Where do you get your energy from? When do you feel the most energised? Are you a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed morning person or a night owl?
Psychological scientists have long known that people vary in the extent to which they perform optimally during different times in the day. Some people immediately “switch on” in the morning, and others take far longer to get started.
A Question of Energy
The phenomenon is a question of energy, albeit psychological or neurological energy. Some people have more energy early in the day, some have more later in the day. Another measure of energy is the influence that social interaction has on your energy levels. Introverts gain energy by being alone (and interacting drains them), while extraverts gain energy by interacting with others (and lose energy when being alone). Ambiverts fall somewhere in the middle of this continuum.
So, if time of day affects your energy levels, and interaction with people also influences energy, maybe there is a relationship between the two? It strikes me that there may be a relationship between time-of-day energy and interacting-with-people energy.
For one, if we generally interact with people at work mostly in the morning, then morning-person introverts should cope better than night owl introverts. Morning-person extraverts may feel especially energised, while their night owl counterparts may have lower energy levels.
If you’re intrigued by this question (I hope!), why not give me a hand in finding some answers? Take our quick survey by clicking on this link. I promise it won’t take much of your time, and you will be doing science!
In the next instalment of this blog post, I’ll be sharing results with you. If that’s not pretty cool, I don’t know what is!
