The early bird model is not for everyone.
Shenzhen Translation Bureau is its compilation team, focusing on technology, business, workplace, life and other fields, focusing on introducing new foreign technologies, new perspectives and new trends.
Editor’s note: “Early birds get worms.” Our society seems to favor the early people, and many successful people have been advocating the rules of early work and rest. I believe that most of us have tried to get up early, and many of them are suffering and struggling with it. Failure to get up early seems to always be associated with the words “laziness” and “looseness”. But in fact, it is all genes that play a decisive role. Everyone has a different body clock, and there is no need to disrupt the synchronization between behavioral patterns and the body’s own biological clock. The original text is from Medium, author Thomas Oppong, and the title of the article “If You ’re Just Not a Morning Person, Your Genes Might Be to Blame”.
Recently, a new study published in the journal Nature Communications confirms that if you have been suffering and struggling to get up early, it’s likely not your fault but yours Genes. In the article, the author points out that there are more than 300 genes in your body that are related to your inability to “unlock” the active state in the morning. In other words, if you are a person who is good at getting up early, you may feel that you ca n’t achieve higher productivity at night, or on the contrary, you want to get up early, but find that you always have enough energy, and the genes are actually behind it. Decisive effect.
Michael Weedon, a professor of bioinformatics at the University of Exeter Medical School, who led the study, said: “We found that circadian rhythms (also known as the” biological clock ” ) Preference-related genes can be activated more in the brain and retina, which helps us determine which parts of the human body are important for different circadian preferences.
And being good at getting up early or sleeping patterns of night owls is a behavior indicator reflecting different circadian preferences. If we do not belong to the type of early circadian rhythm preferences, but try to get ourselves up early, that is to disrupt the synchronization between the behavior pattern and the human biological clock, our physical and mental health will be negatively affected as a result. Experiments have shown that the inconsistency of actual circadian rhythms determined by the actual rest time and body genes is related to the incidence of heart disease, obesity, and depression.
The society we live in seems to favor the early people, and many successful people have been advocating the routine of getting up early to describe their efficient working state at dawn.. However, the problem is that such a routine is not suitable for everyone. The most important thing is to find a suitable schedule for yourself and optimize the workflow accordingly.
Misunderstanding: Getting up early = more productive
Having more time does not mean you can produce more / better work results. If you deliberately force yourself to wake up at a time that is not suitable for you, it is likely to cause a lack of sleep. Lack of sleep will make you feel tired, which will affect your productivity and make you fall into more irritable in.
For those who are genetically determined to be suitable for getting up early, it is a natural thing to wake up at five in the morning, and it can be said that they are completely awake naturally. That early morning will help stimulate their work. Productive capacity. However, for those who are in different patterns of circadian rhythms, trying to change their natural schedule may lead to inefficient work. In the long run, doing so will disrupt your original biological sleep cycle pattern and reduce happiness without bringing you efficiency or any other truly valuable positive impact.
Your body is a clock
Everyone ’s peak time is different, and our biological clocks are different, that is, this different body clock or circadian preference controls our body and determines how we can keep it with it. Synchronize. Your clock rhythm is different from mine, and the patterns that successful people share that are useful to them may not be useful to you.
Katharina Wulff, a biologist at the University of Oxford who has been working on chronology and sleep problems for a long time, said: “If people can live and sleep according to their natural circadian clock, they will feel much better and their productivity will be higher. , Mental health will also improve. “
The most powerful way to pursue efficient productivity is to listen to your body and work with it, rather than choosing to fight it. Brian Tracy, the leading authority on personal growth in the United States, puts forward the prime time of the body. He said, “Listen to your body’s clock. The prime time inside your body is also the most awake and efficient time of your day. Paragraph. “
In other words, one of the most important suggestions you need to follow to improve productivity is to do your most important work during your prime time, which is the best and most efficient time period. The premise is that you need to track your energy, motivation, and concentration to determine when, where, and how for yourself to find a productive state.
Yulia Yaganova has a good suggestion on how to determine your peak time period. He suggested that you conduct an experiment for at least three weeks. Before the end of each working hour of each day during this period, you should score your energy, motivation and concentration, with a score of 1 from the lowest.To the highest score of 10. This way, after the end of three weeks, you can visually determine your peak time period.
At present, there are more and more studies on the sub-circadian rhythm. These studies also show that our state of the day is driven by the circadian clock sleep cycle, which affects our awake and efficiency states. The results of studies on sub-circadian rhythm clearly show that our human body has been undergoing a cycle period of 90 minutes to 120 minutes. During this period, our body will gradually transition from the state of vigorous energy to the physical state of trough. . Every day we go through such a period of time, from time to time, from the bottom of the valley to the peak working state, and then slide down to the bottom of the valley again. At the end of each cycle, our body sends out some signals, including yawning, distraction, and inability to concentrate. If we ignore these signals, our energy reserves will also slow down with the end of the day. Slow is exhausted.
Professor Nathaniel Kleitman, known as the “Father of Sleep,” first discovered this pattern, and then catalyzed a lot of related research. Keeping in sync with the biological clock in the body allows us to make the most of the different characteristics of the peak and the tired state, to do things that are suitable for different states, so as to exert our best advantage.
Mining your energy state cycle
The biological clock in our body is actually a small cluster of cell population composed of unique “biological clock” genes. These cells are open and closed, and they tell us what time the rest of the body is and what to do.
More and more studies now show that paying attention to the human clock and its effect on energy and awakeness can help us determine different state time periods in a day, and schedule different task types accordingly to achieve the most Good performance. At the beginning of each cycle, we will feel energetic, energetic, and focused, and by the end of the cycle, we will feel tired and thoughtless. Some people feel relaxed about working in the morning, but in the afternoon they feel pain and struggle. If you can notice how you react to different tasks at different times of the day, then you can determine when you can focus on your work, when it is suitable for brainstorming, when you should avoid attending meetings, etc.
Steve Kay, a professor of molecular and computational biology at the University of Southern California, points out that when the human body’s clock achieves all its metabolic, cardiovascular and behavioral rhythm functions in synchronization with light and other natural stimuli, then it “has become our daily life. An advantage. ”
An interesting fact is that no matter which country or region of the world you are in, peak productivity status seems to explode at the same time on weekdays. Project management software company Redbooth conducted a two-year global research survey and found that the productivity of office workers around the world at 11 am