Chronotype and Learning/Skill Acquisition: How I’m Leveraging My Chronotype to Enhance Skill Acquisition

I should start out by saying that my knowledge on this topic comes straight from the book “The Power of When” by Micheal Breus.

The premise of this book is that our bodies run on their own internal clocks, or our circadian rhythm, and by knowing which type of rhythm our body runs on we can use our time as optimally as possible.

There are four chronotypes that coincide with a member of the animal kingdom that exhibits similar daily rhythms. The Lion (morning preference), the Wolf (evening preference), the Bear (Neither morning or evening preference), and the Dolphin (borderline or full-blown insomniacs).

Once you identify your chronotype, the author goes through almost every daily event and discusses the optimal times for each chronotype to perform different tasks. From when to consume caffeine, when to eat meals, when you’re at your most creative, or your most analytical, most social, strongest, most competitive, or when you learn the best.

It would be impossible for me to summarize even a fraction of the information in this book without you being better off just reading it yourself; however, I will talk about some of the things I’ve pulled out from this book and integrated into my daily life.

My chronotype is that of a Lion (morning preference).

Knowing that I’ve started:

• Doing my most analytical or least desirable work first thing in the morning.
• Delaying my caffeine intake until my cortisol levels take a dip – which is between 9-11 am and 2-4 pm.
  • (This is something that everyone should do. Cortisol, or stress hormone, levels will simply dip at different times for each chronotype)
• Saving my more creative work (like writing this post) until the late afternoon.

Skill acquisition/Learning

Now to the good stuff.

Each chronotype’s peak time is also the time they learn the best. So, as a student you can schedule your studying around those times, teaching yourself the lesson from the class you skipped during your peak time, then reviewing information during your less alert times.

As an athlete I’ve applied this to my training. For instance, I’m currently working to perfect an aspect of my throwing mechanics, so I’ve made a point to have my throwing sessions during my peak time mentally to make myself as receptive to the new movement patterns as possible.

Another interesting tidbit is the importance of sleep on learning. When we sleep our brains work at hyper speed reviewing what we’ve been teaching it. So, want to get the most out of that study or practice session? Take a nap immediately after.

Peak learning times for each chronotype:

Lion 8am-12pm

Bears 10am-2pm

Dolphin 3pm-9pm

Wolves 5pm-12am

You can take a quiz to determine your chronotype here. I also recommend reading the book in its entirety as there is too much useful information to cover in a post like this.

I hope you get as much out of this book as I did.

 

 

 

Questions or comments? Kyle can be reached via email at kyledacbaseball@gmail.com.