We start every day hoping it'll be
great, maybe even perfect. But then, after snoozing, commuting, sitting in
meetings, and grabbing junk food, we realize that, once again, we haven't
exercised, engaged with family and friends, or knocked much of anything off our
to-do list. Staying up late, hoping to be productive, we manage only to watch
TV and check Facebook before collapsing—and then starting all over again.
We can do better.
Believe it or not, most of us have
the opportunity to get more done. We actually spend more time on leisure than
ever before, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, dedicating
about five hours and 16 minutes a day to pursuits we perceive as pleasurable,
like socializing and watching TV (although research finds no correlation
between the latter and feelings of satisfaction).
But we increasingly experience our
free time in small, scattered chunks, says Geoffrey Godbey, professor emeritus
of leisure science at Pennsylvania State University—nibbled half-hours on
Netflix vs. restorative weekends away.
The foundation of any perfect or
even half-decent day is adequate rest. As you can imagine, most of us start out
behind. Our bodies run on an internal 24-hour chrono biological clock; when the
retina captures light, a message sent to the brain
suggests to this clock what time of day the body should think it is. It's a
system that has served us well for most of human history. "But over the
last couple of generations, these natural rhythms have been gravely
disrupted," says Michael Grandner, the assistant director of the
Behavioral Sleep
Medicine Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Our near-constant exposure
to artificial light has made nighttime effectively optional, leaving our bodies
and brains struggling to do tasks that feel off schedule.
Can we fix our day? Absolutely. When
Ken Wright, the director of the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at the
University of Colorado, took eight people camping for a week in the Rockies
with no electronic devices or man-made lights, the group was exposed to about four
times more natural light than usual. "We were able to shift everyone's
internal clock two hours to become in sync with nature
within a week," Wright reports, and his campers began waking up less
groggy.
So there's hope. Researchers in
sleep health,
nutrition,
cognition,
fitness, and productivity
are working to identify where our modern schedules have gone wrong and how to
better set ourselves up for success. We now know that with a handful of hacks,
both large and small, and some changes to preconceived notions—wake-up sex and
bedtime baths?—we can reconstruct our 16 waking hours to maximize productivity,
leisure, and connection, while restoring alignment with our core
chronobiological instincts.
You don't need to follow this
suggested schedule to the minute, but its consistency and healthier routines
can bring you a lot closer to a more perfect day:
6:00
a.m. WAKE UP
No universal wake-up time will fit
everyone, Wright says, but it's ideal to rise when your body is best
prepared—at the conclusion of REM
sleep. We experience our longest nightly period of REM right before we
naturally wake up. When is that? It's so rare to wake without an alarm that
many of us don't know, but the amount you sleep on vacation should give you a
good idea. Then track backward: If you need 7.5 hours of sleep to feel your
best; need to be at work by 8 a.m.; need an hour to get ready; and have a
one-hour commute, then a bedtime of 10:30 p.m., with a wake-up time of 6 a.m.
might be best. If you can rise without an alarm, all the better, because when
you hit the snooze button, you coax your brain to rewind to the beginning of
the sleep
cycle, making it that much harder to wake feeling refreshed,
according to research by Edward Stepanski of Chicago's Rush-Presbyterian-St.
Luke's Medical Center.
6:10
a.m. SEX
Surprise: Our level of testosterone—the
hormone that spurs desire, our energy to perform, and even our generation of fantasies—is
highest in the morning, for both men and women, says clinical sexologist
Kathleen Van Kirk of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality
in San Francisco. We also get an immediate boost in circulation in the morning,
further fostering energy and arousal. Sexual activity is a pleasurable way to
launch the day, not least because it causes a release of mood-elevating, stress-reducing
hormones.
Research on oxytocin
has demonstrated that the hormone surge we get from intimacy can significantly
reduce our level of the stress hormone cortisol and markedly boost positive
communication between partners.
7:00
a.m. BREAKFAST
Eat within one to two hours of
waking, says psychologist and dietitian Ellen Albertson. It may be 10 to 12
hours since your last meal, and your brain needs fuel. "Your brain is only
about 2 percent of your body weight, but it consumes up to one-fifth of your
body's energy intake," she says. "When you raise blood-sugar levels
with breakfast, you increase your energy and improve mood." Bonus: Your
metabolism is at its peak in the morning, so your body efficiently uses most of
what you consume, depositing less in fat stores, says Matthew Edlund, M.D., the
director of the Center for Circadian Medicine in Sarasota, Florida.
