If you’re a sales leader, then you spend a lot of time thinking about your team’s productivity. You know there's a direct line between daily activities like prospecting calls and emails and revenue. You also know that in the current global pandemic, which has forced many teams to WFH, there's an added challenge to keeping your team motivated and focused (a concern also shared by your team).
In an earlier post, we showed how meeting your sleep need is a fundamental requisite for sales success. Here we dive into the second key lever to productivity: your circadian rhythm.
Maybe you’ve started researching methods and techniques to boost wellbeing and performance. We can save you some time: there’s a deep body of research showing that managing sleep debt and understanding your circadian rhythm can unlock new levels of focus. This is what's known as the Two Process Model of Sleep Regulation, and it's these two laws of sleep science that are the driving force behind the ĢƵ app.
Sleep debt refers to the cumulative hours of sleep lost over a period of roughly two weeks, relative to your sleep need. In the ĢƵ app, you’ll find your sleep debt on the home screen. The bigger this number, the more likely a person is to struggle with key behaviors for sales, like decision making, verbal acuity, and empathy.
But what about circadian rhythm? One way to think of it is as your internal timer that tells you when to be awake and when to be asleep. This means it affects the duration of your sleep and what your brain does at night.
The circadian rhythm also modulates our waking behavior, affecting peaks and dips in energy throughout the day. It has a direct bearing on our focus, and a number of , including attention, our ability to learn new skills, and working memory — the building blocks of productivity. It’s no wonder then that circadian misalignment (such as when you’re jetlagged, or just not keeping regular sleep hours) is associated with and other deleterious mental and outcomes.
It helps to think of your circadian rhythm as your own daily "energy schedule"; a rolling wave of energy peaks and dips across the day. During the two natural windows of high alertness and wakefulness, which, for many, fall in the late morning and late afternoon, every cell in your body is naturally programmed to be alert and ready to perform. During your dip, which generally occurs in the early afternoon, your body is naturally programmed to be relaxed and in recovery. If you're carrying sleep debt, you may feel your dips amplified significantly. Low to no sleep debt will optimize the peaks.
While the general concept of circadian rhythm is certainly helpful to know, it's most useful to have a tool like ĢƵ since your rhythm is both unique to you and changes every day (based on recent light exposure and your chronotype - the "bias" of your internal clock.) ĢƵ’s Energy screen shows you your annotated circadian rhythm, giving you a framework for scheduling your daily activities to make best use of your energy and set you up for a good night’s sleep.
You as a manager might expect your employees to be at their best at all hours of the workday, but an understanding of the circadian rhythm shows that's an unrealistic expectation. Likewise, employees may want to be their best at all hours, but their natural circadian rhythms will not always align with this desire. One way to see this play out in the real world is in the study of the timing of athletic achievements. Indeed, , the time of day when body temperature is the highest. In the NFL, during Monday Night Football, because they're playing closer to this second peak. West Coast teams beat East Coast teams 66% of the time, while West Coast teams beat the spread 70% of the time.
So, how can you put this information into practice?
If you're trying to optimize the work of a team whose activities need to be synchronized, you'll need to make some generalizations. Plan your most important tasks for when people are at or near their peaks in focus (within an hour or so of noon and 6 pm). Schedule tasks requiring less focus within 90 mins of waking, early afternoon, and later at night.
However, the real opportunity arises at the individual level, which is why educating your team about the circadian rhythm and having them use an app like ĢƵ is so important. When employees are able to schedule their work in a way that best fits their energy schedule, that's when true productivity gains will occur.
How We Suggest Sales Teams Structure Their Work Day
As a jumping off point, here's a schedule of daily sales activities, optimized for productivity:
There’s an entire industry of books, , and gadgets purporting to boost productivity. In truth, none of this advice will help until you've minimized your sleep debt and aligned your activities with your circadian rhythm. Interested in learning more? . Please also email us at [email protected] to go deeper on anything we've discussed here.
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