What’s your chronotype? How the best two hours of your day can improve your life

Working with our body clock is important if we want to achieve the best results in our working life. Find your peak of the day.

Do you naturally wake up close to dawn or do you dive for cover and grab another couple of hours of shut eye?

If you’re naturally an early riser, experts say your chronotype is a ‘lark’.

If you’re the person sleeping soundly under the doona until late morning, you’re an ‘owl’.

And somewhere in between these two chronotypes are the ‘middle birds.’ They naturally wake

around 7am and represent more than 60 per cent of Australians.

Our chronotype is mostly genetic and finding a job and routine that fits our natural

chronotype can make the day less exhausting and more productive, says Dr Amantha Imber,

founder of behavioural science consultancy, Inventium.

“We have peaks and troughs in our energy levels over a 24-hour period,” Imber says.

“Knowing your chronotype means you know how to get the best out of yourself – you’ll

know when you will perform better at work, you’ll be more likely to achieve your health and

fitness goals, and you’ll perform better socially, too.”

Understanding how your genes and body clock works could improve your productivity.

Productivity coach, Donna McGeorge, agrees that working with our body clock is important

if we want to achieve the best results in our working life.

“I encourage people to think about their best two hours – if you’re a morning person, then

your best two hours could be from 8am to 10am or from 11am to 1pm. That’s when you

should tackle the most challenging tasks that require mental intensity – it’s not the time to

tidy your desk or go through emails,” McGeorge says.

“Protect those two hours of your working day as much as you can. If someone sends you a

meeting request for that time, don’t automatically default to accepting the invite. Can you

suggest another time to meet outside your best two hours? It doesn’t mean that you can’t

be responsive and available if needed, but as much as you can, protect those two hours for

intense work.”

Most people know when they feel their most energetic, but you can check by monitoring

how alert you feel each hour of the day, and giving yourself a score out of 10. Or you can

reflect back on your day and identify when you felt most productive. Do those patterns fit

the lark, owl or middle bird chronotype?

OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE

Researchers across the world have studied chronotypes to help people optimise their

performance.

One Finnish study found that compared to larks, owls may be twice as likely to underperform because the 9 to 5 work day is stacked against their chronotype.

“About 20 per cent of people are owls and they do their best work when schools and offices

are traditionally closed. If you’re self-employed or working from home, you may have more

flexibility but owls often struggle with 9 to 5 jobs,” Imber says.

Amantha Imber, founder of behavioural science consultancy, Inventium.

McGeorge says the increasing push to work from home, or to work from anywhere, presents

greater opportunities for people to organise their work and social life around their

chronotype.

“The 9 to 5 work construct is a couple of centuries old. There is no benefit in forcing early

birds to stay at work until 5pm when they do their best work early in the day. Similarly,

companies will benefit from allowing owls to begin their working day at lunchtime and finish

later,” she says.

“Everyone wins if we pay more attention to the clock in our body rather than the one on the

wall.”

WHEN YOU’RE AT YOUR BEST

Larks:

Deep or focused work between 7am and 11am

Less demanding work from 11am to 2pm

More deep work from 2pm to 4pm.

Middle birds:

Deep or focused work from 9am to noon

Less demanding work from noon to 3pm

More deep work from 3pm to 5pm

Owls:

Deep or focused work from 4pm onwards

Less demanding work from 1pm to 4pm

More deep work from 10am to 1pm

Georgie Russell, 27, has the perfect job for her Owl chronotype – she’s a professional singer and musician who does most of her best work late into the evening.

THE SINGING OWL

Georgie Russell, 27, has the perfect job for her chronotype – she’s a professional singer

and musician who does most of her best work late into the evening.

“Even when I was six or seven years old I remember being in Dad’s study with him late at

night while he worked. He’s in the corporate world and is wired like me to be most alert

later in the day.

“I naturally wake up at 10am and spend the first hour having breakfast and doing household

chores. In the afternoon I start working – writing music and warming up my voice ready to

perform in the evening. I might record in a studio or have a gig that will start about 9pm.

“When most people are thinking about going to bed, I’m at my peak. I finish around midnight

and go to bed around 2am.”

Russell says she suffered in her old job in mortgage broking.

“I had to be at my desk at 9am. That’s a struggle when you can’t sleep until 2am! Luckily, my partner is also an owl so we operate on the same schedule.”

Originally published as What’s your chronotype? How the best two hours of your day can improve your life