It is sometimes fun to mix up the order of things – like our alphabet. What’s wrong with going from Z to A? Navy Admiral Grace Hopper had a functioning clock that worked “counter-clockwise.” Mixology can be good. Yet, Routine habits are often BEST!
Here’s a “Z” word that should be of KABOOMER interest – ZEITGEBER (time giver in German). Let’s focus on 2 aspects of daily RHYTHM –
- Photic (all that light/dark, circadian rhythm and melatonin stuff)
- Non-photic (food and social interactions).
- This debuglies.com image is worth many of my words:
Photic, even if I’m, not photogenic: I’m a morning person by nature and professional nurture. I may be lucky or fooling myself that light and dark don’t dramatically affect my naps or restorative sleep. Conversely, my wife cannot nap if it is light outside. Perhaps one day soon we’ll again be able to chase the sun or sunset at 35,000 feet and juggle jet lag for longer flights? For now, I do know that regular bedtimes (except on my teaching nights) are zeitgeber habits to hang my hat on.
Non-photic rituals: As I wrote in KABOOMER, Dan Pink describes WHEN and scientific timing hacks for KABOOMER life. I quote Dan in a NPR interview: “Our problem I think is that we focus very much in our lives. We’re very intentional. What are we going to do? How are we going to do it? Who are we going to do it with? But we give short shrift to the question of when, and it has a big role. It has a big role in health care, as you say. It has a big role in education. Even in sort of the day-to-day performance on the job, time of day explains about 20 percent of the variance in our performance on workplace tasks. So timing isn’t everything, but it’s a big thing.”
WHEN? is the type of zeitgeber question that KABOOMERS answer to form healthy habits to live longer and better.
Yours habitually,
Koach Dave
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