We’ve all had that mid-afternoon slump when you just want to crawl back into bed, and many combat that by trying to schedule more exciting ventures at that time–but it turns out there’s a specific time when you should never schedule anything important, according to a new study.
CNN reports that a study in The Journal of Neuroscience found the worst time to schedule important meetings or events is at 2 p.m. Researchers at Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology analysed the brain’s reward response, which is driven by factors such as the value of the reward (you’d be more likely to complete an annoying task for $100 rather than $10) and “internal factors” like optimism.
“This study is testing a third component that may be relevant to this relationship: time of day,” Jamie Byrne, the study’s lead author, told CNN. “Our best bet is that the brain is ‘expecting’ rewards at some times of day more than others, because it is adaptively primed by the circadian system.”
According to the researchers, an area of the brain called the “left putamen” is considered a “core component of reward-related function in humans.” Researchers observed subjects’ activation of their left putamen at 10 AM, 2 PM, and 7 PM. That afternoon slump made itself obvious: 2 PM had the lowest levels.
“Outside of ‘time of day’ variables, multiple lines of evidence suggest that neural activation is higher in rewards regions in response to unexpected rewards, compared to expected rewards,” Byrne told CNN. “A good analogy for this is your response to a surprise birthday party in comparison to a planned birthday dinner. Both are rewarding events; however, when the rewards are unexpected, your brain has to work harder to understand what is happening.”
In other words? Don’t plan anything important at 2 PM and save it for the AM instead.
