Like an offensive line that makes room for the star player to act, the right timezone frees you to make the play.

This past week I worked out of Paris (to attend and speak at Le Web).  I was reminded how incredibly easy it was to get ahead when everyone in the States was asleep.  But to keep my team on task and address some big opportunities, I also found myself Skyping and emailing from 1-3am.  It was the best and it was the worst.

A few years ago I worked out of Barcelona.  This past summer I worked out of Buenos Aires.  A big part of why I take these trips is that they’re simply better timezones for me.  And I mean it when I say that the only thing I truly dislike about San Francisco is Pacific Standard Time.

Timezones play a very important role in my ability to get things done.  Like a long flight without internet, they keep interruptions at bay.  But timezones also mean something psychologically—when I accomplish things before others are even online, it feels different.  A good timezone is an opportunity to not only get ahead but to feel ahead.  That’s powerful.

Try as I might to find another pattern, my routine has been unchanged for several years.  I get the most accomplished in the mornings, when I prefer to keep to myself.  I prefer to take meetings or calls in the afternoons.  And, no matter what advanced calendaring or ‘get up early’ techniques I’ve tried, nothing allows me to maintain this rhythm quite so well as a good timezone.

Essentially, I like to be slightly ahead of those I’m working with—ideally 3-6 hours.  In Buenos Aires I’m now 2 hours ahead of my east coast folks and 5 hours ahead of SF.  In Barcelona or Paris I was 6 hours ahead of the east coast (where I used to live), which was manageable…but the 9 hour difference from SF (where I now live) is not manageable.  So that means Europe is generally off my radar now, at least for long trips.

Of course, all of this assumes that when traveling there’s still an opportunity to get into a rhythm and complete your work.  Being far away from home can be challenging, but these days so long as you can find a good office, coworking space, or even coffeehouse, you should be able to get things done.  I try to take month-long trips since it’s enough time both to build a routine and qualify for monthly rates on apartments and offices.

I’ve been behind on writing to my blog, but now that I’m in Buenos Aires, it’s easier to find that time, as I’m probably writing this before you’re even awake.  I’m free from interruptions, and I must say that it’s nice to have long days in the summer sun.

Now it’s your turn to get away and get things done.  Who says they don’t go together?

I was lucky enough to be interviewed last week by Andrew, where we dug into some practical lessons-learned and shared stories and tips.  The video is embedded below.  So grab some holiday tofurkey and get ready to be productive…

Andrew and I discussed 11 specific and tactical tips for winning back time in the workday.  Below I’ve pasted the video interview.  On Mixergy.com, you’ll find a full transcript, an MP3 version, as well as a many (much more ; ) helpful videos for entrepreneurs.

Happy to answer any questions in the comments.  Meantime, enjoy your Turkey Day!

Flickr photo credit: jdlasica

Remember when we had homework and tests?  It was tedious and difficult to get A’s.  But even without a report card, the best results require the same struggle.

I hated high school, but I recall my last two years idyllically: most days I arrived by 7:30, attended seven classes, ran competitively at the track, and then spent 3-hours in a nearby university’s computer science class.  And I did well, even if my moniker “dot com” was hardly offered with affection.

While I enjoyed the subjects, let’s be honest—few of us would’ve labored through so many chapters or worked out so many math problems if it wasn’t required.  The proof: the concept of “practice” is no longer in most of our vocabularies.

Nope, now we just do.  Do it right, do it wrong—business (or nearly all our activities) are about showing up and giving it a shot.  Mind you, I get to grade my team and I rarely let a B result out the door, but in this case it’s easier to be the teacher than the student.

As the teacher I have no trouble forgetting about the competition (as Seth Godin advises), but I still have to do my own work.  I can certainly show up and move things forward (“minimum viable CEO”?) , but the things that will make the most impact feel more like homework.

The difference between a B and an A+ may be 100 customers vs. a million.  Showing up is just lip service.  Pitching 50 journalists, writing 100 customers, creating another video…no one will ask me to do it, and no one will grade me if I don’t.

But it’s not just about work and making a startup succeed.  It’s the willingness to do something that’s seriously tough, even if the light at the end of the tunnel is far away and you may damage your ego in the process.

To be clear, I’m not talking about taking on more—no, ambition creep can be toxic.  I’m talking about taking the things that you’re reasonable/passable/or even good at, and bringing them to the next level.  (For me, that’s writing/marketing, and Spanish.)

As I approach my thirtieth year, I want to still be able to step up to the plate with the difficult things.  Not in response to someone asking me to, but because it’s the only way I’ll be happy with myself and will make a substantial impact before the next decade is up.

