For top productivity, train people to respect their natural rhythms

Over the course of their working lives, most people have been trained — unintentionally, and perversely — to ignore something essential about themselves. We’re talking about their circadian rhythms, which chart the natural ebb and flow of alertness and energy throughout the day. Traditional assumptions about productivity deal with these ebbs and flows as something to overcome.

But that’s not the best approach, and enlightened managers can do something about it.

They can let employees know it’s OK to heed these natural rhythms. And they can help retrain people to respect them. The likely outcome: Better morale and productivity.

Ebbs and flows

Christopher Barnes, an expert on fatigue and recovery who teaches management at the University of Washington’s business school, lays out the way the average employee’s circadian rhythms function during a typical day:

• Start time through midmorning: Alertness and energy start low and build
• Midmorning through lunchtime: Maximum circadian efficiency attained
• Post-lunch through midafternoon: Alertness, energy and therefore performance decline
• Midafternoon through 6 p.m. or so: A second peak gradually reached
• 6 p.m. or so through the wee hours (3 a.m. or so): Alertness and energy reach lowest point

Backwards

Barnes also notes how organizations often get it backward, expecting employees to work through their circadian dips and wasting their peak energy periods.

Here’s how he describes this kind of state: “Many employees are flooded with writing and responding to emails throughout their entire morning, which takes them up through lunch. They return from lunch having already used up most of their first peak in alertness, and then begin important tasks requiring deep cognitive processing just as they start to move toward the 3pm dip in alertness and energy.

“We often put employees in a position where they must meet an end-of-workday deadline, so they persist in this important task throughout the 3pm dip. Then, as they are starting to approach the second peak of alertness, the typical workday ends. For workaholics, they may simply take a dinner break, which occupies some of their peak alertness time, and then work throughout the evening and night as their alertness and cognitive performance decline for the entire duration… All of these examples represent common mismatches between an optimal strategy and what people actually do.”

Action steps

Barnes suggests several actions managers and employees can be trained to take in light of circadian reality. These include:

• Conducting the most important tasks within an hour or so of noon and 6 p.m.
• Scheduling the least important tasks at low-energy times like early morning or 3 p.m.
• Allowing/encouraging naps around 3 p.m.
• Taking advantage of variation among employees in circadian rhythms when scheduling shift work
• Permitting flextime, which gives employees a chance to match work to their personal rhythm

You’ll never be able to take account of everybody’s circadian rhythms, all the time. But if employees are sensitized to their personal rhythms, and encouraged to work with them rather than against them, you’re more likely to have what Barnes calls “energized, thriving employees” rather than zombies struggling with important tasks while fighting to stay awake.

This blog entry is based on the following article: Barnes, C.M. The Ideal Work Schedule, as Determined by Circadian Rhythms. Harvard Business Review, Jan. 28, 2015.