This is an audio transcript of the Working It podcast episode: ‘Power hours’ — how to make the most of your working day’
Mischa Frankl-Duval
Hi. Before we begin, we’d love to hear a bit more about you and what you like about this show. We’re running a short survey, and anyone who takes part before August 29th will be entered into a prize draw for a pair of Bose QuietComfort 35 wireless headphones. You can find a link to the survey and terms and conditions for the prize draw in our show notes.
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Daniel Pink
I think the key is to give people greater sovereignty over the win 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 wanna do a decent job and care about their work, so give them the freedom to do that.
Isabel Berwick
Hello and welcome to Working It from the Financial Times. I’m Isabel 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 favours 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 is the author of several books, including When: 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 our heads-down analytic firepower and focus. Others require you to be slightly looser. Things like iterating new ideas or brainstorming. And so what we wanna try to do is line up those three things: our type, the time, and our task.
Isabel 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 they? 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 per cent, are very, very strong larks. Some of us, about 20 per cent, are very, very strong owls. And most of us, about two-thirds of us are in the middle. But we lean towards larkiness. And so what you have is you have about 80 per cent of the population moving through the day in those three patterns — peak early, trough in the middle, recovery later in the day. About 80 per cent 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.
Isabel 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.
Isabel 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
Finding your chronotype is generally not a good idea only because it’s an attribute of your physiology. 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 8.00 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.
Isabel Berwick
Oh, I like that. So for most of us, you know, 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
(Laughter) 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 administrator 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 gonna 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, focused work, crunching numbers, writing reports — during our peak. And we should be pushing as much of our administrative work to 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 breaks are not a sign of weakness. Breaks are not a deviation from our performance. Breaks 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 — 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.
Isabel 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 you will see much greater happiness and much greater productivity in the workplace.
Isabel Berwick
Have you come across any managers who actually do that, who sort of insist on breaks for their workers?
Daniel Pink
No, I . . . 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 their reaction to that is, oh, man, I want to be just like Maria, she’s such a badass, she takes a break every day.
Isabel Berwick
I love that. So, but, 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.
Isabel Berwick
As so often in the world of work, there is a simple solution out there that people often ignore, yeah?
Daniel Pink
I think that’s right. Most people actually wanna do a decent job and care about their work, so give them the freedom to do that.
Isabel 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.
Isabel 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 when they do it, is what matters.
The next guest on today’s show shares that philosophy. Aaron Levie 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 multibillion-dollar company when he hates getting up early? Our producer, Misha Frankl-Duval, spoke to him to find out.
Mischa Frankl-Duval
Aaron Levie, welcome to Working It.
Aaron Levie
Thanks. Yeah, good to be here.
Mischa Frankl-Duval
Could you please start off by telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Aaron Levie
Sure. 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.
Mischa Frankl-Duval
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?
Aaron Levie
Yeah. So, you know, most days are a little bit different. So there’s never exactly a typical week. But ideally 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 5.00 or 6.00-ish. 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 my wife and then it’s sort of back to work again from, you know, 7.30, 8pm onward. And that takes me into about kind of midnight, 1am. And then sort of just rinse and repeat that.
Mischa Frankl-Duval
So what time do you get started if you’re working till 12.00, 1.00?
Aaron Levie
On the work side, I probably don’t totally kick off until about 9.30, 10am.
Mischa Frankl-Duval
Fair to say, you’re not a 5am kind of guy, then? I mean . . .
Aaron Levie
Correct.
Mischa Frankl-Duval
Is this something that marks you out? Or do people kind of leave you alone about it?
Aaron Levie
I think that there’s an even divide probably 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 things than myself, you know, answered every email and gone on a, you know, 60-minute run.
That is 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, 9.00 or 10.00 in the morning. It’s just, like, not possible. So, at night-time is when I really get kind of most of my energy.
So, you know, when I’m at my best, it’s, you know, usually the evening time, thinking about problems to solve, you know, responding to issues in the business. So definitely, I’m a bit more nocturnal in that sense.
Mischa Frankl-Duval
I’d be really interested to know, you know, we’re speaking about flex and 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?
Aaron Levie
Yeah, it’s definitely a sort of a never-ending tension to figure out what is sort of . . . What’s the shared, you know, 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 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 gonna execute as a collective? And that’s always this balance we’re trying to find.
Mischa Frankl-Duval
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 gonna get less out of them than at this hour?
Aaron Levie
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.
Mischa Frankl-Duval
Sure, how does that manifest itself with when you plan the meetings or how does it kind of work from a managerial perspective?
Aaron Levie
Yeah, I mean, there are absolutely some people where and this is gonna . . . This will probably make some people kind of pass out listening to this. But our 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 like . . . 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 there are people where, you know, on a weekday at 10pm, I just know that, like, they really are gonna go to bed because they’re one of these, you know, 6am gonna-go-work-out people.
And so I’m pushing the limits on either how much productivity I’m gonna get from them and or just now encroaching into health on their side. So I try and be somewhat responsive to that. You know, there’s always exceptions because of something demanding in the business, but I wouldn’t, you know, get the sense that there’s hundreds of people doing 10pm meetings, you know, every single day, you know, 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.
Mischa Frankl-Duval
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 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.
Aaron Levie
Yeah. So certainly the origin story is correlated with, you know, how their company has developed on this dimension. I mean, we were working at one garage, sleeping in the other garage, and it was just literally 24/7. Like our breaks were food breaks and, you know, somebody was always on call watching the site. Three of us had extreme nocturnal patterns, we could all be up until 4am working on something.
One of our co-founders, my CFO and still CFO, he’s the kind of go-to-bed-at-10pm, gonna-go-on-a-run-in-the-morning type personality. And so what would be funny is, you know, he’d go to bed at 10pm, we’d all be up until 2.00 or 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 like, 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, you know, fully sustained, but that, you know, the kind of people that we work with and certainly I haven’t changed that much from that standpoint.
Mischa Frankl-Duval
So do people wake up to big changes in strategy now, or is that a thing of the past?
Aaron Levie
(Laughter) I’m a little bit more thoughtful about the thrash that 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, you know, when we were just starting out working and sleeping in the same place, you know, we would literally pivot the business in the middle of the night and we don’t do that any more.
Mischa Frankl-Duval
Aaron, thank you so much.
Aaron Levie
Thank you.
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Isabel 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.
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This episode of Working It was produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval and mixed by Simon Panayi. Manuela Saragosa is the executive editor and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Thanks for listening.
