I’m developing a couple of series here. One is with international female leaders who make great impact decisions and are really good ancestors. Then there’s a series about Dutch female entrepreneurs who I think are exceptional examples of making impact decisions, and we can learn from them.
Then I want to add this series where I talk about and share ideas that I hear from clients in conversations. What I don’t want to do is, like, share my examples because I just think that’s just one perspective. But I share what I hear from clients and what they do and how this came about. So today’s example, this is video number one in this series.
Today’s example is from a client who lives right now in Portugal and has a company in Australia. So he lives half the year in Australia, half the year in Portugal, and there’s a reason for this. It’s not important for this video. But the thing is, he has a team that works in Australia, and the time zone difference.
And they recently had a baby, that’s also completely changed their way of living. We were talking about how he has changed his way of working, and now he’s also kind of working at night when it’s quieter. His wife is in bed, and so he does, like, a sauna and meditation.
And then he starts working again, and then he does some listening to a podcast in bed to wind down to get to sleep. I think you could do this differently.
We talked about the usage of his phone in the early morning. So what he does right now is, when he wakes up and is still in bed, he’s checking his messages; he’s checking his phone for sales; he looks for messages from his team, if he needs to intervene, if he needs to do something, if there are questions from clients.
And then, he starts his morning routine with the baby, and with a cold bath, for example, and then he starts working at his desk. And I think what I hear him saying is that he’s responding to a lot of urgent messages. If you know the Eisenhower Matrix, you know, this is all in the urgency box.
You feel like, “I need to respond right away. I need to do something right away.” And what it does is it just upsets your schedule completely. You’re focused on other people’s actions and not your own actions. Other people’s goals, not your own goals.
What we talked about, I think what he can do is to switch up his evening schedule so he has a better night’s rest, so he sleeps better.
And then take the phone from his bedroom completely. In the morning, he’s not on his phone, but he first starts with, you know, his own path. And then when he’s at his desk, he’s really starting to work, then he opens up his phone.
What I do, for example, to support this behavior for myself is I’m using these settings on my phone so that my phone switches off, goes to the gray state, and doesn’t get any messages.
It goes to this night setting at 8:45 in the evening, so I’m not bothered by my phone after that. The phone switches to a black-and-white screen, so it’s not very pleasing to my eyes to watch videos or to go to online social media platforms. And then in the morning, it doesn’t wake up until 8:30, when I’m at my desk.
This doesn’t mean that I sometimes open up my phone earlier, but most of the time, I don’t see any messages from my phone, so I’m not disturbed by my phone. I’m not drawn into my phone.
I’m giving you this example from this entrepreneur because it’s not the first time I’ve heard this and it probably will not be the last entrepreneur that I’m talking to who’s doing this. Who’s already starting to work from his phone in bed, before anything else that he’s doing. That feeling- what happens there in the morning, for example, you’re looking at the sales, you see that you’re behind or you’re going ahead; these emotions influence the rest of your day.
You’re getting questions from your people, maybe, like in this case, from abroad whom work in a different time zone. You feel like you need to reply right away because they are waiting for you. That’s not true. They are sending a signal. They want to be heard, yes, but they don’t need an answer right away.
So you push that back so that you have a calm and easy morning, which I promise you, in my experience, gives you a lot better comfort during the day and gives you the space to really work on the goals that are important to you, the long-term goals.
Not the urgent, short-term goals, but the long-term important goals for you, for your business.
This was episode one in this series, and I will bring you more. Let me know what you think about it, and I’ll see you later.
My name is Erno Hannink, and I support founders with sustainable habits to become good ancestors.
I am the accountability partner for entrepreneurs improving social and ecological equity. See you in the next one.
