Staying In The Zone

MYOB 2008-06-02
Show #82
Release date: 02 Jun 2008

Notes

Staying in the work zone, a follow up on our Working From Home podcast.

In this show we take a look at how to work efficiently and effectively.

How do we define the Work Zone? What does it mean?

Working from home has many comforts but also plenty of distractions. What about the need to discipline yourself if working from home?

Two standard approaches to maintaining productivity – the Charles Dickens method and the Anthony Trollope method.

The third approach – the entrepreneur’s approach – just work and work and work, until you drop (or as long as you can be productive).

And finally, what is the key to a successful emotional zone – being productive and working efficiently?

In The Zone

We find ourselves in 2008 in the middle of a clash of cultures – that is to say a clash of business cultures, which may itself be a reflection of a broader cultural uncertainty.

Anyway, leave the postmodern malaise to the philosophers. As entrepreneurs, even the least philosophical of us is aware of two completely contradictory fashions that have come to dominate the business world in recent decades.

The first is the high-octane, success obsessed “24-7” culture that began with the yuppies of the 1980s. Think of Michael Douglas in “Wall Street”, Sigourney Weaver in “Working Girl”, and Tom Cruise in “Risky Business” and in the opening scenes of “Rain Man”. Winning was acknowledged at last as a desirable goal, and hard work and constant hustle the keys to getting there.

The brick-like cellular telephones have given way to Bluetooth and the Blackberry but the ethos of perpetual motion remains.

However, from the “kinder, gentler” 1990s onwards, many of the same people who were pioneering yuppies have been asking, “Is this all there is?”

So there has arisen a new fashion, for the “work-life balance”, with the same new technology that drives “24-7” lifestyles also turning the ideal of working from home into a practical possibility.

Yet we are fooling ourselves if we imagine the latter fashion has supplanted the former. The “kinder, gentler” thing was essentially a marketing ploy to cover the fact that the work ethic that was remarkable in the early days of the yuppie is now taken for granted in the business world.

If anything, the “24-7” culture is more established than ever. The fact that modern technology has increased accessibility also means that people are expected to be more accessible.

Yes, we can retreat to our cottages in the woods, but we should not expect to rise to the top of major corporations or professional firms if we do.

Entrepreneurs have more flexibility, of course, but entrepreneurs, more than most, depend on building a reputation for reliability. Woe to the entrepreneur who talks about “work-life balance” when his biggest customer in on the line wanting something done yesterday.

The reality is that many who pay lip service to “work life balance” are actually working “24-7” – and expecting others to do the same.

However, this is ultimately a poor strategy. Although it may often be necessary to work “24-7”, to do so continually will be counter-productive over time. Decision-making becomes poor when one is tired and too focussed on the trees to see the wood.

Most yuppies burned out, as will most of their 21st Century equivalents.

The “work-life balance” might be the key to longer term competitiveness. It is more likely to produce that clarity of thought that some call being “in the zone”. Yet how can it be reconciled with short term competitiveness, which demands energy?

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. There is a time for “24-7” and a time for “work-life balance”.

In particular, when one is young, the competitive instinct that drove our ancestors to hunt and to fight is at a high. As one gets older, the instinct remains, but one also realises that there are other things in life.

In his twenties, a man should have the urge to compete, to acquire, and to succeed, or he is a poor excuse for a man – but he is even more pathetic if that urge is still his strongest feeling in his forties.

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