Houston Southard

Daniel Pink - When

This book is the naturalist nootropic biohacker's wet dream. It's all about making your biological clock work for you. Morning alertness breeds better analytical decision making just as evening disinhibition breeds insightfulness. The chronotypes of circadian rhythms categorize us into rising larks, third birds and night owls. Exercising before breakfast burns 20% more tissue-stored fat than if you burn recent calories during post-meal workouts. Abstaining from caffeine for 90 minutes after waking allows your cortisol to plateau and get the most out of your Folgers. Using a UV light stops melatonin production and catalyzes vitamin d production in your skin. Lunching away from your desk helps disassociate from work stress. 30-minute afternoon napaccinos (because it takes caffeine pills just as long after ingestion to hit your blood) let your ears, eyes, legs, back and mind rest long enough without dropping into groggy stage 4 delta wave sleep.

Dan Pink busted onto the scene with his breakout book Drive which taught employees how to harness the more genuine intrinsic motivation with tips to focus your goals with a mindset pointed toward an internal locus of control. Naturally, this book is full of the same life-hacking tips that made the first one a staple in every large organization, but it's also about recognizing what time of day should be paired with certain tasks. It's about our internal clocks changing with our hormones at certain milestones throughout life. It's about making goals easier by breaking them down, publicizing them, and riding the confidence wave by streaking.

For all the practicality, though, this book is also about the global phenomena that the conception of time has created, namely that before we used clocks, which wasn't too long ago, our chronobiology didn't have the many environmental signals synchronizing our circadian clocks that we do today. It's about the many things we mean by the word time, and how we can induce synchrony within our own lives and in the lives of others. Dan ends on a great little quote: "I used to believe timing was everything, but now I believe everything is timing."

Pick it up while you can. Time's a-ticking.