There was a stretch of years, at a fully remote agency, where I regularly worked 60-hour weeks. We called ourselves an async team. It was in the onboarding deck. Work when you work best, reply when you can, we trust you with your own time. Except there was a clock running underneath it. A time…
I read Atomic Habits cover to cover, twice. I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I read the time-blocking books, the morning-routine books, the ones about eating frogs and drawing quadrants and finding your one thing. Two years, on and off, cycling through whichever system promised to be the one that finally worked….
Someone sends me a message on WhatsApp. My phone buzzes. Two seconds later my iPad, sitting face-up on the desk next to it, lights up with the same message. My laptop, if it’s open, chimes in a beat after that. One message, three interruptions, because I bought into the Apple ecosystem specifically so everything would…