THE COOL ART OF GETTING UP
5:59. One minute left. The numbers on the clock tick over to 6:00 a.m. and the buzzer sounds. You open one eye and look at the clock. No more opportunity left to sink back into blissful slumber. It’s time to get up and leave your warm bed behind. In less than an hour you’ll be rushing out the door, already late, and another stressful day will be underway.
Sleep is little understood by most people. It’s very necessary. If you went without sleep long enough, you’d die. The longest a person has gone without sleep is nine days, and that was in a carefully controlled lab experiment.
But this book chapter is about maximizing your productivity during business hours, long after sleep is done. So why talk about it here? Because when you wake up in the morning, your sleep cycle is not finished. Because sleep, like many other elements of the body, is actually a 24-hour thing. When you exit the sleep phase in the morning, your body is already hard at work doing lots of things on your behalf, and one of them is regulating the chemicals and brainwaves that will ultimately bring you back to sleep.
If your day starts on a stressful note, it will be harder to handle the additional stressors in the hours to come. Not only will this make it more difficult to handle stressors, it ultimately will make it harder to get a good night’s sleep later that evening, which will make getting up the next day that much more painful. This, in turn, will reduce your productivity, creating a negative spiral of wasted effort. One major benefit to cooling down and taking things slower right from the start is that it maximizes the positive benefits of your entire 24-hour cycle.
The Curse of the Alarm Clock
How do you wake up on a workday? What kind of alarm clock do you have? Odds are it uses a noise to wrest you from sleep. Although some people pride themselves on being able to wake up naturally, and reliably, without an alarm clock, these are the lucky ones. They have discovered a way to stay in sync with their natural sleep cycle. For everyone else, there’s the alarm clock.
I believe alarm clocks are fundamentally wrong, and I think also that they are a prime contributor to the counter-productivity of high-speed life. To illustrate my point, let me ask you this: When you are finished with your computer, do you shut it down by pulling the plug or turning off your power bar? No? When you first learned to use a computer, you were probably warned never to just flip the “off” switch, since computers really dislike like being turned off that way. Why? Because computers have to tidy up first. They have to get rid of all kinds of files and temporary memory blocks. If they don’t, those blocks will still be there next time the computer is powered up, which degrades its performance and ages it prematurely. That’s why the shut-down operation is software-driven, and takes a few seconds or even a minute before the computer is ready to close down. People who use an alarm to wake themselves up are simply flipping the “off” switch on their sleep cycle without tidying up first. This causes a chemical imbalance that can have repercussions for the rest of the day. Sleep is a series of five phases, ranging essentially from light sleep to deep sleep to REM sleep and then back again. We dream for a while and then we don’t dream. And then we dream again. People lucky enough to be able to wake up naturally are basically enjoying the results of having finished, tidied up, and put away a complete sleep cycle. By contrast, those who are woken by an alarm are given no chance to close off the cycle, and depending on where you are in it when the buzzer goes, you might wake up feeling fine, or you might end up feeling groggy and tired. Most people experience at least one day per week of feeling groggy, tired, and fighting an ache behind their eyes. Even one day a week like this is too much, since it puts the mental tachometer too far back. There has to be a better way to close down the sleep cycle and build a foundation for a productive day. The waking-up process needs to be slower, cooler.
Change Your Alarm Clock
The healthiest type of wake-up device available is one that closes down the sleep process gradually, using subtle increases in light and sound. If your wake-up time is 6:00 a.m., then this clock would come to life at 5:30 a.m. with a gentle low light and very low sound. Over the course of half an hour, these stimuli increase gradually, assisting the body’s natural sleep cycle, and helping to bring it to a complete closure.
One of the primary chemicals that brings on and maintains sleep is melatonin, something that is manufactured when there is little or no light. Therefore, the gradual introduction of light, even onto closed eyelids, helps inhibit further production of melatonin, while encouraging the release of stimulant hormones into the bloodstream.
Sound, preferably low-level white noise or quiet music, does the same thing. Together, the light and sound start to stimulate the senses, and awaken the body gradually and in a much healthier fashion.
Use a Timer
For those who do not wish go out and buy a new clock radio, the next recommendation is to use timers. Put a timer on the lamp in your bedroom (not the one on your bedside table, but one further away, if possible), as well as one in your living room and kitchen. Set them to come on at the same time as your alarm. Therefore, even if you must use a harsh alarm to wake up, you will ensure that there is light from the very first moment you open your eyes, which will stimulate hormone production and help to shift your body into wakefulness.
Use Some Sort of Light
If your partner gets to sleep a little while longer than you and prefers that no lights go on in the morning, then use a flashlight. If it is high summer, and it is already light outside, then move to a room where you can open the drapes to let the light in. The objective, in all of these situations, is to use the body’s own natural stimulant system to dilute the chemistry of sleep with the minimum of shock.
