Here’s What Science Says About Peak Performance Times

Like much of the rest of the country, I just finished devouring HBO’s gritty medical drama, The Pitt. As much as I love Dr. Robby and the rest of the show’s day crew, around whom the series revolves, it always thrills me when their grueling, 15-hour shifts start to wind down and the night shift shows up. 

It takes a specific kind of person to become an emergency room doctor, and an even more specific kind to become one who particularly loves working overnights. As the night shift’s attending, Dr. Abbot, tells his staff in a pre-shift pep talk, “We are the night crawlers. We deal with the weirdest and the wildest because — ” and here the group says in unison — “we are the weirdest and wildest of them all.” 

This delightful scene got me thinking, and not just about how grateful I am that there are men and women out there who are staffing our hospitals in the wee hours of the night. It also reminded me that everyone has their own circadian rhythm, the internal clock that governs when they feel their sharpest. 

As a founder, I used to assume that productivity was mostly a matter of discipline — that if someone wasn’t doing their highest level of thinking during core business hours, they simply needed better habits. I was wrong. What I’ve learned, both from building Jotform and from watching how our team actually operates, is that peak performance times are something you have to discover and build around.

The science behind circadian rhythms

Contrary to the perception that people are either early birds or night owls, it turns out there’s a whole range of hours when one may be predisposed to do their best thinking. For me, I’m sharpest in the morning; by 3 p.m., I have to fight to stay focused. That’s hardly the case for everyone — in fact, recent research from the Journal of Sleep Research found four discrete circadian profiles, including but not limited to those who hit their stride in the afternoon. 

What determines which profile you fall into? Largely genetics, though age plays a role too — teenagers and young adults tend to skew later, while older adults are often at their best earlier. Light exposure, exercise and even meal timing can nudge your rhythms, but nothing you do will fundamentally rewire them. You are, to a significant degree, born with your clock.

Why should leaders care? Because understanding how your employees operate best has a direct impact on their effectiveness. When we schedule our most demanding work without any regard for when our people are at their cognitive peak, their performance is going to suffer, and your bottom line is, too.

Building around your teams’ best hours

Presumably, you already know when you, personally, work best. If not, I suggest keeping an energy journal to note the times of day you feel alert and motivated, and when you start to flag. 

But leaders tend to have more flexibility than their teams — as a CEO, no one is raising any eyebrows about my comings and goings from the office. I can head out for a midday walk or have a long lunch with a colleague, and not worry about what my supervisor will think of my absence. It’s one of the perks of being the boss. 

Your employees don’t have that luxury. And many won’t volunteer information about their peak hours unless you make it explicitly safe to do so. Writing for Harvard Business Review, management professor Stefan Volk suggests using a free tool, like Munich ChronoType Questionnaire, to learn more about your team members’ most productive hours. “Used thoughtfully, those assessments reveal where energy levels align and where they diverge, helping leaders decide when to schedule demanding discussions, assign complex tasks and hand off less demanding work,” he writes. 

Obviously, it’s not possible to completely redesign the standard workday. But it is possible to be more conscious about what tasks are completed when. If you know your lead engineer is most focused in the late morning, for example, that may not be the best time to schedule your weekly check-in call. For collaborative projects, an awareness of everyone’s chronotype can help determine how to determine when the bulk of work gets done. 

At Jotform, I find it’s helpful to lead by example. Aside from having some necessary overlap during the day, I am agnostic as to when employees do their work. For me, mornings are my deep work time, and I don’t schedule anything superfluous during the hours when my mind is at its sharpest. When leaders model this kind of self-awareness, it gives employees permission to do the same.

Dr. Abbot’s night crawlers thrive in the wee hours, and that’s great for them (and anyone with a 3 a.m. emergency). It’s highly likely that some of your team members do, too. By building around when your people think their best, you’re encouraging them to perform at their highest level. And who doesn’t want that?

Like much of the rest of the country, I just finished devouring HBO’s gritty medical drama, The Pitt. As much as I love Dr. Robby and the rest of the show’s day crew, around whom the series revolves, it always thrills me when their grueling, 15-hour shifts start to wind down and the night shift shows up. 

It takes a specific kind of person to become an emergency room doctor, and an even more specific kind to become one who particularly loves working overnights. As the night shift’s attending, Dr. Abbot, tells his staff in a pre-shift pep talk, “We are the night crawlers. We deal with the weirdest and the wildest because — ” and here the group says in unison — “we are the weirdest and wildest of them all.” 

This delightful scene got me thinking, and not just about how grateful I am that there are men and women out there who are staffing our hospitals in the wee hours of the night. It also reminded me that everyone has their own circadian rhythm, the internal clock that governs when they feel their sharpest.