Stop Fighting an Uphill Battle with Your Circadian Rhythm
In last week’s post, we explored ways we can use our brain’s attentional and working memory capacities to find more time throughout the day and be more efficient with our precious waking hours. This week, I want to explore how your brain manages time with its own internal clock and how your sleep-wake cycle plays just as significant (if not more significant) a role in your daily productivity.
If you’re anything like me, you tend to go about your day based on convenience. You fit your responsibilities and leisure activities around your work schedule. If we have that in common, you may also be able to relate with the yo-yoing of energy and fatigue throughout the day. If you sit and think about it for a second, it’s actually very predictable. Let’s take a look at a typical day based around a typical 8 hour work day for a self proclaimed “very much not a morning person”:
...and repeat
UNLOCK THE CODE
Ok, I might be a little dramatic and have some things to work out with my own sleep… But, think about the patterns in your typical day. Do you generally choose to do tasks knowing your own patterns, or do you do them based on a general schema of “wake up, work, responsibilities and fun, bed.”
The reason we can so easily see patterns is because there’s actually a system creating those patterns. That’s the circadian rhythm. You’ve heard of the circadian rhythm, but you probably associate it with sleep. It actually encompasses your body’s full daily cycle of physical, mental, and behavioral functioning. Your circadian rhythm governs your sleep-wake cycle, but it also influences your body temperature, energy levels, attention, mood, heart functions, and more.
YOUR UNIQUE CIRCADIAN RHYTHM
Let me just say, the brain is so cool. Light gets picked up by your eyes and sent to the “master clock” in your brain’s hypothalamus, along with other inputs like sugar, caffeine, hormones, etc. Your master clock interacts with your organ and tissue biological clocks, speeding them up or slowing them down, depending on the input. Your biological clocks and their speeds influence your daily cycle, or circadian rhythm. We won’t spend time trying to decode that more than we need to, but the gist is, there’s so much influencing our daily cycles.
Your circadian rhythm is not identical to that of the person next to you, nor is it the same for you every day of your life. Because it’s influenced by so many factors, you can expect that it becomes interrupted or disrupted. A great common example of this is jet lag after traveling to different time zones. Your circadian rhythm becomes disrupted and your body has to take some time to adjust its rhythm to the shift. Other decisions can shake up your rhythm, including excess sleep, alcohol, and prolonged screen time.
MORE THAN EARLY BIRDS AND NIGHT OWLS
You may be thinking, “Well, I’m a morning person, but my partner is a night owl. How does that hold up?” There are actually profiles of different circadian rhythms, known as chronotypes. Dr. Michael Breus defines 4 different chronotypes, and you can check yours out here. To give a brief overview, your personal circadian rhythm indicates at what times of day you have the most energy and clarity. You might be a lion that gets up early and is most productive in the morning, a wolf that thrives in the evenings, a bear that does best mid-day, or a dolphin that struggles with sleeping difficulties. Your chronotype can change within your lifetime, but you can’t spend your life fighting your personal circadian rhythm. Instead, you can learn from it and synchronize your daily schedule to better take advantage of all the clocks and regulations your brain is constantly orchestrating for you.
SO HOW DO WE HACK IT?
- FIND OUT WHAT YOUR PATTERNS ARE:
Learn about your chronotype. Then take inventory of your energy levels in a typical week. Try using my checklist at the bottom of this page. - DECIDE WHERE EDITS CAN BE MADE TO YOUR SCHEDULE:
Use what you learned to make some changes. Make 1 change at a time so you can be confident the adjustments are responsible for the improvements in your productivity. If you change too many things at once, you won’t know which change made the impact and you’ll probably lose momentum before any real changes happen.
START HERE:
- PRIORITIZE YOUR EVENING:
Consider the actions you take before and at bedtime. Your day really starts the night before.
- CONSCIOUSLY CONSIDER YOUR MEAL & DRINK SCHEDULE:
Think about how you feel after meals. Are you finding yourself more energized or craving a nap after you eat? Are you eating right before bed and having trouble falling or staying asleep? Research suggests it may be beneficial to your sleep and metabolism to stop eating 3 hours before bed.
- SCHEDULE IMPORTANT CHALLENGING OR STRESSFUL TASKS FOR MID-MORNING:
Experts suggest taking advantage of your body’s production of cortisol after a stressful morning activity. Cortisol helps your body to regulate during a flight-or-fight response. Your body doesn’t have the same reaction with stressful tasks in the evening.
- CAPITALIZE ON A TIRED MIND FOR CREATIVE TASKS:
Research shows that we are actually able to accomplish more creative thinking tasks when our brains are at less optimal phases, because our minds tend to wander more when we’re tired. - BE MINDFUL OF THE LIGHT YOU’RE EXPOSED TO THROUGHOUT THE DAY:
Wake your brain up more naturally by starting the day with the morning sun. As the sun sets, avoid as much unnatural light as possible. Stay tuned and I’ll tell you about some cool ways to block out the artificial light. - COMBINE YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF YOUR BRAIN’S ATTENTIONAL CAPACITIES WITH YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR CIRCADIAN RHYTHM:
If you know you’re a morning person and that you need an environment void of distractions to get a complex task completed, maybe you’ll consider getting up a few hours earlier than the rest of the people in your house in order to capitalize on your best time of day. If you’re an evening person, you’ll stay up a little later than the rest of the house. But you’ll have to make compromises to ensure adequate sleep.
SIMPLE CHANGES, BIG RESULTS
My refined schedule synchronized with my circadian rhythm and my work schedule.
Downloadable Circadian Rhythm Tracker
Use my tracker to learn about your patterns and find out where you can make small modifications to get big results!
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DLO
Tayler, Your research and articles are very informative. I have practiced a lot of your findings throughout my life but reading your articles and learning new tweaks, tricks and adjustments to my routine have helped significantly. It’s as though a lightbulb has been turned on again. I look forward to reading more. Thank you for sharing this information and for the motivation!! 🙂
taylercorcoran
Thank you so much!! I’m glad it’s helpful 😊