One day.
One day we will stop messaging or IM'ing the colleague 10 feet away, but walk over and have a conversation.
One day we will stop messing with business correspondence, but take a client out for lunch and get to know him/her as a person.
One day we will switch off our Blackberries in the evening and BE WITH our families.
One day we will switch off our TVs, pick up a book and read up from among the best minds in human history.
One day we will kill all message or IM alerts, set our phones to “silent”, and create a new future in our minds.
One day we will drop all facades, grab a colleague, a friend or a loved one, and tell them how much we appreciate them.
One day we will get away from the crowd, and hear our souls talk.
One day we will stop, if only for a minute, and look, REALLY look, at the people around us.
One day.
If you hope to reap the possible productivity gains from getting up at 5:00am everyday and would like to give it a try, there are a few things that you might need to take note of, especially if you don't live alone:
- Turn off your cellphone's network connection, put it on vibration mode, slip it under your pillow and use it as a silent alarm. Until you can get up naturally at 5:00am, this will wake you but not the rest of the house.
- Pack your briefcase and/or bag the night before. Make sure you know where your watch, your wallet and your keys are. This will avoid a lot of rustling about.
- Even if you tend to skip breakfast, drink a lot of water. That will make you feel a lot better.
- Make sure you know what your travel options are at that time in the morning unless you drive to work.
- Stick to your guns. The first two weeks might be totally horrid, but if you can stick to a regular sleep schedule, you will get use to it. Get up early even on the weekends.
- Have a plan as to what you'd like to do in the morning hours, just so you make your efforts worthwhile.
- Try to get OFF coffee. Lowered caffeine levels in your system allows you to sleep much better at night and therefore allows you to adjust to the new schedule better.
Good luck and tell me how it goes!
I get up at 5:00am everyday even on weekends. I have been doing that for about three weeks. What initially seems like a satanic ritual is now something that I look forward to everyday.
I get to work by about 6:20am. My primary constraint is that I am slow in the morning and that the first subway train runs at 6:02am. I read a book while I am in the subway and when I get to work I use the time to respond to emails and to plan out what I need to do that day. By the time the general population gets into the office, I am usually well on my way with the day's work. I say generally because reading emails invariably draws me into businesses that probably doesn't warrant using that period of pristine, distraction-free time. My goal in the coming week is to stay away from my emails until after 8:00am. I shall be thinking of new improvements, planning new projects and writing performance reviews instead. Once the day starts, there's often very little chance of accomplishing anything that requires more than 5 seconds of uninterrupted attention - the bane of life in the world of multiple communication channels, open offices and instant-everything.
Admittedly, getting up at 5:00am on weekends is a much harder case to make. However in doing so, I make life a little easier for myself on the weekdays that follow. Going out for breakfast at 7:00am and hitting the beach at 8:00am helps! Being able to read or to write or even to watch a movie on DVD are terrific benefits if you have kids in the house. Last Saturday morning at I was in a rather interesting part of town taking pictures as the city gets going. Getting up early certainly makes my days more interesting in spite of the hardships involved.
I took a taxi home from a nearby taxi stand on Friday night. Upon learning where my desired destination is, he said "Great!". I asked "Why?" and that's how the conversation started.
He rents his taxi in 12 hour stretches. The rental and his fuel costs him about HKD 520. Since he can't be driving for all 12 hours, his cost is about HKD 52 per hour. He explained that his using the taxi stand I used is a "hit or miss" affair. He often get expatriates who only need a short ride up the "MidLevels" from there. While that is a short distance and therefore can only fetch about HKD15, it takes a long while to get back out of the area because it's mostly single lanes up there. My trip is a good one because it's a decent distance that reaps him about HKD 50+ and he can get there in 10 minutes because of a nice stretch of highway. So he broke even for that hour in 15 minutes and it's going to be all profits for the rest of the hour. He then discussed the different client types he gets at different taxi stands near by.
I can't help but think that between the two of us in the taxi, he's the real businessperson. He knows his costs. He knows his client types. He knows which type of clients he will most likely run into at different taxi stands. He obviously knows his business a lot better than I know mine.
Plus he gave me my exact change back (Hong Kong you usually don't get the cents in your change)!
Working in a global media company, I take tremendous pride in our use of technology to be faster and better than the competition. Our business is around the world and around the clock, and I can be reached anywhere in the world at any time via a variety of means. You can send me emails, you can call my cellphone, you can page my pager, you can page me on the Public Announcement system, you can hit me via IM, you can get me on my Blackberry Messenger, you can call me on VoIP, and of course you can always walk over to talk to me. There's no reason why anyone can't find me anytime they want to and nor does anyone ever hesitate to. As I am openly available to everyone, so is everyone to me. Well, almost everyone - there are always the smart ones.
As a result, my days are often torn into schizophrenic shreds. Everyone wants “only a few minutes”, every question “a quick question” (which incidentally never accommodates quick answers). I find myself constantly muttering “what was I doing?” during the day. If this is you as well, you will find this article "Bad workmen or bad tools?" in Slow Leadership valuable.
Solid, undivided blocks of creative attention are perhaps the most valuable competitive edge we can allow ourselves to have today. Schedule yourself continuous distraction-free blocks of work time during the day and strive to respect that of your colleagues, especially that of your staff as well. Immediate attention is probably not warranted for every matter that comes to mind. Stop and think for a moment before you reach out to others. Letting your staff do their jobs is perhaps the best thing you can do for them.
In a classic case of taking a business model from one industry and applying it to another, I read on Engadget that a Japanese vending machine company, Apex Corporation, appears to be laying out plans for a vending machine that will give free drinks in return for your attention to advertising videos. This again highlights how much our attention is worth. It's not hard to extend the example and imagine advertising sponsored public transport, or may be even advertising sponsored housing (imagine that .. wall to wall ads .. inside your apartment). When the "ad-sponsored" trend hit a certain point, there will then be a trend towards premium products that are advertising free, a "backlash" of sorts.
Hmm ..
Brought to you by The Middle Class Guy
A working man's view of management, sales, customer service, technology, work and life.
Hong Kong 香港
One day.
