Thoughts on leadership


Matt Baker
Commander, U.S. Coast Guard


When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing - a book by Daniel Pink

So there I was, on the bridge of the Coast Guard Cutter MOHAWK somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. It was sometime in 2003. I was standing watch as the Officer of the Deck, the person responsible for the safe navigation and maneuvering of the ship. It was the early afternoon and the rest of the crew was enjoying a short period of down time after lunch. The bridge doors were open allowing the warm, humid, salty Caribbean air to wash through as the ship gently pitched up and down on the waves.

The four-hour watch from noon to 1600 (4 p.m. for 12-hour clock users) was not my usual assignment. Normally I stood the 0400-0800 and 1600-2000 watches each day, the double four-to-eights. Most people try to avoid that schedule but I didn’t mind it. I don’t remember why I had the 1200-1600 that day.

I do remember that I was standing in front of the radar on the starboard side of the bridge, the usual place. Nothing in particular was happening, the ship probably steaming from one place to another to be in position to intercept whatever drug smuggler we were expecting that night. The ship was alone in the expanse of the ocean, and the other bridge watchstanders and I were not engaged in any of the epic discussions that happen on the bridges of ships on quiet watches. I’m sure I had my guard down.

That’s when it happened. I had a moment of sudden alertness, the warm calm feeling replaced by an electric certainty that something was wrong. I scanned the horizon and checked the radar for a green dot dead ahead but thankfully nothing was there. But I had the unshakeable feeling that I couldn’t remember the last few minutes. Somehow, I nodded off standing up on the bridge of the ship. I picked up the phone and rang down to the stateroom I shared with another junior officer – I told him I needed him up here fast because I needed a break. That was an unusual request so he was on the bridge in about twelve seconds. I went below, closed my eyes for ten minutes, pounded a Coke from the mess deck soda machine, and went back up to finish my watch. That was the last 1200-1600 watch I ever stood. I had no problem getting up for watch at 4 in the morning, but in the early afternoon I turned into a zombie.

As it turns out, I’m not the only member of the zombie-in-the-afternoon club. The importance of time and timing is the subject of Daniel Pink’s 2019 book When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. The first two chapters make it abundantly clear that most human beings are not wired for a high level of external awareness in the afternoon. The research cited on the performance of surgeons and parole judges is particularly alarming. I recommend avoiding either an invasive medical procedure or a parole hearing right after lunch – neither turns out as well for the subject as a similar endeavor first thing in the morning.

The larger message of Mr. Pink’s book is that while we usually think carefully about what to do or how to do it, we seldom think about when to do it. We tend to see time as a uniform line. An hour in the morning is the same as an hour in the afternoon. Our relative carelessness when it comes to timing means we miss out on potential performance, or even set ourselves up to make mistakes.

Know your own clock and know the group’s clock

The science showing our alertness follows a pattern during a day was not a surprise to me. Everyone has their own rhythm, or chronotype. Some people are more alert in the morning and fade after lunch, while others are more productive at night and prefer to sleep later after sunrise. Knowing your own preference is important, but the real work is figuring out how to conform to the social expectations of your workplace if it doesn’t match your chronotype. Although he saves it for one of the later chapters, I found the discussion of syncing group timing to be very interesting. Performance is heavily influenced by everyone’s ability to align their personal schedules to the organization’s schedule, or even to external factors such as a commuter train schedule. An organization that rigidly imposes a daily schedule on everyone may exclude individuals who would perform better if they could follow their own timing. Chronotype is yet another dimension of an inclusive climate.

My favorite example of an intelligent choice for alertness that isn’t usually socially acceptable in the United States is the early afternoon nap. Mr. Pink presents data that shows the performance benefit of a short nap, with the optimal nap duration about twenty minutes. He introduces the concept of sleep inertia, meaning the longer you sleep the longer it takes to return to full alertness after waking. A twenty minute nap has a measurable positive impact on alertness without a lengthy period of drowsy sleep inertia time after waking up. The power nap is a real thing.

The positive effect is enhanced by taking in some caffeine just before starting the nap. Caffeine beings to affect our alertness about twenty minutes after it enters our body – so we’ll feel the boost from a cup of coffee right around the time we wake up from our twenty minute nap.

Despite the evidence showing an after-lunch nap would be a productivity booster, if your workplace is like mine, anyone caught taking a nap would endure awkward questions if not outright ridicule from their coworkers. We should be accommodating of anyone who finds their 1300 meeting goes better if they shut their eyes for twenty minutes during lunch.

The importance of the beginning, middle and end

The new ideas for me in this book focused not on the time of day, but on timing. The middle chapters are dedicated to beginnings, middles, and ends respectively. I had not previously considered the importance of those temporal waypoints.

Beginnings are more critical than most of us probably suspect. Although there are countless examples of sports teams achieving victory after a poor start, in many professional endeavors a poor start leads to lagging performance for the duration of the project. People who underestimate the importance of the beginning of their work may erroneously attribute their struggle to factors other than the start, making fruitless changes to get back on track. Mr. Pink suggests the better course of action is to start again. He points out that there are always natural time landmarks that provide opportunities to begin again: the start of a new day, week or month for example.

I love this advice. As I thought about new projects that I’ve started, or my team has started, I couldn’t think of a single example that went correctly right from the outset. We often made several starts, trying and then abandoning an idea for a better one. Although it may seem like wasted energy, I think it’s better to go back to the starting line than to continue down the wrong path. There’s probably no such thing as a false start; even the worst start usefully confirms one path as the wrong one.

Mr. Pink has similarly interesting insights into the middle of an endeavor. There is bad news and good news about the middle, but here’s the bad news first: people reach a low point in happiness or performance in the middle of anything. Research shows that people, on average, are at their least happy around age 47, near the middle of their lives. Similar studies of people at work show that team performance reaches a nadir halfway through a project. Don’t worry, I’m presenting this depressing news well past the halfway point of this article, because the good news about the middle is that crossing the midpoint seems to spark people into a higher level of performance or happiness. The reason the middle is the nadir, rather than the mid point of a continued descent, is that something about being halfway through inspires people to get back on the right track. Leaders should be aware that even after a great start, team performance is likely to lag in the middle, but we can take advantage of that natural inflection point to boost team performance for the last half of the project.

The book presents several interesting ideas about endings, but one in particular stood out to me. Unsurprisingly, people approaching an endpoint seem to feel increased motivation. Mr. Pink shares data about marathon runners that demonstrates this effect. The most common ages for people to run a marathon, especially their first marathon, are 29, 39, and 49. People feel an urge to achieve as they reach the end of each decade of their life. I haven’t yet figured out how leaders can use this insight, aside from perhaps hiring a bunch of 29, 39, or 49 year olds for challenging work assignments, but I laughed out loud when I read about it, as I started this blog as a 39-year old. I never consciously thought that I needed to start writing before I turned 40…but perhaps my subconscious was tracking it that way.

When is worth the time

As I reach the end of my time writing this article, I’m left with a sense of appreciation for Daniel Pink’s book. So much of leadership is being aware of the sometimes hidden factors that make people go. As leaders, we need to be acute observers of these drivers so we can help everyone perform to their potential and make the world a better place. Whenis the only book I’ve read that describes the importance of time and timing to our lives. As a relatively quick read, it’s absolutely a worthwhile investment of a little of your time, as soon as you can get to it.

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