How to start chronoworking
Because I should probably have a standalone post for the term I made up.
I coined the term ‘chronoworking’ back in January, when I said I hoped it would become a trend for 2024. Since then, chronoworking has been featured by the BBC, Forbes, Huffpost, Stylist (I work there, so yes, I did push for this one), Newsweek, Fox Business, and more. It’s reached Australia, Spain, and Poland. But I realised, in the midst of all this hype, I didn’t have a post dedicated just to chronoworking - what it is, why it matters, and how to do it - on the Working On Purpose newsletter. So, let’s rectify that.
What is chronoworking?
Let’s start with an easy one: what even is chronoworking?
It’s simple: working according to your body clock. To chronowork is to tune into your natural energy dips and peaks throughout the day (or month, or year), and adjust your working day accordingly. It means letting go of the rigidity of the 9 to 5 and instead allowing for a more individualised working pattern that better chimes with people’s energy levels.
What that will look like in practice will vary, because, again, it’s all about each person’s individual body clock. It might mean that someone works a 6am to 3pm shift because they’re a natural early bird, or that a night owl will have a later start. Maybe your day will be split by a good chunk of time in the afternoon to nap, exercise, or do whatever else feels right to deal with the 3pm energy slump. It could be reduced hours for a certain point in your menstrual cycle. Or summer hours that allow you to have some non-work time in the sun, or winter hours that accomodate the gloom of shorter days.
Chronoworking can also be about the type of work you do hour-by-hour. Someone whose job doesn’t allow for flexibility in shift timings might chronowork by shifting certain tasks to points in the day or week when they’re in the best mindset to do them, or they might wake up early or stay up late to have the free time when they most want it.
Why do I care about chronoworking?
Too many of us are exhausted. Too many hours are spent inefficiently, with workers trying to force their brain into a certain gear when it’s clearly not up for it - just look around the office and you’ll spot colleagues who are useless once it hits 4pm, but have to keep toiling until the clock finally hits 5.30pm. Too many people feel like their energy doesn’t align with their working day.
I think chronoworking is part of the fix. I think that we need to make work more flexible as a whole. We’ve started to see some shifts around the where of work, even if the change is maddeningly slow, and now I’d like to see us exploring the when. I think chronoworking is another way of starting to treat workers like people. And crucially, like adults - who can be trusted to get work done without a boss looming over to keep an eye on the time spent sat as a desk.
The 9-5 has been the norm since the 20s. Its introduction was a good thing; a recognition that working 12 hours a day, six days a week as we once did wasn’t the best idea, that we wanted to have a bit more life in our work life balance. A century later, it’s time to question whether the 9 to 5 is really working for us.
How to chronowork
There are two potential paths for the chronoworking journey. One path goes like this: you talk to the people in charge at your workplace, ask for greater flexibility in timing, and they say yes. The other path is: you ask and they say no, or you know you can’t ask.
For option one, it’s then the bosses that need to take some steps, which are…
Have a meeting audit
Honestly, I recommend this for every workplace, regardless of chronoworking plans. But the second you bring up any sort of flexibility or autonomous working, meetings tend to be the first point of concern. I’ve seen this firsthand many times, when someone dares to broach the very concept of people working different hours. What about the meetings, cry the worriers, won’t someone think of the meetings?
I won’t get too deep into the reasons the majority of meetings are rubbish (because, believe me, I could rant on this for many, many words), but let’s cut to the truth: a significant portion of meetings feel pointless. ‘I didn’t need to be in this meeting,’ is a common thought, ‘this could have been an email’ a common refrain. Not all meetings are pointless - there are some that are excellent opportunities for collaboration and idea generation and problem-solving. But to allow for those good meetings, most workplaces need to trim the bad ones and create some solid rules for meetings as a whole.
That starts with a meeting audit. Leaders should go through every meeting on the team’s calendars and suss out which are actually beneficial. Scrap the ones that feel immediately useless. Then ask: which meetings really need everyone in the same place at the same time? Could this meeting work asynchronously, for example with a presentation people can watch at a time that works for them, or a written list of questions for your team to answer over Slack throughout the day? If it’s a meeting that truly requires live collaboration, keep it, make sure it’s efficient, and book it into core hours (which we’ll get to in a minute). For any that don’t, get creative and pursue other options to fulfill the objectives the meeting was intended to achieve.