7:45
a.m. GET OUTSIDE
The best time to go outdoors and get
moving is within two hours of waking up, says Jacqueline Olds, an associate
clinical professor of psychiatry
at Harvard Medical School. “The UV component of sunlight is low,” she says,
“but the bright light sets you on a good course of wakefulness.”
The morning is a great time for a
workout at your gym as well. Brigham Young University researcher James
LeCheminant found that 45 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous morning exercise
reduces the urge to eat throughout the day, but if that’s not possible, he
suggests that you fit it in whenever your daytime schedule allows, because it
still provides cognitive benefits and fosters restful sleep. “Pick the time
when there are the fewest barriers,” he says, noting that this is often in the
morning because the day’s events haven’t interfered yet.
8:45
a.m. SEND EMAILS
Messages sent between 6 and 10 a.m.
are much more likely to be read promptly than those sent between 10 a.m.
and noon, when people are more focused on work, says Dan Zarrella, the
author of The Science of Marketing.
The average person spends 28 percent
of the work week managing email, one reason 26 percent of us label ourselves
chronic procrastinators. Limiting temptation by quitting your email app when
you’re not using it can be instrumental in reclaiming your day. Start
establishing two times during the workday to review messages—one here, one
later in the afternoon.
9:30
a.m. COFFEE
You may be used to pouring your
first cup much earlier, but it will do more for you if you wait until later in
the morning. “Our circadian clock controls the release of cortisol, a hormone
that makes us feel alert and awake,” Albertson says. “Production is usually
highest between 8 and 9 a.m., when most of us drink coffee,” negating the
usefulness of the caffeine.
This may be why regular coffee drinkers have an average of 3.1 cups a day—the
first doesn’t help much. “Drinking caffeine too early can lead to too much
cortisol, which can disturb our natural circadian rhythms,” Albertson adds.
“It’s much better to drink caffeine between 9:30 and 11:30 when you actually
need it.”
10:00
a.m. TACKLE YOUR WORK
“Alertness follows the same
trajectory as core body temperature,” Edlund says. Both steadily rise in the
morning, then start to decline or flatten by early afternoon. This means
mid-to-late morning is the best time for mentally taxing activities that take
maximum alertness, says Albion College psychologist Mareike Wieth, because we’re
less distractible and exceptionally good at screening out irrelevant
information. (This is especially true for people who are by nature early birds;
similar research finds that so-called night owls experience their cognitive
high point in the late afternoon or early evening.)
10:20
a.m. TAKE A BREAK
Workers who take the most breaks get
the most accomplished. In 2014, the Draugiem Group, a social-networking
company, tracked the habits of its most productive employees. It discovered
that the crème de la crème took 17 minutes of break time for every 52 minutes
of work. Yet even though 86 percent of us know that breaks can aid
productivity, more than a quarter of us don’t take any true breaks other than
lunch. The reason? One in five of us say it’s guilt.
When University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign researchers tested people’s ability to focus on a repetitive
task for about 60 minutes, they offered some participants brief breaks, but not
others. “The individuals who got breaks maintained their focus significantly
better than those who didn’t get breaks,” says study coauthor Alejandro Lleras.
Brief breaks, he explains, enable your brain to shift attention to a different
goal, so when you go back to your original task, the main goal is reactivated
and revitalized. A good break, he says, involves something intrinsically
different from what you were doing before—but not playing an addictive smartphone
game, because “you need to be able to stop easily.”
12:00
p.m. LUNCH
Putting lunch off much later can
cause your blood glucose to decrease, negatively affecting your brain’s ability
to focus, and making you start to feel sluggish, Albertson says. And while many
of us reach for a light lunchtime salad, saving our appetite
for a larger dinner, it’s actually wiser to have the bigger meal at noon. “You
want to eat more during the day when you need the energy and less at night when
you want to go to sleep. Having a large meal in the evening, as we
traditionally do, signals your body that you’ll be awake for a while,” she
says.
It’s also vital to remember the
“break” part of “lunch break.” University of Toronto researchers found that not
taking a proper lunch, away from your desk, can increase fatigue and torpedo
productivity.
