Dan Pink | INBOUND 2019

your most recent book win is all about the secrets and and science behind perfect timing in particular one of the things you talk about a lot in there is like power of breaks and drinking breaks and all that can you elaborate a little bit on that and why that really is so important yeah great that's a great question I'm glad to talk about that so so what I guess the top line view of all of this is that if you look at well let me let me take two steps back here there's this work on timing it the mistake that we make is when we make our timing decisions we make them based on intuition and guesswork and we should be making it based on evidence there's a lot of evidence out here on on timing and some of the evidence has to do with bricks and what the evidence tells us about brakes is that brakes are woefully woefully under sold we should be taking more breaks and we should be taking certain kinds of breaks and so at a very top level there's this there's this view I think it's a very American view it's a very somehow like Americans from all races and walks of life just simply stepping I mean true in Massachusetts sort of you step on the soil of America and sort of through you bottom of your shoes you begin to get these very puritanical values even if your family has no connection to the Puritans at all and these puritanical values are like powering through is how you get more work done powering through is good for you powering through is morally virtuous and what the evidence says is that is not true and it's totally changed my view and what the evidence tells us is that is that I used to think that amateurs took breaks and professionals don't it's the exact opposite professionals take breaks amateurs don't and what we need to start thinking about is brakes as part of our performance rather than a deviation from our performance as integral to our performance rather than a kind of a sort of a turn away from our performance and you see this in a whole range of things you see it in medicine where if you give doctors and nurses and brakes they actually perform better on surgery they're more vigilant in their care you see it in the work of certainly an athletes athletes bill breaks into things you see it in a whole range of different brain power tasks where if you give people their some really really good research showing that kids do worse on standardized tests if they take the test in the afternoon versus the morning significantly worse but you can get those scores back up if you give them 20 minutes to run around before they take that afternoon test scores go back up so breaks matter to our performance the other things forgive the long-winded answer well they need to take a break from this answer is is that we know about the right kinds of breaks to take and this is really important that all breaks are not created equal we know is we have a very good from the evidence a very good kind of set of design principles we know that something is better than nothing so even taking a one-minute break is better than not taking a break at all one thing I try to do especially when I'm on deadline is what I call the 22 is what people call the 20 20 20 break which is it every 20 minutes look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds even that kind of thing can restore energy we know that social is better than solo so that breaks with other people are more restorative in the breaks on our own even for introverts we know that some amazing I mean I like to see all these folks outside here we know that breaks outside are more restorative than breaks inside we know that breaks where you're moving or better than breaks where you're sedentary and we know that breaks where you're fully detached are better than when you're semi detached so you actually have to take a break don't look at your phone don't talk about work well I'm glad you mentioned to the piece about like when you're on deadline like that sort of that short example because some of the things that strike me in this type of stuff is it it all sounds great yeah but how do you practically do some of this stuff when maybe dictating your own break schedule isn't entirely in your control or you work with people who don't have that same mentality and so do you have tips and advice for doing this but working within a larger construct that might not be bought in yeah absolutely that's just a really really great point and and it's a so so one thing would be these what what what are called micro breaks which are these very very short breaks they can be restorative it's a lot of bang for the buck the other thing is really just to start small so so don't so if you're if you're an individual an organization that doesn't necessarily prize these kinds of things you know just be smart about it so don't say oh I'm gonna take a two-hour siesta today everybody you see you later what instead what you do is like don't ask for permission just I'm convinced it if everybody in the workplace took each afternoon one 15-minute walk outside with someone they liked talking about something other than work you would see gains in productivity so just start small and and I think that the other point you make learn is is really interesting too about how in the MA of things going on we sometimes neglect that yeah and so one of the things that I've started doing is is actually literally scheduling a break and and you know MIT just even so you just like on your like if you had a meeting on your calendar you'd go to the meeting right being time to go to the meeting and so if you schedule like 3 15 15 minute walk break you start you start adhering to that so start to start small and schedule it yeah but I have a tip because I have those in my calendar but if you do them at the same time every day people figure it out so you got to do them at random times good point that's really good that's the other thing don't do in an Outlook just do it on your phone well that's yeah yeah similarly in the book there's also some science in there around like the cycles that we're all on and some people