This is research out of NYU that found that - and this is one of the great things about the research here - is that a lot of it's being done with big data. KELLY: They score better if they're taking their exams in the morning. KELLY: In the peak, I mean, as a way of measuring this, you were tracking students taking tests. KELLY: OK, well, so stay with me in the peak for a minute. And then actually during this third period, the recovery, we're actually pretty good at more creative things 'cause we're in a slightly better mood, but we're less inhibited. And so we're better off doing the analytic task during the peak, administrative stuff during the trough. PINK: And so that pattern of mood affects our performance. It drops considerably in the early afternoon and then rises again late in the day around the time that ALL THINGS CONSIDERED comes on the air. You also see a pattern of mood that follows the same sort of trajectory where we have an elevated mood in the morning. During - and for most of us, that's the morning. But during the peak, we're better at analytic work, work that requires heads-down focus, vigilance, attention, batting away distractions - auditing a financial statement, writing a legal brief. Those of us who are strong night owls go in the reverse order. And most of us move through it in that order. What we see from the research is that we tend to move through the day in three stages - a peak, a trough, a recovery. PINK: Well, we do certain kinds of work better in the morning. And you argue that for most of us, most of the time, we are more productive in the morning. There's a thread that runs throughout this book, and it is that the time of day that we do things matters - matters a lot. Daniel Pink, welcome.ĭANIEL PINK: Thank you, Mary Louise - great to be here. Pink's new book is titled 'When: The Scientific Secrets Of Perfect Timing.' And he's here to share some of those secrets. Well, there is a right time and a wrong time to do all of these things, argues Daniel Pink. Are you thinking of changing jobs or maybe a different radical life change like getting married or getting divorced or something more mundane? Maybe you want to ask your boss for a raise.

Perfect timing