Lose the Snooze Bar
Another key technique for helping ensure top-quality performance and quicker wakefulness is to no longer use the snooze bar on your alarm clock, since it is not possible to reconnect properly with the full sleep sequence in just nine minutes. It might actually make things worse. Falling back into the primary stages of a new sleep cycle within the time afforded by the snooze bar means that you’ll just have to pull yourself out again, and this can hurt more than it helps. Instead, sit up and move your feet around and down, so that you are sitting on the edge of the bed. This reduces the temptation to flop back down. As your eyes start to open and adjust to the light of your timer-activated lamps, start thinking. Think about positive things, about goals, plans, or upcoming leisurely activities. Get the wheels turning, so that together they flush out the chemical remnants of sleep.
Benefit Statement
It sounds harsh, this bright, snoozeless approach to rousing first thing in the morning, but it can truly make a difference between a mediocre day and a top-quality one. By using this technique, you will be:
• More alert first thing in the morning, which will help you to prepare and eat a good breakfast and ensure you leave the house without forgetting anything
• More alert for the whole day
• Able to do more
• Able to remember more
• Able to handle stress better
• Able to digest food better
• More inclined to exercise
• Less prone to fatigue and headaches
• More likely to fall asleep quickly at night
• More likely to enjoy healthier, better sleep
• More able to wake up comfortably the following morning, thus repeating a constructive cycle.
THE BENEFITS OF A COOL BREAKFAST
Everyone has heard the old expression that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, yet it still goes under-appreciated and underused by a great many hard-working people. Some say it’s because they have no time. Others say they have no appetite at that hour of the morning. Still others can get by on just a coffee and a muffin or donut.
For those who are lukewarm to the idea of slowing down and having a good breakfast, I would like to suggest that the cost of ignoring breakfast will exact itself throughout the entire day. In Chapter 3, I demonstrated how taking 15 minutes to eat lunch away from your desk will yield far more productivity for the entire day and week to come, and now I must say the same about taking time to eat breakfast—a good breakfast, a real breakfast.
Donuts and muffins always seem so much more appealing than cereal. First, they can be eaten quickly, with little mess, which is perfect for the commuter on the run. Furthermore, the sugar, the colors, the texture, everything about them seems to connect with our senses and satisfies our immediate hunger. They fool our ancient instincts. What the body truly seeks is fruit, grains, and protein—a package of energy for a busy day, but what what we often choose is a low-grade commercial imitation.
The problem with donuts, of course, is that they are made primarily from refined sugars and flour, which deliver a quick burst of energy that lasts for about 20 minutes and works in conjunction with the caffeine boost delivered by coffee and tea to fool the body into thinking it’s been fed. Soon after comes the sugar crash as blood sugar imbalances get rebalanced and recompensated by the body’s internal mechanisms. Few people who experience a sugar crash actually fall face-first onto their laptop, of course, but if that forehead tachometer mentioned in Chapter 2 were working and visible, the significant drop in processing ability would be noticeable. This is the hidden cost of high-speed food. Muffins may provide a slightly healthier alternative, of course, but most commercially created muffins contain high amounts of fat, including hydrogenated and trans-fats, as well as glucose-fructose and other high-sugar products.
The temporary satisfaction gained from small portable breakfast snacks like these, including the cup-of-coffee-only breakfast, not only negatively impacts mental productivity and energy levels during the morning, they also exert great negative influence on the choices we make for our lunchtime meal.
People who eat small, inefficient breakfasts are much more likely to feel
very hungry come lunchtime. What’s wrong with feeling hungry at lunchtime? Nothing. But there is something wrong with feeling
very hungry at lunchtime, since extreme hunger leads to more poor food choices. People who are very hungry at lunchtime:
• Seek out fast satisfaction from fast food outlets
• Seek out food with high amounts of starches, fats, and sodium—all great conveyers of taste, but not necessarily of nutrition
• Seek out food based on convenience—fast-moving lines and precooked meals
• Seek out higher proportions of meat and smaller proportions of vegetables.
• Seek out food that doesn’t require a lot of chewing
• Eat their food too fast and rely on fast-acting antacids to compensate
• Eat too much, since a great deal can be consumed in 20 minutes.
TIPS for Excellent Breakfast and Morning Snack Choices
• Bran muffin
• Oatmeal
• Zucchini bread
• High-fibre toast
• Yoghurt
• Almonds
• Raisins
• Milk
• Eggs or reduced-cholesterol egg replacements
All of this high-speed reaction to extreme hunger puts extra strain on the body, leading to further reduced ability during the afternoon. The natural lethargy felt by most people at 2:30 p.m. is exacerbated by the blood sugar imbalances caused by fast food, and the sheer effort of its digestion. This reduces the ability to concentrate, which ultimately means work takes longer to get done, with much of it having to be done on the train ride home.