being morning trouble and being productive there some people being evening people their ratios the question though is again like how do you identify who you are and identify who somebody else is and work together another great question yeah so on so so what you so what you're talking about for the folks who haven't looked at the book art is what's called a chrono type which is basically a morning person or an evening person it sounds a little like folklore is actually science there's a whole field of chronobiology that this studies this some of us are naturally wake up early and go to sleep early a lot some of us wake up late and go to sleep late a lot of us are in the middle and for yourself there are instruments out there you can find online there's something called the Munich chrono type questionnaire the MCT queue there's something called a morning evening this questionnaire the meq there's also a very simple back-of-the-envelope way to figure out your chrono type and we could I could do it with somebody right here in 30 seconds if you want it and want to have that okay yeah so well I saw I'll go to this guy right here and I just happened to see him first sorry about that we can you we can do you afterwards so tell me your first name drew okay so drew I want you to think about this is what quanta biologists call a free day a free day is a day you don't have to wake up to an alarm clock you're also not exhausted and trying to catch up on sleep you can just like wake up and go to sleep when you feel like it so on a typical free day when would you typically go to sleep 10:30 okay so let's say 11:00 and then on and when would you typically wake up again on a free day you know alarm clock get up whenever you want 7:30 okay so I'm gonna go with 10:30 just go I don't have to do the halves so 10:30 to 7:30 so that's nine hours of sleep four and a half so what I'm trying to do is figure out your midpoint of sleep so your midpoint of sleep would be 3:00 a.m. all right yeah midpoint of sleep would be 3m and here's what here's what we know if your midpoint of sleep is before 3:30 you're probably a lark if your midpoint of sleep is after 5:30 a.m. you're probably an al and if your midpoint of sleep is between 3:30 and 5:30 you're in the middle so you would be you would be a lark not a super strong lock does that seem logical to you yeah yeah so you're better off doing like you're more analytic work early in the day and you're more insight work later later later in the day now when it comes to other people it's harder mm-hmm and so but I actually think that that knowing people's chrono types can be really useful so if I'm a boss I'm not okay first of all like how do you feel about working all-nighters how do you feel yeah or how do you feel like having a boss you say okay yeah we're gonna be here till 11 o'clock at night well that's it but okay so okay so what so drew you in the box okay so so so here's the thing so suppose that you have somebody who is anybody tests much more later in the day more of an owl okay so tell me your first name karna Carlos sorry so Carla so Carla's a now so suppose that Carla's in your organization all right she's an owl all right don't make Carla come to an 8 o'clock a.m. strategy meeting all right so it's that kind of thing so just knowing a sense of people's chrono types you can make some adjustments based on basically not how do you feel but 8 o'clock in the morning meetings Carla right but Carla might be good at like maybe at 9 o'clock at night you're feeling pretty good about stuff so so that so that's it so it's just a matter of just knowing that is you know allows us to make small decisions to do a little bit better how did you come to this research like how did you get on the topic of timing and when and writing that book you know what I was actually um I was actually bullied or not I actually had written a proposal for an entirely different book and and then I realized how personally frustrated I was because I was making all kinds of decisions myself like like when should I'm a writer when should one of the day should I write when one of the things that I was really concerned about or interested in like when should exercises a better exercise in the morning is a better exercise later in the day and I found myself like I was making these decisions and I was doing it in a totally half-assed way and I said there's got to be a better way to do it and so I started looking around for some guidance and it didn't exist and so then I started looking at the science and said well there's a lot of science here and I was like this is a book that I wanted to read no one had written it so I had to write it myself is it I also got to write this so I could read it love it yeah is it possible to get too bogged down in the science of like I have to work out at this time because that's when the only time it's gonna be good for me and like all of that you don't have advice I guess to not fall into that trap yeah I mean I think that what you want to do is you you I mean what I think in general when it comes to how we lead our lives and this is a it's it's it's interesting that we want a mix of kind of loose and tight so we do want to have some kind of structure in our schedule but so so for me it's like I know that I'm better off I know that I'm better off you know for me getting to my office in the morning and maybe like at 8:30 or so cuz I'm not I'm a little bit I'm larkey but not as strong of a lark si si drew so 8:30 but if I get to my office at 8:40 it's like I'm not gonna spend the next 20 minutes beating myself up on that you know it's like okay yeah we're gonna aspire to do that and you don't want to be overly rigid but you want to have some you know you want to have so so if you think about let's like let's take exercise so if you're better off exercising in the late afternoon and early evening you know if you miss a day or two yeah you missed a day or two so you know so what's the next question that you're looking for the answer for that you're gonna need to write a book to answer oh good question