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Copyright © 1996 by Marcia Yudkin
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Twelve Star Publishing, P.O. Box 123, Jefferson, MD 21755

Respecting Your Motivational Rhythms

by Marcia Yudkin, Ph.D.

Here's fuel for fantasy the next time you're hunched tight with stress: In one South American tribe, people never do anything unless they have so-called gana for the task. "Sorry, no gana," you could say if you lived there and felt crazed by the slow-moving mounds of work on your desk. And there, no one - not the president of the company or your own voice of conscience - would urge you to budge until your gana came back.

In our North American tribe, a gana-like excuse would rank with "the dog ate my homework." Instead we rely on mental and physical tricks to keep ourselves going when we're tired, to whip up willpower when motivation flags. The cost in wear and tear on our systems is high.

Research by physiologists and psychologists suggests a less extreme approach than gana, consistent with our ancient wisdom that everything has its proper time. By learning about and respecting your individual, predictable motivational cycles, you can maintain your accomplishments with less stress.

Here's what researchers in chronobiology (the study of biological rhythms), and related fields advise, and why:

1. Observe and plan for daily peaks and slumps.

If you're a "lark," awake and ready to chirp with the songbirds, you're less adaptable to an uncongenial schedule than "owls," who prefer to perform towards and after dark. In larks, a sharp morning rise in body temperature causes early alertness, and a drop, starting mid-afternoon, makes mental and physical vigor fade. In owls, the body temperature cycle runs about seventy minutes later.

Since both patterns are as inborn and fixed as height or eye color, you're wise planning jobs and schedules accordingly rather than expecting discipline or coffee to change your biological druthers. Flex-time anyone?
Blood pressure, heart rate and hormone levels fluctuate daily as well, causing mental acuity for most people to crest late in the morning, about 11am. Short-term memory is 15 percent better in the morning too, while long-term memory improves in late afternoons and at night. During the hours before dawn, accidents peak, independently of the need for sleep.

2. Take breaks at least every 90 minutes.

Newly discovered ultradian, or shorter-than-24 hour, rhythms indicate that marathoning through your day without stopping does not make you optimally productive. Just as you dream every ninety minutes at night, every ninety minutes during the day your brain tends to slip into day-dreaming. If you welcome rather than fight brief periods of fantasy and escape, you'll periodically refresh your concentration instead of hurling yourself headlong toward burnout.

Similarly, sleepiness and fatigue attack in ninety-minute cycles. Until mid-afternoon, the urge to sleep will pass relatively quickly if you're absorbed in something interesting or you reenergize yourself by taking a stretch.

But around 3pm, a biologically determined gateway for sleep opens, so strongly that whole cultures - again, not ours - close down for a few hours and people nap. Avoid scheduling a slide presentation or a high-stress interview for that time unless you're up for disaster.

3. Stay alert for seasonal effects.

For some people, February is the cruelest month: gloom, despair and lethargy deepen as winter lasts, while their spirits lift with the arrival of spring. If that's true for you, find a practitioner qualified to diagnose and treat Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) with a proven remedy, high doses of bright light.

Even without clinical symptoms, you're more likely to gain weight through the darker months. As a remnant from the eons in which our ancestors needed extra fat in winter, you tend to eat more from September through March and store more of what you eat as fat. Start your diet as an April fool, and you'll keep your poundage down with less effort.

By respecting rather than fighting your motivational cycles, you won't need to dream about the exotic allure of motivational gana.

Marcia Yudkin, Ph.D. has published articles in New Age Journal, Natural Health, and Intuition Magazine. She is the creator of the newsletter "The Creative Glow," available by subscription. For information write: Creative Ways, P.O. Box 1310, Boston MA, 02117.


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