Feeling foggy, flat, or out of step with the day? You're not imagining it. Many of us are living out of sync with the rhythms our bodies have evolved to follow. Long hours indoors, artificial lighting, and late-night screen time have nudged our minds and bodies away from their natural cycle – a mismatch that's not just tiring, but potentially harmful to both physical and mental health.
By mirroring the changing sights, sounds, and moods of the natural world, Circadian Flow is designed to help you rediscover these rhythms. Surround yourself with a curated sequence of portals that are synchronised with your local time of day and which integrate beautifully with smart lights.
For the best experience, we recommend granting location permissions in Settings > General > Permissions so Portal can more accurately determine your local sunrise and sunset times. And if the selected portal isn’t quite right, you can try another with the previous/next arrows, or the shortcut: cmd+ ←/→.
Intrigued by what’s going on here? Read on to explore how we can realign our minds and bodies with nature’s flow.
The Quiet Clockwork Inside
Deep within every living organism, from starfish to squirrel monkeys, an internal ‘circadian’ timer ticks along with the planet’s 24-hour cycle. In humans, this process is orchestrated by a ‘master clock’ in the brain: a concentrated bundle of neurons in the hypothalamus. It’s highly sensitive to light, and helps coordinate thousands of biological processes, including sleep, body temperature, hormone release, and digestion.
But here’s the twist: left alone, the human circadian pacemaker oscillates with a rhythm that isn’t exactly 24hrs. So to keep it from drifting out of time, it needs to be continually calibrated. And the daily motion of the sun provides the perfect reset: exposure to natural variations in light helps to keep our internal rhythm in check.
For most of human history, this wasn’t a problem. We lived in rural settings, free from artificial lighting, our routines governed by the rising and setting sun. But today, we’re largely disconnected from those external cues. Many of us spend over 90% of our time indoors, waking to alarms, working under man-made lights, and gazing at bright screens well into the night.
Add into this mix daily commutes, shifting meal times, and irregular sleep patterns, and we have the recipe for an internal clock gone haywire. Research suggests this circadian disruption can lead to depression and anxiety, and over time, even raise the risk of conditions like heart disease, obesity, and diabetes.
Your Personal Rhythm
Fortunately, our circadian clock is highly adaptable and there’s lots we can do to keep it in line. Leaving curtains open at night and waking naturally with the dawn, taking a short walk outside during the day, and avoiding bright light in the evening, can all help to anchor our master clocks to the solar day. Other small changes, like having regular mealtimes and consistent sleep schedules, can also help to recalibrate our internal rhythms.
Our Circadian Flow feature adds another effortless way to reconnect with the ebb and flow of the natural world, connecting you to the everchanging sights and sounds of the outside world. It’s also been designed to make the most of smart lighting set ups, allowing you to tap into that all important cycle of light and dark.
A Hidden Productivity Hack?
But there’s more – when it comes to productivity and trying to get things done, our brain’s optimum time for working might be guided by circadian rhythms more than willpower. Our ability to focus, problem-solve, and form memories can fluctuate across the day, following distinct circadian patterns that are specific to each of us. Notice when you feel most alert and lean into that routine – rather than trying to resist it – if you can.
Creativity could also be time-sensitive: some people may perform better on tasks that require original thinking when their brain is actually less alert. The theory is that when we’re slightly less focused, our minds are freer to make unconventional connections – a sweet spot for insight and innovation.
Circadian Flow
But there’s a deeper message here, too. There’s something quietly profound about living in time with the world around us: waking with the dawn chorus, taking a break in the midday sun, walking at twilight. When we reconnect with nature’s cues, we don’t just feel better, we can rediscover the quiet joy of moving in touch with the planet.
Circadian Flow is available now in Portal for Mac version 1.6.0 and later.
