Cool Down: Getting Further by Going Slower

Chapter 6. CREATING A COOLER WORKDAY

This chapter looks at some more activities found in a typical workday, to observe just how the act of cooling down can contribute to greater productivity. The items here are listed chronologically. Please note, though, that some key elements of the workday (such as meetings and email) have already been covered in previous chapters, and you might therefore wish to refer to those sections.

THE COOL ART OF GETTING UP

5:59. One minute left. The numbers on the clock tick over to 6:00 a.m. and the buzzer sounds. You open one eye and look at the clock. No more opportunity left to sink back into blissful slumber. It's time to get up and leave your warm bed behind. In less than an hour you'll be rushing out the door, already late, and another stressful day will be underway.

Sleep is little understood by most people. It's very necessary. If you went without sleep long enough, you'd die. The longest a person has gone without sleep is nine days, and that was in a carefully controlled lab experiment.

But this book chapter is about maximizing your productivity during business hours, long after sleep is done. So why talk about it here? Because when you wake up in the morning, your sleep cycle is not finished. Because sleep, like many other elements of the body, is actually a 24-hour thing. When you exit the sleep phase in the morning, your body is already hard at work doing lots of things on your behalf, and one of them is regulating the chemicals and brainwaves ...