Never Visit a Hospital After 12pm
I drove to the suburbs recently to hear Daniel Pink be interviewed. I’ve been a fan of his since reading Drive. One of our values at Spikeball is to challenge the status quo. No one does this better than Mr Pink. I’ll get to a few interesting anecdotes he shares from his new book, “When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing”, in a bit but for now, I’ll share some thoughts on Drive.
Drive has informed a lot of how I’ve built Spikeball Inc. The book discussed how Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose are the 3 main drivers of what motivates us. This was difficult to accept as I had spent 12 years in the corporate sales world chasing commission checks. I thought money was everyone’s main motivator. I now realize that the lack of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose in my sales roles left little motivation to advance or do much other than chase a commission check.
Autonomy. This is a big one as it’s something that I never had until I was running my own company. I think the lack of autonomy at my past roles was a big reason that I was never all that happy. I did well in my roles but I never really liked them. For the most part, I felt like I was executing a playbook written by someone else.
Mastery. I was good at my sales roles but I never loved the jobs and never had the motivation to become the best. I wanted a commission check but not much else. That is not a recipe for an engaging, happy, successful career.
Purpose. My purpose was to sell more. I’d hit my monthly quota, get a high five from the boss, and then would have a new, higher number the next month. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. There was little to no discussion about values or purpose in my past roles. I think that allowed a sense of apathy to take over and to focus solely on the money side of things. I hit my quota but didn’t have much driving me other than that.
On to Pink’s new book, When. He talks about how we should focus on doing the right type of work during the right time of day. You can, and should, read the book for more detail, but for the most part, he says people follow a cycle of peak, trough, rebound throughout every day. We perform our best at our peak and should make sure the most important work is done during that time. Most people’s trough begins about 7 hours after they wake up. That’s a good time for a nap (seriously). Structuring your day to take advantage of these cycles is key.
A few interesting/random anecdotes from his book ‘When’:
· Never visit a doctor or a hospital in the afternoon. Partial quote from the book: Afternoon patients are 3x more likely (than those that visited in the morning) to receive a potentially fatal dosage of anesthesia and considerably more likely to die within 48 hours of surgery. Gastroenterologists find fewer polyps in the afternoon during colonoscopies than they do in the morning, so cancerous growths go undetected. In the afternoon, Internists are 26% more likely to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics for viral infections. Nurses and other caregivers are 10% less likely to wash their hands (in the afternoon) before treating patients, increasing the probability that patients will contract an infection in the hospital they didn’t have when they entered. Pink calls hospitals in the afternoons, ‘Hospitals of Doom.’
· Most people’s peak time is in the morning. Do not let mundane work creep into your peak time. It’s valuable- protect it.
· People remember the end much more than they remember the beginning or middle. For family vacations, always schedule the best part of it near the end. You and your kids will have much fonder memories if you do this.
· Across the board, high schools that start at 8:30am or later outperform those that start earlier. Think about how important sleep is to high school students. Putting them in classes at 8:30am or earlier limits their chances at success. If your high school kids start before 8:30, it’s time to make a call.
· He shared results from a study that showed that students that take a test in the morning outperform students that take the same test in the afternoon. Peak time for most is in the morning.
· Judges are more likely to give parole after taking a short break. Short breaks from work are important and allow you to sort of reset your mind and start fresh. You could literally spend a few more years in jail just because you faced the parole board just before their break. Get your attorney to fight for a trial time right after the judge takes a break!
· One final point that I thought was interesting — he said chronic stress is primarily the result of a lack of control. Overall, I think my stress levels are in pretty good shape. But, I definitely get stressed when I fear I am losing control over something.
Disagree with these statements or want to learn more? Read the book, it’s good.
And thanks to Daniel Pink for doing the work he does. It forces me to rethink common assumptions and look at things from a new perspective.
