Editor’s note: The AM and PM Dailies often include an item pointing readers to articles, videos or other information the Business Record newsroom has found interesting. We welcome hearing from you on what you enjoy (send to suzannebehnke@bpcdm.com). Here Fred Darbonne shares a review from one of his reading choices lately, “The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing” by Daniel H. Pink. He writes: 

Daniel Pink argues that while we know that timing is everything in the “when” decisions that life confronts us with — when to change careers, deliver bad news, end a relationship, or get serious about a project — we often make these decisions from a “bog of intuition and guesswork.” We believe timing is an art, while a compelling body of research is emerging that shows timing as rather a science that can help us work smarter and live better. We are familiar with how-to books, but Pink wants us to think of this book as a new genre of when-to.

Pink is the author of several award-winning books, including the New York Times bestsellers “Drive,” “To Sell Is Human,” and “A Whole New Mind.” For the last six years, London-based Thinkers 50 named him, alongside Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen, as one of the top 15 business thinkers in the world. 

Pink, with his enviable team of researchers, helps us see the hidden yet predictable daily patterns in our life that oscillate between peak, trough and rebound, and to organize our work according to when we are most creative and productive, and when it is best to do more routine tasks. He shows us the power of lunch and breaks to boost our productivity, even tapping the wisdom of traditional cultures to consider the case for a modern siesta during our trough periods.

The science behind timing enhances our understanding of the importance of beginnings and endings, and how endings can lead us to “sharpen our existential pencils and scratch out anything non-essential,” as Pink puts it. Something similar happens at midpoints when “a mental siren alerts us that we’ve squandered half our time.” He shows us the secrets of group timing and argues that groups must synchronize on three levels — to the boss, to the tribe, and to the heart.

At the end of each chapter Pink offers a mini-handbook to help us apply our new learning in practical ways, each with its own title such as “How to Figure Out Your Daily When: A Three-Step Method,” “Avoid a False Start With a Premortem,” and “Five Ways to Reawaken Your Motivation During a Midpoint Slump.” Equally valuable are his extensive endnotes for the researchers among us, and an annotated list of further reading suggestions for most of us.