I don't know I'm trying to figure out I'm trying to figure out that right right now I mean writing a book is some of you've probably written books some of the millions of us watching at home I probably written books on writing books a giant pain in the ass it's really really really I mean it is it's really really hard it's really really hard so you have to find a topic that you really are really really really really interested in so I've actually gone down the road to research two topics one of which I was wrong about so I had an idea and it turned out to be not true and then another one it was like oh my god if I have to spend three years working on this I'm gonna bang my head against the wall is that the the normal timeframe three years yeah basically I figured out yeah I like to have our year to research in a year - right generally and then and then I build in a you know another year just to for you know what writers do best which is crafts the nation and self-loathing so Rachel Botsman was up here yesterday and she was talking a little bit about her process and I found it really interesting she said that as she's researching a topic and writing a book or anything she draws the ideas is there anything in your sort of writing process that helps you materialize what you're what you're thinking through yeah there are I tend to be pretty I tend to be pretty analog even though I you know I'll use Evernote and all that kind of stuff and the and I use dry I rely on Dropbox like if if the main Dropbox server ever got attacked by North Korea my life would be over I mean I would basically have nothing to do and so but that said I don't I I like to I like to see stuff you know so I will write out like just lists of words I wonder what this word is has to do with anything or questions and either I have a big thing of whiteboards in my a big kind of whiteboard ish wall in my office I also will often use giant what do you call them like stick notes yeah yeah yeah like like post-its but the like the poster size ones and will write stuff on there and plaster those up and I will like I literally sometimes will turn in my chair and look at an array of those giant stickies and just literally spend 45 minutes just looking at them my family thinks like oh my god there he is again he's been day drinking and so that that helps me process things I also am I also use a lot of paper believe it or not I mean paper files and things like that yeah why like why paper what does it do for you it's hard to put into words you know for me I think it goes back to being able to see being able to see stuff I also feel like I mean maybe I'm completely delusional I feel like I read better on paper than I do on a screen I feel like I process and understand more it could be because it could be a generational thing you know because well not like when I was a kid learning how to read and whatnot there weren't that were really many screens you know but I feel like I just and maybe there's some kind of weird psychological thing where I just find it comforting to be able to type something yeah I understand you've been up here with us you've been doing your spotlight talk if you could leave this inbound audience with just one thing to take hold on to and take away from your time here what would that be I think on the question of timing and even on your first question about brakes would be to be we just I feel like everybody could up their intent I hate this word it's a little clumsy intentionality that that a lot of times we're doing things you know based on default settings based on kind of just stumbling through things there's a great line from William James taught at Harvard father of psychology started off as a philosopher basically founded the field of psychology and he has this great line and one of the things that he wrote called he says most of us go through life only half awake you know yeah and I feel I made myself like sometimes I'm like I'm only half awake and if you just sort of say hey wait a second you know certain moments in the beginning of the day or somewhere in the day saying okay am i half awake or am i fully awake and my intentional or not I I just think you just it's just more interesting you learn a lot more Elizabeth Gilbert was here tonight one and I think she set everybody off on a good intentionality path oh good yeah yeah okay we here's this great thing we're about just like like you know the other thing that I would leave you with boring and Liz Gilbert stuff is is this showing up if you want to do work show up yep you know she has this whole thing where it's like you know if you sit around waiting for the muse to visit you you're never gonna get any work done but if you show up every once in a while the muse will come knock at your office door absolutely one final question what does inbound mean to you you know what I'm a big hub so I fan I've been to inbound I'm inbound before I think that what's interesting is the overall approach of HubSpot and inbound and the whole world of say content marketing is really interesting because it's really it's about education alright we're not trying to hoodwink people we're not trying to deceive people we're basically saying hey I found out some interesting stuff let me share it with you what do you think and to me that's really engaging and I think that that's one reason why you have these ginormous armies of P from all over the world coming here I was here a few years ago as well and now it's like holy-moly like what the hell is going on yeah I know I know it's more than doubled since the time you were here yeah it's crazy well thank you so much for coming back thank you for having me thank you for stopping by the studio and thank all of you for being here thanks a lot [Applause]

Channel: INBOUND

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Keywords: the inbound studio, inbound studio, inbound, innovative, leader, thought, inspiring, inbound19, inbound2019, marketing, sales, growth

Id: WgqzaZRG50g

Length: 17min 46sec (1066 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2020