1:00
p.m. NAP
If you work at home, or for an
especially progressive company, this is the ideal time for a short nap. Sleep
clears the brain’s short-term-memory storage, making room for new data.
University of California, Berkeley researchers asked people to complete a task
designed to tax the hippocampus, the brain region associated with fact-based memories.
Afterward, half the group napped. Several hours later, when both groups
completed another learning exercise, the nappers performed substantially
better. Limit your own nap to 20 to 40 minutes. “Any longer and you risk
getting into deeper stages of sleep, which will leave you groggy and
disoriented,” Grandner says.
If you’re in an office that’s not
nap-friendly, and you have paperwork, photocopying, or collating to do—anything
that doesn’t require a lot of mental energy—this is the time. “After eating,
blood is directed to the digestive system instead of to the brain. This
postprandial crash causes focus and concentration
to slide,” says University of Iowa psychologist J. Toby Mordkoff, whose
research confirms that executive control is at its lowest in the middle of the
day, leaving early birds and night owls equally susceptible to distraction.
2:15
p.m. LAST CUP OF COFFEE
By this time, your cortisol levels
are starting to dip again.
If you’re feeling it, grab another cup of coffee—your final one for the day. “Caffeine has a half-life—the amount of time it takes for the body to eliminate one-half of the total amount—of between three and seven hours,” Albertson says. “Time your last cup so caffeine is out of your system before you’re ready for bed.”
If you’re feeling it, grab another cup of coffee—your final one for the day. “Caffeine has a half-life—the amount of time it takes for the body to eliminate one-half of the total amount—of between three and seven hours,” Albertson says. “Time your last cup so caffeine is out of your system before you’re ready for bed.”
2:45
p.m. CALL HOME
If you’re not home to pick up your
children from school, this is the time to call or Skype with them. “Most parents
use bedtime to have talks with their children, but it’s not the best idea,”
since kids are tired then, says Cedarhurst, New York, child psychologist Laurie
Zelinger. “To really connect, talk after school while their energy is still
high.” It also gives kids a chance to mull over your questions so they can
share more during a later dinner-table or bedtime chat.
3:00
p.m. HAVE A STAFF MEETING
Analysis by the online scheduling
service YouCanBook.me found that this is the time that the most people will say
yes to a meeting request. It’s late enough in the day so that all attendees can
(at least theoretically) be prepared, and it’s close enough to the end of the
day that people know they cannot push the time much later.
The sweetest spot for a weekly staff
meeting: Tuesday at 3 p.m. “It falls right between the catch-up of Monday and
the slow descent into the weekend,” says Keith Harris, chief architect and
engineer of YouCanBook.me.
4:00
p.m. HAVE A SNACK
“During the day, eat every three to
four hours,” Albertson says. “If you go longer, your blood glucose decreases,
impacting alertness and metabolism.” And don’t feel guilty
about your diet; the right snack—combining protein and complex carbs—can
actually keep you from overeating at dinner. Think plain yogurt mixed with
oatmeal; hummus and veggies; or peanut butter–stuffed celery stalks. A study
published in the journal Neuron found that amino acids in protein
activate the cells responsible for keeping us awake, while sugar inhibits those
same cells.
4:30
p.m. CREATIVE THINKING
Innovation and creativity
actually peak when we’re not at our best, according to a study by Wieth and
colleagues. For many of us, that’s between 4 and 5:30 p.m., although night
owls may experience the same effect between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m. “We found that
during the non-optimal time of day, our cognitive processes are not functioning
as well,” she says. “This means we’re less able to tune out irrelevant info.
But having that seemingly irrelevant info in our heads leads to new ways of
thinking and innovation.”
6:00
p.m. BE SOCIAL
“Early evening is when a majority of
people—whether larks or owls—feel quite alert and sociable, making it a good
time for group work if you’re still at the office, or for getting together with
friends or a partner if you’re not,” Edlund says. The timing may be a holdover
from our hunting-and-gathering days. “Dusk is when people had to be especially
aware to stave off dangers they couldn’t see,” says Harvard’s Jacqueline Olds.
“It was the time of day we’d group together for safety.”
