People don't think much about time for the same reason fish don't think much about water: we're in it.
Daniel Pink has thought about time, reviewed the research on it, and he has some useful things to say in When: The Secrets of Perfect Timing. More specifically, he’s thought about the way circadian rhythms, narrative structures, synchronization, and even verb tenses affect our ability to complete tasks, meet goals, and find meaning.
Riverhead Books, 258 pp., $28 hardcover
The book brims with life hacks and fun facts. For example, the single least productive minute of the workday is 2:55 P.M. There’s great advice here on when to schedule what, when to be especially vigilant, why you should take breaks and what those breaks should look like, and the best ways to optimize beginnings, capitalize on natural midpoints, and leverage our endings. He makes a case for nostalgia, debunks the sacrosanct notion of “living in the moment,” and suggests a linkage between verb tenses and savings rates. You can turn that vague sense that you’re a morning person into an actual plan.
Not all the advice applies in all contexts, and Pink either implicitly or explicitly acknowledges this. Self-employed workers may profitably power nap but cube workers are just asking to get poked with a stick. Handholding may help a chorale group harmonize but it’s somewhere between icky and actionable in a User Experience task force.
When also can be read for its implications for public policy and corporate best practices and as a pro-business corrective to a culture that mistakes frantic busyness and 24/7 reactivity for actual work.
But Pink doesn’t press any of this too hard. He’s a likable writer whose other books included the wonderful Drive, about what really motivates people. He’s likeable because he avoids the sins of business writing—overenthusiastic cherry picking, reductionist reliance on formulas, death by buzzword, charlatanism—while tapping into its energy and creativity.
When takes a big idea—what if we asked “when” rather than “what” or “how?”—and transforms it into an intensely practical, surprisingly resonant one.