Is there a solution to this? Sure! In the morning, eat foods that take longer to digest—the foods that stick with you longer (see the TIPS box for some suggestions). These will give your body something to keep it occupied and will maintain better internal balance. I’ll repeat here just one of the snack suggestions made in Chapter 3, simply because it’s the one that many of my past clients and audience members have told me was the most successful of all: the 11:00 a.m. yoghurt. A serving of yoghurt, preferably 0% fat, at 10:45 or 11:00 a.m. helps alleviate growing hunger pains. This allows people to feel less ravenous when lunchtime arrives and therefore allows them to choose more wisely and eat more slowly. It’s as simple as that.
The Daily Famine
The other counterproductive result of not having enough time to eat breakfast happens when people skip it entirely. Those who choose this route condemn their body to experiencing “famine mode.” When it becomes apparent to your body that food is scarce, because there’s none in your stomach by 9:00 a.m., the body reacts by breaking down its own stored energy reserves. It eats from the inside. Now this would be a great concept if your body were to take on those stored fat reserves and whittle them away. But no, stored fat takes weeks to break down. Remember, it’s there to help keep hunter-gatherers going through the winter. Instead your starved body goes to work on a different source of easily accessible energy, which is stored inside muscle fiber. This, by the way, is why some unfortunate marathon runners have to undergo that torturous experience 500 yards from the finish line, when they find themselves on hands and knees unable to move any further. During the three hours or so of a race, a marathon runner’s body burns up all available stored energy from the muscle tissue. There is nothing left. The poor racer may still have a small amount of body fat around his middle, but three hours is nowhere near enough time to start working on it, and so he collapses. For the high-speed working person who skips breakfast in order to get to the train station on time, similar reflexes operate behind the scenes. Unwilling to undergo famine again, her 50,000-year-old body makes sure that when she finally decides to eat something, a little extra will be stored as fat, just in case another mini-famine happens again tomorrow.
Thus, for the average North American male or female, skipping breakfast or settling for a quick, poor breakfast paves a quick, easy route to weight gain and sluggish mental performance. By contrast, those who cool down enough to eat a good breakfast reduce their potential gain of body fat. They fuel their body and mind for a good three or four hours of high-tachometer productivity and accuracy until the next refueling stop just prior to midday.
Finding Time for a Good Breakfast
So where can someone find time for a good breakfast, when mornings are already so busy?
This is an area where we have to counteract the event-to-event mindset, described in Chapter 3. The home-to-work sequence must be redefined, so that if breakfast is currently skipped or rushed, an additional 15 minutes is injected, somewhere between the time we rise and the time we start work. There are two approaches that seem to best fit this mold:
• The 15-minute at-home breakfast. What would it take for you to set your rising time just 15 minutes earlier? To give yourself and your family members the chance for a complete breakfast? Or to give yourself a chance at a quiet breakfast before everyone else gets up? Most people react negatively to this statement. Their quick reaction and quick judgment says, “All I can see is losing out on some sleep.” But what they tend to forget is that their body would quickly adjust to this new rising time. Almost everyone in the world already demonstrates that changing a sleeping/waking time is possible. They do it twice a year, when they switch from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time and back again. And that’s a whole hour! Within three days the body readjusts. It can be done. Getting up 15 minutes earlier can be easily achieved, and with just a little practice, the new rising time will be hardly noticeable.
• The 15-minute breakfast before work. If it is not possible to get up 15 minutes earlier for whatever reason, the next best approach is to invest in these minutes elsewhere—somewhere that is neither work nor home. Perhaps a favorite coffee shop, food court, park bench, or the privacy of your car (once parked). Not everyone has the budget or the desire to pay money every day for food from a restaurant or coffee shop, but that’s no problem. There are many types of portable foods that can be brought from home and will not perish if eaten within an hour of leaving the refrigerator. Bananas, yoghurt, home-made muffins, bagels, a thermos of coffee, tinned fruit, even a sealable dish of healthy breakfast cereal along with a second, sealable thermos cup of cold milk are all available and reliable. This breakfast between home and work requires an adjustment to the “event-to-event” mindset that has us all racing from home to work in once single action, but once again, its payoffs are great. The importance of choosing to have your 15-minute breakfast before you get to work, rather than at work is probably obvious. Once at work, your mind and body will be in work mode, prone to interruptions, requests, distractions, and work itself, a situation in which the idea of eating properly quickly gets pushed aside.
The bottom line here is that productivity starts with fuel, and fuel must be delivered properly at the start of the day. This requires a small amount of time, a small amount of slow.
THE COMMUTE IN
The daily commute is that twin set of episodes in the day in which time is spent battling the elements in an attempt to get to work reasonably punctually. For people in a home office, this might simply mean a short trip up or downstairs. For others, it might mean getting to different locations to visit different customers each day, and for the majority, it means getting to your place of employment to carry on with the projects and challenges at hand.