7:00
p.m. DINNER
Consuming food elevates body
temperature, which signals your body to stay awake, Albertson says. Eating
dinner less than three hours before bedtime can interfere with sleep—and
greatly increase your chances of nighttime reflux, according to research
reported in the American Journal of Gastroenterology. A full postmeal
stomach produces gastric distention, causing the lower esophageal sphincters to
relax. Coupled with lying
down horizontally to sleep, these conditions can result in reflux.
8:00
p.m. LOG ON
8:30 p.m. LOG OFF
8:30 p.m. LOG OFF
If you’re a Facebook user, post a
status update at 8 p.m. when your chance of garnering Likes peaks. A study
coauthored by psychologist Stephanie Tobin of the University of Queensland
found, not surprisingly, that all those thumbs-up icons positively influence
our sense of belonging, meaningfulness, and self-esteem,
which can deliver a major late-day mood spike. While you’re online, share the
love. “You’ll satisfy friends’ needs and set up a positive cycle of
reciprocity,” Tobin says.
But logging off is at least as
important. According to the 2013 Sleep in America poll, most of us are still engaged
with a TV, computer, tablet, or smartphone within an hour of bedtime. No matter
what you’re doing on a screen, shut it down two hours before you go to sleep.
Exposure to these electronics suppresses production of melatonin, a
hormone that helps prepare the body for rest. When you delay that signal, you
make it harder to fall asleep.
9:00
p.m TAKE A HOT BATH
It’s not a luxury: Our temperature
naturally dips at night to help us get ready for slumber. Taking a hot bath ups
body temperature, but the rapid drop afterward prepares you for sleep, Edlund
says. To maximize the effect, make the bath as hot as you can comfortably
stand. When you slide in, he advises, relax and do some slow belly-breathing,
and stay put for about 15 minutes or until your forehead starts to perspire.
9:30
p.m. READ
Reading is relaxing and helps
prepare the brain for rest. It's also best in general to read in a quiet,
comfortable setting, and that’s most likely achieved at the end of the day,
says psychologist Michael Masson of the University of Victoria. When we read
amid distractions, he says, the information being processed in our working
memory is disrupted, so we retain less.
10:30
p.m. GO TO BED
It’s bad news for Jimmy Fallon, but
since most of us need seven to eight hours of sleep to stay healthy and perform
at our best, we should turn in before any late-night show kicks off. But
there’s a reason Fallon is so popular: Only 47 percent of us meet our sleep
minimum during the workweek, according to the Sleep in America poll. At the end
of the day—now—there’s only one way to get that sleep: Go to bed. It may take a
few weeks to turn a new and improved sleep schedule into a habit, but the
payoff—a more perfect day—is worth it.
The
Opposite Lives of Night Owls and Early Birds
There’s no question that some of us
like to wake with the sun and others prefer to stay up all night. “Extreme
larks and owls each make up about 10 percent of the population,” reports
Matthew Edlund, the director of the Center for Circadian Medicine in Sarasota,
Florida. It’s not simply personal preference: Research indicates that the
tendencies are at least partly genetic, and MRI studies have found the brains
of self-identified “morning people” to be most engaged at 9 a.m, with that
excitability slowly decreasing throughout the day. For night owls, brain
function peaks at 9 p.m.
It’s generally acknowledged that our
9-to-5 workday, and even earlier school day, favors early birds. It’s probably
one reason that studies find night owls to be generally less happy and healthy
than average—although they can shift their sleep-wake cycle earlier by limiting
nighttime exposure to artificial light and maximizing exposure to daytime
natural light.
If you’re an extreme early bird, you
may want to shift our tips for constructing your perfect day 30 minutes or so
earlier to take advantage of your cognitive peak, which could come as early as
8:30 a.m. And if you tend to tire earlier than you’d like, recharge with a
healthy dose of natural light in the early afternoon to help delay production
of melatonin, a hormone that prepares the body for rest, says Jacqueline Olds
of Harvard Medical School.
Extreme night owls may want to
reverse the general advice for timing creative thinking and problem-solving
challenges, says Mareike Wieth of Albion College in Michigan. Night owls may do
their best brainstorming around 8:30 a.m., when their chronobiological clocks
render them less cognitively sharp and, significantly, least able to censor
their own ideas. Night owl brains’ focus may peak around 4:00 p.m., making that
the best time to solve analytical problems at the office.
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