100 Business Days Out: Day 22 - No Watch

I realized today that for the first time in a month I haven’t had my watch on my wrist. It’s in my briefcase, when I decide to carry it. I wondered to myself today why I haven’t been wearing my watch. What I realized is that I have been scheduling meetings and events with ample time to get to them early (my quote: “There is no stress in being early”) and then plenty of leisure time between so no rush if I run over. It’s pretty liberating actually. I always thought that back-to back was the way to go…get lots jammed in and don’t have downtime as that would be wasted. I was fascinated that Bill Clinton, when President, was scheduled every 5 minutes and I figured that a back-to-back schedule was the way to go. Now in hindsight I realize that when you are back-to-back what you are really doing is not finishing meetings well. In fact, you are finishing them poorly because you start to think 15 minutes before they end on how to wrap up this one and get to the next one on time. And then if you are late, well you know how that feels. I will not mention a CEO who I worked with once who would run so far behind that he would carry over meetings into the next day. That was a nightmare for all involved and made people feel very disrespected. I was more than once on the receiving end of waiting until 7:00pm for a 4:00pm meeting to start only to be told that it was rescheduled for the next morning at 7:00AM. I never wanted to be like that so I worked hard to get done on time, but I now realize that to truly be present and respectful I should have left time between meetings so that I could be fully in the moment for an entire meeting and then have the downtime between meetings to get in the moment for the next one. Not to mention, I wouldn’t have to wear a watch.

100 Business Days Out: Day 10 - 3:00AM Wake Up!

I was on the phone with my financial advisor late one evening. I posed to him a question that he answered, let me sleep on it and get back to you in the morning. The next morning when I talked to him, he said, “I was thinking about this when I woke up at 3:00AM”. For all those years, I thought only me and the President of the United States got woken up at 3:00AM (that’s a jab Senator Clinton) but I have talked to others and the 3:00AM wake-up might be way more pervasive than anyone is letting in. What is the 3:00AM wake-up? It goes like this…you have gone to bed with something heavy on your mind and as you fall asleep it is one of the last conscious thoughts you have. All is well until your mind starts working through the problem and your subconscious pops the thoughts back to your conscious level and bam! you all of a sudden are wide awake with that problem, thought, idea right there with you in the dark screaming for you to get up and go deal with it. You look over at the clock and it is (give or take an hour) 3:00AM. Now, if you respond to the call, you get up and get going and by 5:00AM you are wiped out and wasted for the day. But if you lay there and not respond, then you go over and over the same thoughts in your head for tossed and turning hour and finally in that hour you fall back to sleep and when you wake up you feel like you have to rush to get going. It’s a tough wake-up call. One that I have had probably thousands of times. I thought that for sure with removal of a daily job that the 3:00AM wake-up call would go away. It did for awhile but last night I got the call. This time it was my brain bringing up my insecurities and fears and trying to get me to get up and go do something with it. But, there is no short-term problem or idea to work out. It’s a long-term topic. I wasn’t going to do anything with this topic at 3:00AM. So, I forced myself, like I have done so many times, to go back to sleep. The difference was that when I got up on the morning, there was no rushing to deal with, there was no sense of urgency that said I must get it done pronto. It felt like the difference of drinking a cup of good green tea vs. a 20 ounce Diet Mountain Dew first thing in the AM. One is a gradual and humane way to enter the day. The other is like a baseball bat to the head. I like the former. So, the 3:00AM wake-up may never go away, but how one deals with it could make a difference in how one starts the day and carries on. It’s a good lesson to be learned.