Thought Leader Interview: Daniel Pink

For those of us who thought Twin Peaks was just a weird TV show, tell us a bit about the hidden patterns of everyday life.

Behavioural researchers have found that we experience a consistent and strong bimodal pattern — ‘twin peaks’ — during the day. Our positive affect — when we feel active, engaged and hopeful — climbs during the morning hours until it reaches an optimal point around midday. Then our mood and energy plummet and stay low throughout the afternoon, only to rise again in the early evening. Put simply, we move through the day in three stages: peak, trough and recovery, and this sequence is true for most people.

One important implication of this pattern is that we are better off doing certain types of work or activities at certain times of the day. During the peak period, when we’re most vigilant, we do better analytic work. Later, during the trough, we should do administrative work, because that time isn’t good for much else. Then, during the recovery period — when our mood is higher but our vigilance is lower — we should do creative work that requires a bit more looseness.

This pattern also has a huge effect on work performance. There is evidence showing that ‘time of day’ explains about 20 per cent of the variance in how people perform on cognitive tasks. Timing is definitely more of a science than an art.

While these peaks and troughs are internal, research indicates that they have external implications. How so?

One thing we know for sure is that the