Establish core hours
Chronoworking doesn’t have to mean chaos. It doesn’t mean colleagues will never see each other or interact again. Instead, it’s allowing for a touch more flexibility - but you might want to keep one section of the day when everyone can connect. Establish some core hours that will be used expressly for the purpose of live collaboration; that’s when meetings can then be booked in. You’ll likely want these to be around the middle of the day to catch both early birds and late risers - perhaps 11am-3pm?
Let go
A new way of working requires a new way of thinking. Chronoworking - and most forms of flexible working, really - require bosses to let go of certain things; presenteeism, rigidity, traditionalism, that sort of stuff. Free yourself from the idea that work has to be done the way it always has.
Trust
On that note, you’ll need to actually trust your team. True trust; an understanding that the work is getting done even if you can’t see it happening. Allowing for autonomous working means putting your faith in the belief that workers know how they best work. Without that trust, chronoworking fails.
Talk to people
A key component of all of this is bosses talking to the people they manage and asking what they want. Chronoworking and other flexible working measures should never be blanket diktats. Those with power will need to talk to the people working and listen to what will best work for them, making adjustments to the plan as needed. It’s tempting to think that everyone will be thrilled by a later start to the work day or an early finish on Fridays simply because you would be thrilled. Everyone’s different. You’ll need to hear other perspectives before you uniformly make changes to working hours.
Now for the other path, which then pushes chronoworking into a more individual act. Here’s what anyone working who wants to chronowork within a company that won’t budge needs to do.
Do an energy assessment
Wait… can you hear your body clock? Do you know what your ideal working day would look like? If you’re anything like me, the answer to these questions is a resounding no. And that’s understandable! Most of us have been wedged into a certain schedule since childhood, forced to set alarms to go to school, then university, then to jobs with traditional start times. As a result, many of us have no clue how we actually work best. Am I an early bird at heart? I have no clue.
The ideal way to work this out would probably be to take months off work and attempt to ‘reset’ our body clocks, but few of us have the luxury of doing such a thing. Instead, the best way to better understand our energy flows is to keep track of them throughout the day. Over a period of a few weeks - or even months - have some form of an energy journal (there are loads of mood tracker apps, or you could do something handy with a spreadsheet, or you can do as I do and go old school with a notebook and pen) whereby you note down how you’re feeling at different points of the day, with as much detail as possible. The more data you get, the more you’ll be able to spot patterns, such as ‘ooh, I really do feel exhausted every day at 2pm’ or ‘I am useless every day before 10am’ or ‘I get into a creative flow at around 5pm as long as I’ve had enough sleep’.
Tweak your to-do list according to that info
In an ideal world, once you’d gathered up all that data you could then present it to your boss and immediately change your working hours accordingly. But I know that often isn’t the reality. No fear - you can still chronowork within these confines by moving around your tasks according to what you’ve found out by doing your energy assessment. If you’ve learned you’re a morning person, for example, you can frontload your day with your trickiest requiring-the-most-brainpower responsibilities. If you know you have a dip every day at 2pm, perhaps you could use this window to do the boring but easy admin of deleting some emails. If you’ve noticed it takes you a while to warm up in the week, bare minimum Mondays might be the perfect thing. If by Friday you’re flagging, give yourself permission to take it a little easier.
Know that chronoworking extends beyond your working hours
You might not have control over your working hours, but when it comes to your non-work time, you’ve got all the power. Use your energy lessons to inform the structure of your time outside of work, whether that’s getting up at 5 to go for a run or do a creative project pre-work, or rolling out of bed at 8.55am when you’re working from home. Stop forcing yourself into what you think your day ‘should’ look like and instead do what actually works for you, even if it means saying no to evening plans.
Do you have any questions about chronoworking? Any thoughts you have on what I’ve missed? Do you disagree with me entirely and think I should get in the bin for badmouthing the 9-5? Please do leave me a comment or ping me an email.
Work-related reading recs:
As someone who met their partner through work and continued to work with them for many years, I of course greatly enjoyed this article about couples who work together
I always love editing and reading Alyssa’s pieces for Stylist and this one is, as usual, brilliantly helpful: how to get re-engaged at work
Interesting piece on the importance of fun at work! If you’re interested in this idea, I recommend listening to this episode of Eat Sleep Work Repeat with Catherine Price to delve deeper
Microsoft and LinkedIn’s 2024 Work Trend Index on AI at work is fascinating
A depressing but necessary read on what it’s like to be a woman working in TV