The headline sounds nutty, right? “Finding Time to Work?” Don’t we already put in enough hours in the day to make our bosses happy? If you are on tour, in sales or a traveling man, a good part of your business is spent being outside of the office, being on site and, often, working out-of-pocket. Your typical “eight hour day” is spent nowhere near a computer and, most likely, away from paperwork. You know, those pesky pieces of paper or digital files that actually get us paid.
Not Just 9 to 5
For months, I have been doing quite a bit of traveling — so much that I changed my wallpaper on my phone to a photo of my wife and dog just so I can remember what they look like. It is a small thing like this that keeps me sane and connected to my home life when I’m on the road.
With all of this travel, my normal hours of work have been thrown out the door. Take, for instance, Prolight+Sound. It is a long trade show day, from 9am to 6pm for four days in a row. While the show ends at 6pm, our workday doesn’t. It’s a mix of business and pleasure — including dinners, drinks and socializing into the early hours with friends from around the world. But if it’s more pleasurable than hard labor at the salt mines, it’s still a block of time you can’t really call your own.
Of course, I was working from the phone the entire time, returning important calls, rescheduling lower priority ones and then the skimming and responding to emails nonstop. Oh, and the endless amounts of tweeting and posting to Facebook about new product announcements. Doing these quick tasks from the phone sharply reduces the workload I’ll face when I finally have a chance to sit down in front of a desktop computer.
With the long hours we pull in during the day, when is a good time to get some real work done on the computer? This bit of info was passed on to me early in my career: “Whenever there is time.” Kind of vague right? Yes, but it is a simple rule.
Everyone knows their business and how to run it. If that means staying up a couple hours one night to get a client a proposal, you do it. It means opting against that next drink and getting back the hotel. And instead of lazing back and watching a movie on the iPad during the next flight, it means taking out the computer to get some thoughts down in writing. “Whenever there is time” means taking those hours of downtime through the day and making it meaningful time.
Case in point. As I write this, I am waiting for yet another flight. I knew that I had to write this, and how long it typically takes. Then, estimating how long the TSA lines are, I gave myself an extra hour to get a draft down. It is an added bonus that Reagan National Airport — near Washington, DC and also my home base — has free Wi-Fi, so the PLSN office in Las Vegas won’t have to wait until I land to get this now!
Getting it Done
My plan for the flight is for even more writing and organizing these pages of PLSN for you. That is if the guy in front of me in the “cattle” section doesn’t recline. It is tempting to watch that latest movie I downloaded, but then you might not have anything to read, and I would be out of a job.
“Finding time to work” still sounds nuts, but in an industry like ours, when the whistle blows at 5, we are still on the “job site” or on the road. Catching up on the computer when you can is just as important as being focused when on the job. And “catching up” doesn’t just mean completing the current job at hand.
Sure, it feels great when each issue of PLSN heads out to the printers. But when that time comes, the following issue’s feature lineup is already well underway, and I’m busy planning and making assignments for two issues down the road.
I’m sure it’s the same for many of our readers – when everything’s done with the current gig, they’re “catching up” on the next one – getting that drafting done or patching the next show.
Or maybe they’ll glance at the wallpaper image on their phone, and they will be reminded to do something less urgent, perhaps, yet more important, than anything else — to send a love note back home.
For a video introduction to the April 2014 issue of PLSN, go to www.plsn.me/201404ednote.
