Work Smart, Not Hard: Insights from Science

Image Source: Unsplash

You end up endlessly drinking coffee, snacking, smoking, or surfing social networks and so on, unable to “wake up”. Then, after lunch, all of a sudden your head becomes clearer, and tasks that seemed insurmountable in the morning are completed in an hour.

Or one day you and colleagues launch a new project and decide to work on it in the evenings when the office is quiet. Despite seemingly ideal conditions you fail to concentrate. You get angry at yourself and this cycle of frustration leads you to believe you just need to push harder and work longer hours to succeed.

However, is there a point for all this tension? Does it really need to be an integral part of your daily work? Maybe it’s because you haven’t found the “perfect” job yet? Well, the truth is that with any job you will suffer from ups and downs and fight the urge to do anything other than work at certain times. As you probably already guessed, fluctuations in your performance are very much influenced by your internal biological clocks. This brings us to the notion of Circadian rhythms and Chronotypes which have an enormous impact on our energy and ability to focus.

Circadian rhythms are periodic changes in a variety of physiological, biochemical and even genetic processes throughout the day. Today we know that circadian rhythms are a very ancient mechanism found in all major groups of organisms, hence it is something intrinsic for all living matter. As sunlight enabled photosynthesis in plants and other photosynthetic creatures, natural selection favoured the emergence of biological mechanisms that adjusted timing of the most important processes to daylight. We would expect that humans should not depend that much on illumination. However, we depend on the temperature that in many places on the planet differs a lot between day and night. Banal dark also significantly complicated any activity back then. Finally, all living beings are connected to each other through the food chain, so the life of photosynthetic organisms directly influenced others too.
Thanks to evolution, people now have special genes regulating circadian rhythms and for their discovery and description the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physiology was awarded to Jeffrey Hall, Michael W. Young and Michael Rosbash. Researchers found that genes associated with circadian rhythms function as molecular oscillators and self-regulate through the principle of negative feedback. They synthesise proteins that themselves block such gene’s activity when the level of these proteins exceeds a certain threshold. The period of work of such an oscillator is just about 24 hours. This is our internal regulation but external stimuli also have influence on it.

What impacts our biological clocks:
The key regulating signal is light interacting with the retina of our eyes, but not only. Temperature, food intake, physical activity, stress, changing time zones - all this can affect the work of our biological clocks. More importantly, gadgets can seriously disturb them too. Our retina features specific photosensitive cells called ganglion cells that are activated with a blue light, emitted from our PC or phone screens. These cells are connected to brain structures regulating release of hormones like insulin, cortisol or melatonin. Melatonin is natural relaxant produced when it’s getting dark to help us fall asleep easier. If you spend all evening exposed to artificial blue light, melatonin production slows down making it harder for you to fall asleep and restore energy resources for the next day.

Being such an ancient mechanism, Circadian rhythms cannot be surpassed or tricked easily. Coffee and cold showers or other stresses can mobilise your energy for a short period of time, but they don’t work in the long run. A number of studies have demonstrated that people fighting their inherent clock end up having a range of health issues such as insomnia, digestive disorders, obesity, cardiovascular diseases and premature death. The scientific consensus is clear: one shall live and work according to their own body clock manifested in their chronotype.

We just learned that circadian rhythms are produced by our internal 24-h biological clocks and synchronized daily by environmental signals. Chronotypes reflect our individual variability in how our body clocks operate and define optimal times for wakefulness and sleep. We are already somewhat familiar with the notion of chronotype as we all heard that working people are divided into two groups: "morning larks" and "night owls”. We know that larks demonstrate maximum performance and ability for concentrated work early in the morning soon after waking up, when Owls are capable only of slowly dying. The rise of Owls’ cognitive capabilities happens towards late evening or night, peaking shortly before the earliest of the Larks wake up. However, all turns out to be a bit more complex than that, with a third “mixed” chronotype being actually the prevalent one.

Our ancestors developed varied sleep patterns for survival. Research on existing hunter-gatherer tribes, like the Hadza people of Tanzania, suggests that ancient humans rarely slept all at once, taking shifts to keep an eye out for wild animals and other dangers. The shift that stayed awake at night led to the evolution of night Owls, but most importantly it also contributed to the emergence of the third - “Dove” - chronotype. This is the most common chronotype and happen to have two activity peaks: first in late morning (10-11 a.m. rather than 8-9 a.m.) and second in early evening, about 16-17 p.m. In between, Doves experience a significant decrease in mental activity. This is likely to be the same echo of our prehistoric life in savannahs when the majority of the tribe would be taking a nap in the shadows during the hottest part of the day.

Image Source: National Geographic

Obviously, traditional 9-to-5 work schedules poorly fit any of the chronotypes. Historically, work schedules were determined by agricultural activities, favouring early start. Industrialization cemented the 9-to-5 routine, which remains a norm till today, despite its inefficiency. In fact, Larks peak early and should ideally finish work by early afternoon. Owls peak when the office is already closing. Doves face midday drowsiness, reducing overall productivity during most of their office hours.

We already know what science advises us: aligning work schedules with our chronotype's golden hours increases productivity and helps reduce frustration. Let’s dig into how you can achieve that:

Understanding and leveraging your circadian rhythms can transform work from a struggle into a more natural, relaxed and productive process. By aligning work schedules with our biological peaks, we can harness millions of years of evolution to enhance our performance and well-being.