Over the last year as many of us have had to adjust to working from home, it can be frustrating to find productivity at work and at home slipping away…

More than ever before working from home has led me to examine when I am most productive during the day. Am I really a morning person? Chronotypes are a useful method to underpin a examination of our own biological clocks tendencies.

A chronotype is generally considered the behavioural manifestation of underlying circadian rythyms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotype. The 1970s marks the begin of mordern research into chronotypes stemming from the PhD Thesis of O. Öquist at the Department of Psychology, University of Göteborg, Sweden titled Kartläggning av individuella dygnsrytmer or "Charting Individual Circadian Rythyms".

>>> Öquist, Oscar. Kartläggning av individuella dygnsrytmer. Göteborgs Universitet, Psykologiska Institutionen, 1970.

This marked the beginning of the self-assessment morningness-eveningness questionnaire #MEQ developed by Olov Östberg and J.A. (Jim) Horne (1976).

>>> Horne JA, Ostberg O. A self-assessment questionnaire to determine morningness-eveningness in human circadian rhythms. Int J Chronobiol. 1976;4(2):97-110. PMID: 1027738.

It is interesting to consider this when it comes to reflecting on your own productivity. If you would like to take a self-assessment #MEQ, simply search for the questionnaire on your favourite search engine and choose one of the many variations available that have been developed from the wealth of research studies in this field.