Biorhythms Don’t Exist, but Peaks of Productivity Are Possible
You know a theory is flawed when even its Wikipedia page includes the word “pseudoscience” in its title. The same applies to so-called ” biorhythms “—periods of 23, 28, and 33 days that supposedly predict your mental, physical, and performance readiness for work on any given day. The concept of biorhythms has been hotly debated on social media for years, so you might think there’s some truth to it, but it’s essentially complete nonsense. However, there are other, more scientifically proven ways to track your productivity “peaks.”
The difference between biorhythm and circadian rhythm
The idea behind biorhythms is that your physical, emotional, and intellectual capacities fluctuate rhythmically, rising and falling over the course of a month. Therefore, you should tune into your personal schedule and act when each of these cycles peaks. The first problem here is fairly obvious: this mindset not only dictates that you can or should only be productive once a month or so, but also gives you permission to coast when you find yourself at the bottom of one of these so-called rhythms. If you patiently wait for a biorhythm to peak, your responsibilities and tasks can pile up, leaving you with a mountain of to-dos, and most of them, left unattended for so long, are likely to become urgent.
Scientists have studied this issue and dismissed it as nonsense, but persistent belief in this phenomenon has led to the emergence of scams in which influencers and other scammers try to sell you products that can help you “hack” your own biorhythms to maximize your energy, productivity, and happiness.
Now, you may have heard of circadian rhythms and assumed that biorhythms are basically the same thing. In fact, they are completely different. According to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences , circadian rhythms are the physical, mental, and behavioral changes that occur throughout the day and are triggered by light and darkness. There’s a whole science behind it (chronobiology), but the gist of it is this: you get tired when it gets dark, your body sleeps at night, and you need to be awake during the day to get things done, ideally feeling refreshed. You can spend a lot of energy “hacking” your rhythm, but these are all the obvious things: sleep at night, don’t stress or look at your phone before bed, go outside in the morning, stick to a schedule, etc.
Biorhythms don’t exist, unlike circadian rhythms. You’ll be more productive if you sleep regularly and well. You don’t need to track peaks and valleys or subscribe to silly apps to master this. Instead, focus on quality sleep and making the most of those precious daytime hours. If you’re still looking for a system to fill the void left by the false promises of biorhythms, let’s explore the Yerkes-Dodson law.
Yerkes-Dodson Law
Some peaks and valleys are worth exploiting. The Yerkes-Dodson law models the relationship between stress levels and performance, showing how experiencing some stress and urgency can make you more productive. It’s been around since 1908, when psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson discovered it, and it appears as a curve when plotted on a matrix, just like so-called “biorhythms.” It looks like an inverted U: on the left are your moments of low stress, on the right are your moments of high stress, and in the middle is your peak, or the time when you’re stressed enough to be productive but not completely overwhelmed. The Y-axis shows peak performance at the top and your lowest performance at the bottom, so you’ll notice that your periods of poor performance coincide with periods of too little and too much stress.
When there’s not enough stress, you won’t be motivated to complete a task. When there’s too much stress, you’ll be too anxious to perform well. Yerkes and Dodson’s hypothesis arose from studying the effects of electric shock on mice’s ability to perform tasks. As stress increases, ability also increases—to a certain extent—due to motivation.
So, essentially, there’s a certain “rhythm” that matters, and that’s how your interest and stress fluctuate. You don’t need to spend money on a self-help app or book, but it’s worth paying attention to how interested you are in a task at any given moment, as well as how motivated you are at that moment.
For example, when no one’s coming over, you’re probably not as motivated to clean the house as you would be if they were coming the next day. You don’t feel stressed or urgent. On the other hand, if they were coming in 30 minutes and your house was a mess, you’d be so nervous you wouldn’t know where to start. In this case, your cleaning peak might be the morning before they arrive. You’re motivated and motivated, but not panicked. Apply the same approach to any task you need to complete. Pay close attention to how you feel in the lead-up to it to identify your own peak stress periods and peak productivity times.
It’s helpful to prioritize tasks and carefully plan your days and weeks. For example, Parkinson’s Law is closely related to the Yerkes-Dodson Law. It states that the more time you devote to something, the longer it will take you to complete it, so you should allocate less time overall. Limiting your time to urgent tasks will increase their urgency, bringing you closer to the Yerkes-Dodson peak. Plan your weeks in advance using prioritization methods like the Eisenhower Matrix and task batching , thinking about when you’ll have the exact level of urgency that will motivate you to complete each task.