-than-optimal times. In the classroom and in the clinic. Attention, memory, analytical thinking, and other basic mental abilities affected by synchrony are all abilities that contribute to academic success. This relationship is especially important for teens, who tend to stay up late but generally start school early.
In one study, more than 700 adolescents were randomly assigned to early morning, late night, and afternoon testing times. Owls scored lower than larks on the morning test, and owls scored lower on the afternoon test. Perhaps because of the earlier start time, the owl students were one step behind the lark students.
Time of day may also be considered when assessing cognitive impairments such as attention deficit disorder and Alzheimer’s disease. Older adults are more susceptible to larks and often show greater entrainment effects than younger adults. Peak performance is better on several key neuropsychological measures used to assess these conditions.
Failure to account for entrainment may affect diagnostic accuracy, which in turn may affect data regarding eligibility for clinical trials and treatment efficacy.
Of course, entrainment does not affect all tasks or everyone’s performance. Simple and easy tasks, such as recognizing a familiar face or location, dialing a close friend’s phone number, or preparing a favorite recipe, are unlikely to change over the course of a day. Furthermore, young adults who are neither larks nor owls show little variation in their daily performance.
True early risers and night owls may be able to improve their performance by tackling the most difficult mental tasks at times that coincide with the peak of their personal circadian rhythms. Synchronicity may be one of the secrets of success when small performance gains become essential advantages.
Source: From Larks to Owls: The Surprising Link Between Body Clocks and Personal Success
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From Larks to Owls: The Surprising Link Between Body Clocks and Personal Success