You Are Going to Be More Successful if you get up early – and other interesting research!!

Post Written By Valerie Freeman, CEO of Imprimis Group

As I was reading the paper Sunday morning, I came across the Executive Briefing with the headline “Morning types appear to be poised for success.”  Then right under the headline were the words “Harvard Business Review.” So I figured if it was in that venerable publication, maybe there’s something to it.  The research (study of 367 university students) by Professor Christoph Randler  in Germany concludes that “People whose performance peaks in the morning are better positioned for career success because they’re more proactive than people who are at their best in the evening.”

The professor goes on to say that “Though evening people do have some advantages – other studies reveal they tend to be smarter and more creative than morning types, have a better sense of humor and are more outgoing – they’re out of sync with the typical corporate schedule.”

I never knew that we all possessed a “chronotype” which is our tendency to  be a morning or evening type and that about 50% of a person’s chronotype is due to genetics.  I also learned from this article that chronotype typically changes over the course of a person’s life – more people under 30 are evening types – from 30-50, the population is evenly split and after age 50, most people are morning types.

So I’m not sure what to do with all this valuable information – do I want to hire morning people who are more proactive, evening people who are smarter and more outgoing or people over 50 who have all become more proactive!!!  Or maybe I just want to chalk this up to more useless research by academics who have to publish or perish!!