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Overview
The instant New York Times Bestseller
#1 Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller
Instant Washington Post Bestseller"Brims with a surprising amount of insight and practical advice." --The Wall Street JournalDaniel H. Pink, the #1 bestselling author of Drive and To Sell Is Human, unlocks the scientific secrets to good timing to help you flourish at work, at school, and at home.
Everyone knows that timing is everything. But we don't know much about timing itself. Our lives are a never-ending stream of "when" decisions: when to start a business, schedule a class, get serious about a person. Yet we make those decisions based on intuition and guesswork. Timing, it's often assumed, is an art. In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Pink shows that timing is really a science. Drawing on a rich trove of research from psychology, biology, and economics, Pink reveals how best to live, work, and succeed. How can we use the hidden patterns of the day to build the ideal schedule? Why do certain breaks dramatically improve student test scores? How can we turn a stumbling beginning into a fresh start? Why should we avoid going to the hospital in the afternoon? Why is singing in time with other people as good for you as exercise? And what is the ideal time to quit a job, switch careers, or get married? In When, Pink distills cutting-edge research and data on timing and synthesizes them into a fascinating, readable narrative packed with irresistible stories and practical takeaways that give readers compelling insights into how we can live richer, more engaged lives.
Details
- ISBN-13: 9780735210622
- ISBN-10: 0735210624
- Publisher: Riverhead Books
- Publish Date: January 2018
- Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
- Page Count: 272
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BookPage® Reviews
When timing is everything
Time: There’s never enough of it, and it slips through our fingers. As the poet Mary Oliver asked, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
In this pair of books, a first-time author and a bestselling author offer their advice on making the most of the time we have.
In When to Jump: If the Job You Have Isn’t the Life You Want, Mike Lewis recalls landing a plum job at a major corporation after graduating from an Ivy League school. He thought he’d achieved everything he could hope for, but at age 23, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should be doing something else.
“For twenty-three years, I had chased plainly laid out goals,” he writes. “Goals that were easy to want to chase because they were popular with the older people around me and were even popular among my own peers. . . . I felt compelled to run faster toward particular goals—at the risk of forgetting what I was hurling toward, and why.”
So did Lewis want a different corporate position, or perhaps a career switch to science or the arts? No. He wanted, somewhat unbelievably, to pursue a professional career playing squash. And he did! Lewis’ book offers practical advice about how—and most importantly when—to make a big career switch. Lewis isn’t the only one who has taken a huge, life-changing leap, and essays by these passionate risk-takers bolster this compelling book. Others who have listened to their own “little voice,” as Lewis calls it, and switched careers include a mechanical engineer who becomes a trainer, a reporter who joins the Marines and a garbage collector who now designs furniture.
I promise I like this next book for more than just its rock-solid, evidence-based defense of naps. Daniel H. Pink, who taught us the secrets of achieving high performance in his bestselling Drive, returns with another deeply researched and lively book. In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Pink reveals that timing really is everything.
No matter where one lives, everyone experiences the same daily rhythm: a peak, a trough and a rebound. It may be at different times for different people (some people are night owls while others are morning people, while still another group is what Pink calls “third birds”). The trick is to take advantage of the time when you’re at your best to do your toughest work.
And that time is rarely midafternoon. Pink noted a British survey that pinpoints the most unproductive moment of the day: 2:55 p.m. Afternoon is when hospital workers are least likely to wash their hands, it’s when Danish schoolchildren fare worse on exams and it’s when prisoners are less likely to get parole.
Throughout the book, Pink breaks down the science of timing by offering what he calls the “Time Hacker’s Handbook.” These are simple tips to maximize your time, such as how to take the perfect nap. This marriage of research, stories and practical application is vintage Pink, helping us use science to improve our everyday lives.
This article was originally published in the January 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
