10 Tips on the Right Time of Day for Your Personal Best
10 Tips on the Right Time of Day for Your Personal Best By Eve
Abbott,the Organizer Extraordinaire Excerpted from her new book
"How to Do Space Age Work with a Stone Age Brain" TM
Can choosing which time we do an activity really make a
difference in our performance?
Have you ever wondered what would be the best time of day (or
week) to do different kinds of work? Every person's internal
clock runs on the Human Circadian Timeline. Except those who
have been on graveyard shift for years!
This is the schedule by which our body systems (including our
brain) 'take care of business'. Every work day is divided into
cycles that match our naturally heightened abilities - both
physically and mentally.
The trick is to take advantage of identifying and using this
information to schedule your work and life activities
accordingly.
Circadian rhythms are present at birth and the body temperature
cycle emerges between 6 to 9 months for infants. By the age of
three the adrenal system is coordinating a complete daily cycle
or timeline.
The adrenal glands in coordination with our pituitary,
hypothalamus, pineal glands control both our internal clock and
our stress reaction.
This means our stress levels are in direct proportion to how far
off we are from our natural time cycle.
Body temperature cycle doesn't vary so much from person to
person. But, studies show our natural rhythms do shorten as we
age. Mental conditions like depression in which sleep
disturbance is common and physical illness of any kind disrupt
the daily cycle.
However, healthy people keep their innate circadian cycle
throughout their life.
Although each body system has its own rhythm, generally cell
replacement peaks between noon and nine pm. The skin and the
liver are the only organs which replenish worn out tissues with
new ones at night and this process peaks by midnight.
The brain is the only organ that functions without cell
replacement - So, we'd better take better care of the one we
have!
Setting Your Internal Clock To work and live at our best, we
need our internal circadian rhythm in harmony or synchronized
with the environmental cues (i.e., light and dark, temperature
etc).
Human beings grow faster, produce more offspring, enjoy better
health, do better work and live longer when time setting
environment cycles match.
This makes it easy to understand the fact that graveyard shift
(midnight to eight am) workers experience more accidents than
day and evening shifts combined. Also, more of the worst auto
accidents occur after midnight. Our bodies 'know' we should be
asleep!
One night of short sleep does not affect overall performance.
However, several nights of sleep deprivation leads to dull
sensory perceptions (vision, hearing etc.). Plus, longer
reaction time, slower motor coordination, reduced memory
retrieval, combined with lowered new memorization ability, as
well as increased irritability.
These are exactly the functions we need to do good work -
including decreased irritability.
Light is the number one influence