Not wishing to repeat myself, I would like to state simply that the difference between a cool, calm commute in, and a frenzied stress-filled one will be visible in all of your actions and abilities for the day to come. That is why in Chapter 3, “The Cool Approach to Commuting,” I highlighted the value of a slower drive, and in Chapter 5, I advocated the use of this time for blue-skying rather than taking on additional work as per the demands of Parkinson’s Law.
The Daily Warm-Up
What I wish to add to this is the value of the changed mindset that a cooled-down commute can provide. The commute is a mental changing room. It is where people must shift from home mode to work mode and then back again at the end of the day. It’s an opportunity to ramp up to that level of focus and preparedness that will ensure top-quality productivity and stress management throughout the entire day. Recall in Chapter 2 the analogy of the NBA player and the need for warm-up, both for him and, by extension, for your colleagues around a meeting room table. So, too, it is necessary to do this on the commute in, so that there is greater opportunity for you to handle appropriately the immediate requests that will be waiting when you arrive at your workplace. We must eliminate the “event-to-event” mindset that defines the commute as a mere inconvenience and use it instead as an opportunity.
A Mentoring Opportunity: Carpooling
The work-bound and home-bound commutes both offer yet another opportunity for personal growth and profit by mentoring with carpool colleagues. In Chapter 9, I will challenge you about your mentoring commitments, both in seeking out a mentor and in being one. The benefit, as I describe more fully in that chapter, has to do with not only hearing another person speak, but in also hearing yourself, as you will always be your own best audience and critic when it comes to creative thought. The secret, however, is to let those thoughts escape your short-term memory for a moment by speaking them out loud and have them reinforced by hearing them spoken. One of the best ways you can do this is by changing how you view your commute. Turn it from a solitary race against time to a learning opportunity, by sharing the drive—carpooling.
How to Enjoy a Smoother Start to Your Commute
Create an evening checklist that reminds you to:
• Listen to the latest weather report. Will there be frost or snow tomorrow? If so, plan for the time required to clear the driveway and car of snow and ice. Will there be rain tomorrow? If so, allow extra time for the commute.
• Consider purchasing a windscreen cover that actually prevents frost from forming.
• Make sure all items needed are accounted for, e.g., files, keys.
• Make sure your cell phone is charged, or charge it up overnight.
• Make a realistic assessment of how long it actually takes you to get from your front hall to your office. Not an optimistic one, but one that factors in traffic, weather, and other realities. Then add 15% more. Create a departure schedule that favors a “pessimistic” estimate, and you will find the trip less stressful.
• When confronted with arrogant drivers or pushy commuters, choose sympathy over anger. Rather than meet their anger with your own, view them as people who are suffering. Feel pity for them, silently. It’s a remarkably calming technique.
Throughout this book I highlight many situations in which the value of face-to-face communications outweighs the perceived advantages of high-speed activity. Talking together within a carpool is a great central example of this difference. Someone might ask, for example, what the difference would be between conversing with people who are physically in the car (or on the train) with you, versus talking on a cell phone. The answer is significant: When a person is talking to you on a cell phone, she cannot make eye contact, and she cannot read your facial and non-verbal messages, and she doesn’t know about the specific driving challenges you are currently facing. She continues to talk, and the expectation from both parties is that the conversation must continue at this pace, even if traffic is becoming challenging. This is why, as I mention in Chapter 2, talking on a cell phone while driving causes significant impairment: The driver’s faculties are largely taken over by the conversation due to his inability to meter it in any other way. By contrast, a discussion in a car takes advantage of numerous interpersonal dynamics, in which the conversation can be attended and paced through body language, and even paused if the driver needs his full concentration and reaction abilities. Mentoring and being mentored in a carpool is part networking, part blue-skying, and part education. It makes even the most congested route more of a pleasure and far less of a waste of time.
The Daily Warm-Up for the Home-Based Professional
A similar warm-up happens for those whose office is at home. It is always highly recommended that a home-based professional assign a room, or at least a corner of a room as a designated workspace. This is not merely for organization’s sake; it serves to create a mental division between work life and home life, just as a commute does for others. People with home offices tend to subscribe to Parkinson’s Law just as much as anyone else, even if they don’t own a wireless PDA. The temptation to check and answer email at 10:30 at night is just as strong. However, those who create a designated space, and who take the time to commute to and from it, rather than bringing work to the dining room table, allow a mental transition to take place. This makes it easier to let go of work in the evening and to turn away from it when the day is done, even if it’s only six steps from the kitchen to the office.
A cool commute, for all working people, is an opportunity to don the “work suit” in time for the arrival at the workplace, and more importantly, to take it off again when it’s time to go home.
