Larks, owls and middle birds: How to structure your day based on your chronotype

Do you know your chronotype?

Think about this: it’s 9am and you kick off your workday with a quick check of your emails and your daily (now virtual) stand-up meeting with your team. You hear about what your teammates are up to and then get back to your inbox which has built up overnight.

During the last two years of the pandemic, you developed a slightly unhelpful habit of checking the news throughout the morning too, waiting for your local news site to release the day’s case numbers. But of course, you get sucked into several other headlines, and before you know it, it’s time for a morning tea break.

What you probably didn’t realise is that you have potentially just wasted your peak brain power time with non-challenging, and non-impactful, tasks.

So when is the best time of day to undertake different types of work activities? The answer lies in working to our chronotype (the natural peaks and troughs of our energy levels over a 24-hour period).

The three chronotypes

1. Larks

   Think of larks as stereotypical morning people, those who are at their cognitive peak in the early morning. Larks represent around 16% of the population and they should schedule their most cognitively demanding work for this time of day.

2. Owls

   Owls are the other extreme, and represent around 20% of the population. As the name suggests, owls have their cognitive peak at night and are best served working on less cognitively demanding work during the day. 

3. Middle Birds

   The rest of us are middle birds, who follow the rhythms of a lark, albeit delayed by an hour or two. If you wake naturally at around 7am or 7.30am, you are probably a middle bird and your best thinking happens before lunch.

All chronotypes have a dip in energy after lunch for a couple of hours. These hours represent the idea time to schedule work that is less cognitively demanding, like checking emails or doing team updates (such as daily stand-ups) or work in progress meetings.

Larks and middle birds have a rebound in energy in the late afternoon, whereas for owls, this is when they start to enter their peak brain power time.

Unsurprisingly, scientists have found that matching your work schedule to your body’s natural 24-hour energy cycle is enormously beneficial to improving productivity.

Assess your chronotype to determine when you should be doing work that requires the most heavy lifting. Then, schedule your most challenging tasks for when your brain is performing at its peak and do easier tasks when your brain is having a dip in energy.

Use the guidelines below to help structure your day (note: timings are approximate — use them as broad principles, not rules).

Larks:

1. Deep, focused work: 7am–10/11am

2. Less demanding work: 11am–2pm

3. Rebound (for additional deep work): 2pm–4pm

Owls:

1. Deep, focused work: 4pm onwards

2. Less demanding work: 1pm–4pm

3. Rebound (for additional deep work): 10pm–1am

Middle Birds

1. Deep, focused work: 9am–12pm
   Less demanding work: 12pm–2/3pm
   Rebound (for additional deep work): 3–5pm