Peak time for everything

[Leo]

Dear Friends,

I found a very interesting article on the Peak time for everything. I
have found similar matter in the past on the type of foods we eat, the
types of music that we hear, the types of interactions we have - and
their bearing on our human intercourse and disposition.

This one makes interesting reading.

Please give some feedback and comments.

Rgds
Leo D'Mello
You have one life, live it to the full.

****************************************
The Peak Time for Everything

Pack More in a Day By Matching Tasks To the Body's Energy; Lung Power
at 5 p.m.
Could you pack more into each day if you did everything at the optimal
time?

A growing body of research suggests that paying attention to the body
clock, and its effects on energy and alertness, can help pinpoint the
different times of day when most of us perform our best at specific
tasks, from resolving conflicts to thinking creatively.

Many people are squeezing so much into their days that old-fashioned
time management doesn't work, productivity researchers say. Sue
Shellenbarger on Lunch Break explains how productivity research is
yielding new clues on more ways to be energy-efficient.

Most people organize their time around everything but the body's
natural rhythms. Workday demands, commuting, social events and kids'
schedules frequently dominate—inevitably clashing with the body's
circadian rhythms of waking and sleeping.

As difficult as it may be to align schedules with the body clock, it
may be worth it to try, because of significant potential health
benefits. Disruption of circadian rhythms has been linked to such
problems as diabetes, depression, dementia and obesity, says Steve
Kay, a professor of molecular and computational biology at the
University of Southern California. When the body's master clock can
synchronize functioning of all its metabolic, cardiovascular and
behavioral rhythms in response to light and other natural stimuli, it
"gives us an edge in daily life," Dr. Kay says.

When it comes to doing cognitive work, for example, most adults
perform best in the late morning, says Dr. Kay. As body temperature
starts to rise just before awakening in the morning and continues to
increase through midday, working memory, alertness and concentration
gradually improve. Taking a warm morning shower can jump-start the
process.

Peak Times

The ability to focus and concentrate typically starts to slide soon
thereafter. Most people are more easily distracted from noon to 4
p.m., according to recent research led by Robert Matchock, an
associate professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University.
Alertness tends to slump after eating a meal, Dr. Matchock found.
Sleepiness also tends to peak around 2 p.m., making that a good time
for a nap, says Martin Moore-Ede, chairman and chief executive of
Circadian, a Stoneham, Mass., training and consulting firm.

Surprisingly, fatigue may boost creative powers. For most adults,
problems that require open-ended thinking are often best tackled in
the evening when they are tired, according to a 2011 study in the
journal Thinking & Reasoning. When 428 students were asked to solve a
series of two types of problems, requiring either analytical or novel
thinking, their performance on the second type was best at non-peak
times of day when they were tired, according to the study led by
Mareike Wieth, an assistant professor of psychological sciences at
Albion College in Michigan. (Their performance on analytical problems
didn't change over the course of the day.) Fatigue, Dr. Wieth says,
may allow the mind to wander more freely to explore alternative
solutions.

Work & Family Mailbox

Of course, everyone's body clock isn't the same, making it even harder
to synchronize natural rhythms with daily plans. A significant
minority of people operate on either of two distinctive chronotypes,
research shows: Morning people tend to wake up and go to sleep earlier
and to be most productive early in the day. Evening people tend to
wake up later, start more slowly and peak in the evening.
Communicating with friends and colleagues online has its own optimal
cycles, research shows. Sending emails early in the day helps beat the
inbox rush; 6 a.m. messages are most likely to be read, says Dan
Zarrella, social-media scientist for HubSpot, a Cambridge, Mass., Web
marketing firm, based on a study of billions of emails. "Email is kind
of like the newspaper. You check it at the beginning of the day," he
says.

Boost your mood with online socializing:
Posts made to Facebook at 8 p.m. tend to draw the most 'Likes,' a
Hubspot study shows.
Reading Twitter at 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. can start your day on a cheery
note.

That's when users are most likely to tweet upbeat, enthusiastic
messages, and least likely to send downbeat tweets steeped in fear,
distress, anger or guilt, according to a study of 509 million tweets
sent over two years by 2.4 million Twitter users, published last year
in Science. One likely factor? "Sleep is refreshing" and leaves people
alert and enthusiastic, says Michael Walton Macy, a sociology
professor at Cornell University and co-author of the study. The
cheeriness peaks about 1-1/2 hours later on weekends—perhaps because
people are sleeping in, Dr. Macy says.

Other social networking is better done later in the day. If you want
your tweets to be re-tweeted, post them between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.,
when many people lack energy to share their own tweets and turn to
relaying others' instead, Mr. Zarrella says. And posts to Facebook FB
+1.68%at about 8 p.m. tend to get the most "likes," after people get
home from work or finish dinner. At that time of day, they're likely
to turn to Facebook feeling less stressed. "You have less stuff to do
and more time to give," says Mr. Zarrella.

Best time for kickboxing? Research says it's late afternoon.

Tossing a Frisbee? Likewise

Late-night drama can be found on Twitter, where emotions heat up just
before bedtime, between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., says Scott Andrew Golder,
a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University and co-author of the Twitter
study. At that time, people tended to send more emotion-laden tweets,
both positive and negative. Tired out by the workday, but also freed
from its stresses and demands, people become "more alert and engaged,
but also more agitated," Dr. Macy says.

When choosing a time of day to exercise, paying attention to your body
clock can also improve results. Physical performance is usually best,
and the risk of injury least, from about 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., says
Michael Smolensky, an adjunct professor of biomedical engineering at
the University of Texas, Austin, and lead author with Lynne Lamberg of
"The Body Clock Guide to Better Health."

Muscle strength tends to peak between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. at levels as
much as 6% above the day's lows, improving your ability to grip a club
or racquet. Another boost for physical strength comes from the lungs,
which function 17.6% more efficiently at 5 p.m. than at midday,
according to a study of 4,756 patients led by Boris Medarov, an
assistant professor of medicine at Albany Medical College in New
York.
Eye-hand coordination is best in late afternoon, making that a good
time for racquetball or Frisbee. And joints and muscles are as much as
20% more flexible in the evening, lowering the risk of injury, Dr.
Smolensky says.

These body rhythms hold true regardless of how much you've slept or
how recently you've eaten. In a 2007 study at the University of South
Carolina at Columbia, 25 experienced swimmers did six timed trials
while sticking to an artificial schedule that controlled for variables
like sleep, diet and other factors. The swimmers' performance still
varied by time of day, peaking in the evening and hitting bottom at
around 5 a.m.

Is there a best time to eat? To keep from packing on pounds, experts
say, limit food consumption to your hours of peak activity. A study in
Cell Metabolism last May linked disruptions of the body clock to
weight gain. Researchers put two groups of mice on the same high-
calorie diet. One group was allowed to eat anytime; the other group
was restricted to eating only during an eight-hour period when they
were normally awake and active. The mice that ate only while active
were 40% leaner and had lower cholesterol and blood sugar.

While more research is needed on humans, Dr. Kay says, the research
suggests that "we are not only what we eat, we are when we eat."