PLANNING AND ASSESSING THE VALUE OF TASKS
Once we get to work, of course, we then have to get to work. Management guru Peter Drucker said it many years ago: “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” This prompts the question: Are the tasks that you plan to do, or more precisely the tasks that you actually do, important enough to be done, by you, now? How can you tell? What is your benchmark? What do the tasks mean with regard to your working goals for the day? For the week? For the year? What will they mean this time next year? What does your manager think about the tasks you choose to do? Are business and speed causing you to react rather than pro-act? How can you tell? Is high-speed technology just allowing you to do unimportant things faster? What can you do to replace busy-ness with business?
That’s a barrage of questions, but they lead back to the central statement once again that high-speed reactionism costs more than it makes. Planning and assessment require that you slow down before moving ahead, long enough to ensure that your efforts are being wisely used. Many people turn to their email first thing in the morning. For some, as we’ve seen, this may be essential to their primary line of work. But for others, it’s merely reaction without strategy. Are you able to take some time, seconds, even, to think through your actions before acting? Such an action often yields some surprising and helpful revelations. Consider the following case study:
Case Study: Working for a Workaholic
Sally was a hard-working professional who came to me seeking help on what she thought was a problem with procrastination. “I tend to put things off until the end of the day,” she said, and this was causing her obvious distress. Together we reviewed her workload and her work style. What we discovered was that she was really quite an organized person. However, her manager was a workaholic who never seemed to leave the office before 9:00 p.m. To match this, Sally, who was eager to appear as a team player and a responsible professional, had also been staying longer and longer so that she could complete her work and deliver it to her manager. What appeared to be procrastination was really Sally’s unconscious desire to reorganize her workload so that the important things were still there to be done around the close of the day. In this way she was “forced,” by her own will, to stay later in order to hand them in and appear indispensable. Sally had no time to assess the circumstances that caused this to happen, namely the personality of her manager. She had been just plowing ahead, unaware of the dark path down which such high-speed pursuits were leading her. What would you advise Sally if she had come to you for advice?
My recommendation was threefold: First, I recommended that she take some time to understand her manager’s personality and approach to work. This included talking to a mentor on the nature of workaholism and how to deal with it. The time required to do this, however, would pay off in her improved ability to approach and negotiate with her manager. Second, I recommended that, armed with her new knowledge, she and her manager should step away from the grindstone and discuss their different schedules with an aim to negotiating a revised and mutually satisfactory schedule of tasks and expectations. Third, I recommended Sally review the questions in the opening paragraph of this section
(Are the tasks that you plan to do, or more precisely, the tasks that you actually do, important enough to be done, by you, now? How can you tell?), prior to embarking on, or saying yes to additional requests or scheduling tasks for earlier or later times in the afternoon.
The expression used in project management circles is that those who fail to plan, plan to fail. In Sally’s case, as with so many other time-pressed, high-speed people, this applies equally well. Taking the time to plan and work things out allows you to better know what you’re getting into. Otherwise, momentum will just carry you along on its blind path, at your expense.
Planning for Meetings
We had a good look at meetings in Chapter 2, and offered a few tips on running them better. But what about your reaction to a meeting invite? This is another example where a
cool approach can help win back a significant portion of your day for your own use. Whether the invitation comes by way of voicemail message, a direct face-to-face request, or worse, the meeting is simply inserted into your calendar by way of an electronic scheduling system, those who are able to assess its worth and then negotiate accordingly stand to gain more time to do more of their other tasks than those who willingly comply. When you are asked to attend a meeting, is it possible to slow down and ask some or more of the following questions?
• Will you need me for the entire meeting?
• For how long will you need me?
• Can I negotiate a late arrival or early departure while you’re covering items that don’t concern me?
• Will you be sending the agenda in advance so that we can prepare for the meeting?
Such questions are never intended to challenge the authority of the requestor. They’re intended to step away from candid reactionism and to seek alternatives to simple “death-in-harness.” Just because meetings have been run a certain way for many years does not mean we no longer have the opportunity to offer suitable alternatives. All such discussions must be approached with respect, of course, especially towards the chairperson. However, much can be said for speaking in the language of mutual benefit.
• You can communicate to the chairperson how your partial attendance will allow you to give your undivided attention to the meeting, for the parts that concern you.
• You can demonstrate how your departure will help refocus the group more tightly for the next agenda item.
• You can demonstrate the value of the work that you will be able to do prior to and upon leaving the meeting early.
Negotiation, in this scenario, as with all others, must always aim for the win-win. This is a language that all people understand, and when phrased correctly, they will be able to visualize how the results will benefit them.
Alleviating Confusion While Prioritizing or Multitasking
One final demonstration of the power of
cooling down comes from the alleviation of confusion and stress when trying to prioritize multiple conflicting activities. This is a situation in which overload happens quickly, and the cost is great. In Chapter 5, in the section entitled, “I like Causing Creativity,” I used the unusual metaphor of clogged sinuses to illustrate the way the human brain processes creative thought. Most important, I pointed out the value of recording your ideas, and in so doing, more creative ideas will rush in to fill the space. Later, in Chapter 8, I will describe how taking time to write things out actually helps us to cope with or even alleviate fears, simply through the act of making them “solid,” that is to say, getting them on paper. This technique has great value for anyone who is struggling with the mental overload of handling more than one task or urgency at a time: Slow down and separate the items on paper.
