Time-Zoned: Working Around The Round-the-Clock Workday
The timing could not have been more perfect …
Conventional approaches to flexibility, such as flextime, don’t help time-zone warriors very much … Instead, they need ways to regain control over their time. … being explicit about personal commitments when they intervene, says Tess Mateo, Wyckoff, N.J., a director in the CEO’s office at PricewaterhouseCoopers. After an early-morning conference call last week with eight co-workers in six time zones, she told co-workers she’d be unavailable for two hours of family time.
In offices of old, “you’d never tell anyone, ‘I have to feed the kids now so please don’t return my call,’” she says. “Now, you can say those things.”
Source: Wall Street Journal
Yesterday was “President’s day and at my company, many official holidays have gone the way of “personal choice”. So often you work them either because your team is working or you want to use the “personal choice” holiday at some other time.By yesterday was not a “personal choice” day it was a federal (and company) holiday.
My cell phone rang at 8:20AM with a sales rep asking about a project. Then again at 10:15AM, and twice around 2PM. *Everyone* was surprised when I said it was a federal holiday and I was taking it off.
What was amazing to me was all of these calls were from US based people working on government projects with government agencies - ALL OF WHOM WERE ON HOLIDAY.
Ironically the answer is always, “we gotta get this project done and then we can take some time off.” But, we all know this project will immediately be followed by the next project.
There will always be exceptions to rules but as a general rule, take your holidays, your vacations, and spend time with your family and friends.
A US Navy pilot once said to a co-pilot going thru a divorce; “you can’t be married to the Navy and married to your wife. You chose the Navy.”
