2-3-4 Friday

‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’

1 thought

When was the last time you were really productive? Remember the time when you just knocked out casenote after case note, document after document, slide after slide?

If you’re honest, you would have said,

the bus?

The train?

The time when no one came to disturb me for a few hours.

Basecamp is a software company built not for the Fortune 500, but for the Fortunate 50,000. They love talking about how they build first for small businesses, rather than the larger ones.

They first started building project management software, and then later branched out into other software like chat.

When they first started, they started as a team of 3, with one programmer in Denmark, and the rest based in the US. Later when they scaled to a team of 5, they were spread over 4 cities over 8 time zones. There were only 4 to 5 hours where they were together and working.

But hear this:

One positive side effect of this 8-hour difference is

alone time.

You might find this hard to believe in something like software, which you would have assumed would have involved people huddled in a room, pasting post-its, and trying their best to hash out the features.

But it isn’t.

It’s alone time that allows you to think hard about the difficult problems you’re trying to solve, so that you can actually put things together.

And I want to put it to you this:

together time is over-rated.

Walk into the office today and you would be quickly frustrated at how little time you have to actually do the work. Much of your day is interrupted by colleagues and managers walking up to you and asking you something.

Then you have those meetings that seem to meander, going nowhere, and you hardly knowing what’s going to be done after the meeting.

Maybe you think I’m understating the importance of together time. It’s perhaps important for hashing out difficult issues that require coordination. But for execution, you need alone time.

If COVID’s lockdown showed anything, it was that people could get a lot done when they weren’t together.

And that the focus time you need for thinking hard about problems, preparing presentations, papers, needs time that is uninterrupted.

1 talk

Together time is overrated.

1 tip

Can’t control the time you’re spending with colleagues? Or can’t stop colleagues from interrupting you?

One way to do this is to disappear. And I mean - really. If you don’t have to go into the office, don’t.

If you are in the office, disappear into a meeting room you can book from 9am to 12pm for the focus work, before coming out after that to meet. If you need to meet, arrange it after your productive hours.

If you’ve ever come to a point where you’re sick and tired of constantly having too much work, and not enough time to do it, you may have approached it in the wrong way. It’s not about doing it more efficiently.

It’s simply about having uninterrupted time so you can think, focus and do the work.

John

Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love

Think others might benefit? I’m counting on you. Forward this on.