• Dealing with multiple static tasks: Let’s say you have a number of tasks, big and small, to take care of within the same two-hour timeframe. You could choose to grab the first one and run with it, or you could take a moment to write out the urgency and timelines of each, and then take this plan to the stakeholders in order to involve them in the negotiation and resolution of the conflict. Although it is not easy to go back to one or more managers and ask them to help you in reprioritizing these tasks, I suggest it be done for the following reason. Liberating your mind from the pressure and confusion that swirls about inside short-term memory during these scenarios will liberate a greater amount of creative energy and focus, since the brain no longer has to “hold these things in its hands.” If you want a fast path to clear thought, then writing down and assessing conflicting problems, especially in conjunction with the stakeholders, will get you further, faster.
• A similar principle applies with dynamic tasks, such as phone calls, drop-in visitors, and other incoming messages. No-one can handle more than one at a time. Even people who are attracted to high-speed, high-pressure work know there are (or should be) rules in place to ensure nothing gets forgotten. Just ask a day trader. Or an E.R. nurse. Or a journalist. When people come knocking at your door asking for an immediate response, give them the signal that says, “Wait until I can get this thought down on paper (or saved as a file) before I change my train of thought.” This is the crucial act of closure that wraps up every activity. Before you attend to the next incoming email, or the next person hovering over your desk, slow down, complete the task at hand, take a breath, and then move on.
Shauna worked for the media department of a large organization. She used to enjoy going to the gym. She saw and felt the benefits of regular workouts—better sleep, better mood, better resistance to colds, overall better feeling. But as the pressures of work became greater, her workouts were always the first thing to be sacrificed. First, occasionally, and then more regularly, she rescheduled them until finally her running shoes started to gather dust.
She said, “Every day the work takes me to 5:30 or 6:00, sometimes later. It doesn’t make sense to go to the gym at 6:30. If I did, that would mean I’d not get home until 8:30 or later.”
Shauna was focused on her work, on being busy. But she was not able to perceive that being busy and being productive are not the same things. As we have seen, email, meetings, and distractions make people feel busy, and indeed they may be legitimate components of work. But she was not able to see how speed and overload had blinded her to being able to tell the difference.
When Shauna did an audit of her work patterns, including the most important types of work, the nature and frequency of the emails she was responding to, and the “human element” (the expectations of her boss and of her external and internal clients), she realized that the key work components could be reassigned to specific hours. She applied more conscious control over casual conversations and drop-in visitors, and made a point to not let time slip by. Her careful choice of meals and snacks kept her alertness level high, and most important, she took time to ask her manager outright whether a change to her schedule was possible. She and her manager worked on this together and agreed that she could leave work a half-hour earlier, provided that her key assignments were up to date. She agreed to come in a half-hour earlier on her workout days and most importantly, she made sure to reserve time with her manager once a week, every week, to demonstrate how her productivity had actually improved through this new pattern.
Shauna found she was also better able to deal with her colleagues, some of whom observed her early departure and immediately questioned her loyalty and team spirit. Shauna found she was able to educate her team through communication. She explained to them how the work they needed from her would still be completed on time, that she herself remained available and accountable throughout the day, and she showed them how her open-door policy was not going to be adversely affected. With their needs and concerns met, Shauna was able to condition herself and her colleagues into working well within these slightly modified timelines. Her slightly earlier departure allowed her three workouts a week, and she was still able to get home in time for dinner.
The success factor was not Shauna’s dedication to working out; it was that she took the time to slow down and communicate with her manager and with her co-workers. That’s what gave her the permission and the freedom to go to the gym.
People often ask me what the best time of day is for exercise. Such a question can be answered, but not simply. There are many factors to take into account, since not all exercise is equal. Running outdoors is much more difficult than running on a treadmill, due to sidewalk friction, air resistance, and changes in surface angle and grade. Lifting weights for three sets of 20 reps has a different impact on muscle development than six sets of 10 reps. Doing cardiovascular exercise with a mid-level active heart rate for 30 minutes has profoundly different effects on the body than does high-speed sprinting for 20 minutes.
As people age, their bodies react differently to food (including excess food), sleep, stress, excess, deprivation, and exercise. That’s why it’s so important to know yourself; to slow down long enough to hear your body tell you what it wants and when. Are you morning oriented? If so, are you able to get in a workout before work? Some people find it easy to get up at 5:00 a.m. and hit the gym. It’s an excellent way to start a day. Others, however, cannot do that. Many people cannot face exercise first thing in the morning, no matter how good it might be for them. So, then, what remains for morning-oriented people, whose best time for energy and activity is the morning, but who can’t get to the gym before work and who also can’t delay work to spend time at the gym? Does that mean they’re doomed to not get any exercise at all? That need not be the case.
