I read a fair amount of books that could be classified as how to and self help. They are often motivating and remind me of things that I should be doing. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink calls itself a when to book. And that’s not a bad description as it focuses far more on the most useful time to do things and far less on the things that you should be doing. And even though many of the things it suggests are likely to have a less dramatic effect on your life than those suggestions in The Power of Habit or one of Malcolm Gladwell’s books because it focuses on things that you may not already being doing the actual change may be greater.

The primary thesis of this book is fairly simple. When you do things matters. And it explores those in several ways. The first is planning the activities of your day. We all know that there are times of the day we feel better than others, but I had never stopped to think about what those times were or how useful they were. The answer is that, for most people, you will do better early in the day and worse late in the day. And the effects of that can be measured. For example, students who took tests earlier in the day did better on them than students who took them later in the day when you account for all other factors. But it’s not simply being more aware. Parole boards are more likely to give parole early in the day and people are more likely to judge someone based on ethnic or racial biases later in the day when they are tired and so fall back on the simple way of thinking.

Most of this is fairly simple to fix right. Everyone should do things earlier in the day. But it’s nowhere near that simple. Night-owls really are a thing, and it is in part based on age. Teenagers it seems are more likely to be night-owls and so schools which move school openings from 7:30 to 8:30 not only improved test scores but reduced accidents involving teens.

Another valuable bit of the book is when people do things not based on time of day but on time of year or other calendar based views. We all know that people are more likely to start a diet in early January, but statistics show that there are far more of these days than we think. The beginning of every month, every week, holidays and even more can all serve as useful starting points and using them can make you more productive as it’s easier to succeed. This is also true when you give yourself a deadline, even if that deadline is unnecessary and arbitrary so long as it’s firm and preferably public.

More frustrating for many are the sections on the long-term effects of bad timing. For this he showed the effects of people who entered the job market at a bad time. It turns out that it’s not just harder to get a job when unemployment is high; it has long-term effects or your wages. As he explains why it becomes clear, but at its most basic people who change jobs early in their career generally have higher wages. This is, presumably because they’re changing to a job that better suits their goals and talents. But if you’re beginning your career in a poor economy, there are fewer chances for those lateral moves, so you’re more likely to stay at the job you have. And once you’ve been there too long, it becomes more difficult to move to another, more suitable job without losing progress.

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink is a fairly short book and most of the advice on how to effect your day-to-day life is fairly simple and easy to implement. Whether it’s drinking your coffee just a few minutes later or taking a ten-minute nap, it suggests ways that you can improve your day, improve your productivity and the quality of your output and hopefully improve your life and because it focus on when to do things rather than what to do it pairs well with a lot of other books that have interesting ideas on what should be done.