Preston Leadership Blog

Just Say "No" to Loud Restaurants with Open Desks

Last Tuesday I scheduled two appointments far apart and at either end of the day, meaning I would be wasting a lot of time driving back and forth. So, at 9pm the night before I searched for a Starbucks or Panera Bread where I could spend about 4 hours between meetings.

Even if I could avoid the unnecessary driving, the problem with restaurants is noise and a lack of space to spread out. I had calls to make, but in the car or at a loud restaurant. Fortunately I remembered a much smarter alternative: Open Desks.

At 9pm on my phone, I was able to easily find an office with a door, a landline, coffee, and Internet halfway between my two meetings. The price was right and the process was simple. The next morning I breezed in, gave them my name, and they led me to my office. After they showed me where the coffee, the copier and the bathroom were, and I was working in under 5 minutes.

I didn’t have to do much to find a perfect place to spend 4 hours. Now that I know about this new “on-call office” in Malvern, PA, I actually look forward to being there - and avoiding down time. 

 

Greatness over Busyness

On the outside, busy seems to rhyme with worthy. Busy people seem successful, needed and important. Busyness is, after all, serious business!

Yet on the inside, we make it through the day, shorten our night’s sleep, survive through the week, and finish off what is left on our to-do list over the weekend.  It is customary to describe our workload with words like crazy and expressions like “no time to breathe.”

We also discuss time in very financial terms.  We save it, spend it, waste it, we never have enough of it. Time is now seen as a non-renewable resource, and as such, it is precious.

But is time really our most precious resource? We can have a lot of time on our hands and accomplish zero or we can do a lot in a very short period of time.  Performance therefore depends on the skillful management of our energy; not time. 

Rather than go through life as if it were a marathon, how about approaching it as a series of sprints? The focus shifts from managing our time more efficiently with fancy blackberries and ever-shorter email strategies to managing our energy more successfully, avoiding both over and under-use.

To build your energetic capacity, try the technique high-level athletes have used for years. Push beyond your known limits, thus setting them further back, then rest.

Notice that rest is just as necessary as the push; and not only for our subjective benefit, but also for our brain and body to process and register that a new boundary was established. Downtime is no longer an unproductive indulgence, but a necessary procedure that prepares us for the next effort.

While this equilibrium seems very much intuitive, it uncovers the less obvious conclusion that constant busyness impedes greatness.

If you’ve been running long and hard and if there is a small voice inside that is begging you for a rest, pay attention. You will engage, problem-solve and perform better after recovery.

Save a ton of time

A lot of great books have been written on leadership. In order to use my time wisely, I often read a thorough book summary before deciding whether to buy it. While online reviews by publishers and other readers are certainly helpful, I find it much more valuable to read a full summary of the book. There are some excellent books on success and leadership listed on this page, but there's a way to save a TON OF TIME.

Perhaps you've heard of a great service called Soundview Executive Book Summaries®. They’ve summarized over 1,000 business titles, condensing them down to eight pages each. With a subscription, all summaries can be downloaded in multiple formats - from pdf to mp3. My clients get free and unlimited access, but individual subscriptions are available directly from Soundview – http://www.summary.com.