Some people may be able to put into effect the same type of flexibility that Shauna demonstrated in the case above, but in reverse. They might renegotiate start times so they can arrive at the office a little later, and, if need be, work a little later to balance it out. Others might be able to find the time within the workday. More and more employers are providing on-site fitness centers or corporate health club memberships along with the permission to use them. Refer, once again to the AstraZeneca example in Chapter 4.
Still others may be able to adopt Shauna’s situation more directly by setting up staggered departure times, and by communicating the value and benefits of doing so to their manager and team. When the only time available for exercise is late afternoon, even if late afternoon is not your optimum time, it is still possible to make best use of the opportunity by slowing down and choosing a food intake schedule for the day more carefully.
All exercise, when done correctly, is good. But the benefits of cooling down reveal themselves in the exercise room just as they do in other areas. For people who are looking to burn off that spare tire of stored fat during the workweek, slow exercise is far more efficient than a high-impact workout. Fast aerobics may be good for getting the cardiovascular system in shape, but they don’t burn stored energy as efficiently. Fat burning happens when exercise is of lower impact but longer duration, for instance, 20 to 30 minutes on a cycling machine or treadmill, three times a week.
Most people who exercise regularly notice by the second week that the exercise itself becomes addictive. The body gets used to exercise, and starts to “ask” for it. However for the first few days, getting into a habit may seem difficult. One of the best approaches is to buddy up—to make a commitment with a friend to visit the gym together. This makes procrastination or rescheduling more difficult since it would inconvenience two people, not just one.
Also, consider entering your workouts into your calendar as recurring activities. This reifies the event, making it real both in your own mind as well as in the minds of other people in your working world.
Do you find long workouts boring? Is that one of the reasons why it is so difficult to motivate yourself to do it daily? It’s true. Thirty minutes on an exercise bike can seem extremely dull to anyone who has just stepped out of their high-speed working world. But there are solutions. Here are a few:
• Music. Your favorite tunes are more accessible and portable than ever before. It is easy to put together a collection of high-energy dance tunes by your favorite artists as a custom soundtrack to your workouts. Download them from a tunes site and play them on CD, MP3, or any other format. Studies have shown that workouts are more effective when there is danceable music present since the beat keeps the body in pace and passes the time pleasantly.
• Spoken-word books. These, too, are available in both downloadable format and also by mail. (Recommended suppliers are listed in this chapter’s How to Cool Down section. There are thousands of book titles that have been recorded, often by well-known actors. Each CD is generally an hour long, perfectly timed for a great workout. View exercise as an opportunity to get in shape and catch up on all those books you’ve been meaning to read. But don’t read them; listen to them!
• Movies. These are also available in “rental-by-mail” formats, just like spoken-word books. With portable DVD players costing under $100 in some cases, it’s easy to prop one up on the console of a treadmill or exercise cycle and let the time slide by.
• Thinking with your eyes closed. Though this one may not seem as stimulating as the previous suggestions, exercising on a safe setup, such as a treadmill, exercise bike, or stair climber means you can do it with your eyes closed. This allows your blue-skying thoughts to arrive in good form. They’re yours for the taking, every day, and it gets easier with practice. Once you know that you will have 30 minutes of daily eyes-closed aerobic exercise, creative thoughts, positive thoughts, deep thoughts willingly appear before you. I recommend this technique heartily, but with two reminders: 1) Make sure your setup is safe, e.g., no loose shoelaces or other potential dangers and 2) Make sure to have something close by to record your great ideas—they’re too valuable to lose.
For people who are looking to build more muscle or develop muscle tone, it may surprise you to learn that lifting weights slowly is far better than doing “power sets” or using the “clean and jerk” approach. Lifting weights more slowly enables you to employ proper technique, which ensures the right muscle groups are being used and challenged. The human body is capable of using numerous other muscle groups to compensate or share the load. This means that many people who invest the time to work out with weights waste a great deal of it through improper technique. (The actual technique and motion required is best learned by taking the time to ask a qualified trainer at your health club to work with you.) Proper, cool technique also reduces the risk of injury, since the weight is moved in the proper direction, offering the right type of resistance to the muscle. In addition to using the wrong muscle groups and/or risking injury, people who work their weights or weight machines too quickly tend to use momentum, not strength to move the weight. This is a subtle, unintentional form of cheating that reduces the demand on the muscles being trained as soon as the weight gets moving. A good weight movement should be slow and steady on the way out and on the way home, using care and focus to keep it safely in line. This, of course, reflects the slow principle perfectly: the difference between doing something of substance versus the false satisfaction of just feeling busy. True productivity, both at the desk and in the gym, really does require a cool approach.
