When summary

So there’s substantial evidence that our emotional levels tend to follow a daily pattern – but that doesn’t mean everyone’s pattern is the same. Although everyone shares the afternoon energy trough, there’s a good chance you have friends or family whose schedule is otherwise different.

Studies show that, on average, one in every four people has a differing internal clock, or what’s known as a chronotype. In addition to the normal chronotype, which experiences the morning peak, afternoon trough and evening rebound, there are two others: the night owl and, to use the author’s term for early risers, the lark.

You may know what your current chronotype is, but here’s the thing: we tend to move through these different types as we age. Young kids and older folks are generally larks, while teenagers tend to be owls.

This is why teens suffer when high-school classes start before 8:00 a.m., especially when math class is scheduled for the first period, and they’re forced to think analytically at the worst possible time.

Over the past ten years or so, we’ve been moving in the wrong direction when it comes to taking breaks.

Many schools have reduced, or entirely gotten rid of, recess breaks, in the mistaken belief that this would improve grades. But as we saw in the previous blink, breaks, when timed well, are actually extremely beneficial. They expand your cognitive abilities and improve your mood, acting as an overall refresher for the mind and body.

We like to imagine that, no matter the undertaking, we’ll hit the ground running and get off to a good start effortlessly. But, in reality, we’re bound to encounter a challenging takeoff at least once in a while.

Here’s a helpful tool that the author uses to ensure things go as smoothly as possible with any new endeavor: a premortem. It’s like a postmortem, the procedure a mortician would go through at a hospital, only moved up to before a project even begins. In other words, imagine all the ways in which your project might die and identify all the possible causes of death so that you can be sure to avoid them.

You’ve just learned about the good that can come out of a midpoint crisis, but there’s also a bad version, where people panic and the last leg of a project becomes a disorganized mess.

Here are some tips on how to help your team get through an eventual midway slump and reach a successful finish.

So people overemphasize the importance of endings, and they usually display extreme behavior near the end. This tendency is almost as predictable as our desire for endings to be happy.

And not only happy – but poignant. Poignancy is that bittersweet happiness that is shaded by sadness, an emotion that seems to capture the essence of the human condition. Pixar, with movies like the tear-jerker Up, is a poignancy pro.