8 Ways That Cooling Down Can Improve Your Company Right Now
• Development of Communities of Practice. Improvement comes from education, but not all education is classroom-based. Communities of practice are groups of people who have in common a particular interest or procedure within the company’s operations. They are informal, as opposed to a formally structured team, and tend to meet, either in person or on-line, at regular intervals to share knowledge about their area of expertise. Allowing time for employees to participate in Communities of Practice helps to both distribute and generate knowledge and expertise.
• Establishment of Organizational Memory. One of the greatest losses a company can face is when its knowledge base walks out the door due to downsizing, attrition, or retirement. The concept of Organizational Memory recognizes that the collective knowledge and wisdom of a workforce must be transferred and retained if the company itself is to have a future. This requires time for employees and managers to step away from immediacies and instead establish traditions and opportunities to systematically transfer this knowledge through mentors, classrooms, experiential scenarios, and interviews.
• Identification and Treatment of Burnout and Stress. Not everyone who calls in sick on a Friday is faking it. Similarly, not everyone who is at work today should be there. Can you tell the difference? People who are burning out will soon be lost to the company. Through absenteeism, presenteeism, resignations, and long-term illnesses these assets quickly lose their potential for the company’s bottom line, and worse may lead to personal tragedy. Managers and organizations who allow time to step out of the silo and observe what is truly going on in the heads and hearts and eyes of their staff stand to keep them around, healthy, loyal, and productive.
• Elimination of Firefighting and its Cascade Effect. Firefighting has a quadruple cost: first, the time and stress involved in fighting the fire; second the need to reschedule and revisit the tasks that were put aside in order to fight the fire; third, the ongoing concern among employees of the fire breaking out again; and fourth, the perception in the minds of the customer, who must balance your quick action in fighting a fire against the existence of the fire in the first place. Though fires and crises inevitably happen, it is the company who sits its people down and works in post-mortem review—to identify how to mitigate such fires in the future that stands to refocus its employees’ energies on higher value tasks.
• Pattern Identification: There are busy times in the year and quieter times. There are times when people take vacation, there are long weekends, and then there’s the Christmas/ holiday season. Patterns can easily be recognized by people who take the time to lay them out on a tangible surface, such as a wall calendar. Pattern identification can help offset personnel shortages, firefighting, deadline crunches, and can also be instrumental in influencing the needs and expectations of the customer.
• Parallel and Bottom-Up Learning. Whether implementing large-scale change or simply seeking smaller-scale continuous improvement, more can be done through parallel learning scenarios, in which all levels of an organization together follow a systematic model of inquiry, innovation, and testing. This requires more time than traditional top-down initiatives, but pay off in heightened motivation, buy-in, and, of course, improvement.
• Conflict Management. Conflicts often escalate because people confuse the issue with the individuals involved. The best time to resolve a conflict is before it becomes a conflict, when it is still just an irksome issue between two people. This requires time to slow down and observe. Sources of conflict don’t always go away by themselves, but time spent in advance usually wins back much more later on.
• Superordinate Goals and Motivation. Companies that take time to demonstrate to its employees the large-scale vision of a single project, or of the company in general, will yield greater productivity, since emotion-based humans work primarily on emotion. Goals are more than a framed mission statement on the wall, though. Managers need to connect, human to human if they are to effectively communicate superordinate goals as well as hear unfettered feedback.
KEY POINTS TO TAKE AWAY
• Sleep should be observed as a series of cycles. Waking up is the closing down of this series, and should be approached gradually, rather than with shock.
• Light reduces the sleep hormone melatonin and stimulates the body to activity. Use light in any form you can as soon as you wake up.
• Our physical body structure hasn’t changed in 50,000 years. Excess energy is stored as fat.
• Highly processed fast foods answer the call for nutrition but don’t deliver in the same way.
• Sugar swings yield great influence on lunchtime meal choices, which leads to reduced ability during the afternoon.
• Eating more of the right things slower will maintain better internal balance.
• Those who skip breakfast entirely condemn their body to experiencing “famine mode,” which actually contributes to weight gain.
• A fast-food breakfast or skipping breakfast entirely not only depletes mental and physical energy but also leads to poor food choices at lunchtime, which can adversely affect afternoon productivity.
• Allow time for a 15-minute breakfast either at home or somewhere else other than the workplace.
• The commute to work serves as a daily warm-up that gets the mind in the right place for work. The commute home does the same in reverse.
• Carpooling is a great opportunity for mentoring.
• Tasks should be assessed and valued before moving ahead with them in order to avoid the blindness that can come from reactionism.
• Multitasking and prioritization are best served by slowing down, writing down, and then negotiating.
• The best time to exercise depends on your job, your metabolism, and your ability to communicate with your manager.
• Slow exercise is far more efficient than a high-impact workout for burning fat.
• Slow weight-training reps are far better for building muscle than fast ones.