Growing up may be a struggle, but it’s also a myth.  We’re never grown up, and it’s never too late to take things to the next level.

But there are two common problems that will sabotage any distributed team’s progress.  We fight them every day at AwayFind, and here’s what we’ve learned.

A big part of remote (er, any) work is a need to communicate frequently, or even over-communicate.  But in a distributed team, there are two communication challenges that lead to big problems.

First, let’s make some assumptions:

• Others on your team have more experience with some of the things you have to do
• The work you’re completing now will change before it’s presented to customers

These are true in any company with a handful of people.  And depending on the degree to which you address these assumptions through communication and feedback, your team can sometimes suffer from:

• Over-perseverance – fighting through every new challenge completely on one’s own
• Over-polish – perfecting what one’s working on before offering it up for feedback

I love having a team that works hard and gets stuff done, so perseverance and polish are generally great traits…but when they lead to slow work and re-work, that’s both frustrating and dangerous.

And on remote teams, these two traits are even more prevalent.  First off, people who are attracted to remote work are often independent people who enjoy working through their own challenges.  But more importantly, in remote work there are far fewer casual check-ins:

• We’re less likely to ask for help form our colleagues when we don’t run into them
• We’re less likely to see a project before it’s finished when it’s not right in front of us

Think about it—when you’re working in the same room you see what they’re working on and hear their frustration.  We’re quick to help one another out and to address problems at earlier stages.

Now this isn’t merely an argument again distributed teams (I’ve long been a fan), rather it’s a warning to prevent these problems from occurring in your distributed team.  As a remote worker, you need to:

• Find a way to share your work well before it’s completed…and be open to reviewing others’ work while its unfinished
• Ask for help from your colleagues when you’re working with a new tool or technology…and regularly check in with others on your team to understand their skills and where you might be able to help

There is not a month that goes by where I don’t learn of someone who struggled with a project I could’ve helped with… or a feature that could’ve been corrected before it got to its present level of polish.  These things can set us back DAYS or WEEKS, and they kill me because they’re avoidable.  Fight back NOW.

These problems no doubt exist in every company…but in remote teams they’re even more prevalent and pervasive.  And if you want to work with people in different offices, you need to proactively combat these issues and architect a culture that supports early feedback and casual sharing of ideas.

While these aren’t the only challenges in distributed teams, these may be the biggest.  If you focus on them head on, perhaps you can reap the rest of the benefits…and join me on my next trip to Buenos Aires.

It’s no secret our greatest asset is time and our greatest predictor of success how we spend it, yet most of us have grown into our roles and task lists without giving it much thought.

Where do we kick ass…and where do we struggle?  Where do we have leverage..and where are we a replaceable worker bee?

At a dinner the other night, we got on the topic of "what are you best at?"  An interesting question perhaps, but it led to a couple better, more specific ones:

• In what area are you uniquely skilled, relative to others?
• Of your unique skills, which can you leverage the most for impact?

Take two minutes to consider your answers.

Though there’s scarcely one right answer, it’s likely that your responses will not be how you spend most (or even much) of your time.

I believe my answer is my ability to offer feedback and communicate advice in a way that’s useful and specific.  With my team that comes in the form of product vision, specifications, and feedback.  With the outside world it comes in the form of speaking and writing.

And as I look back on the past decade, my only regret is that I haven’t written more, created more, and shared more.  Like many of you reading this, as my team and responsibilities have grown, I’ve dealt more with unplanned situations, rather than setting my own agenda.  But, as I wrote a few months back, that’s not the way to make a difference.

How about you — are you spending most of your day in an area where you kick ass and leverage your time?  Any advice, for you or for me, for how to get back on track?

Go above and beyond and forget your to do’s.

We all know what “good enough” is—it’s passable and professional, and while it won’t win awards, it won’t draw criticism.  We’re always capable of “good enough.”

But for a few things, we’re rockstar good.  Maybe you can design landing pages, maybe it’s funny replies to support questions, or maybe it’s writing 10 page blog posts that land you on Hacker News.  Whatever it is, there are some areas where you can  do things that will pull people in and delight.

The sad truth is that when there are 957 things to do, many of them pressing, it’s easy to do “good enough.”  After all, some of our best work takes a lot of attention to detail and a lot of time.  What we don’t realize is that 957 good enoughs is worth less than one above and beyond.

It’s okay to fall behind, and then to fall behind further.  It’s tempting to switch into maintenance mode, to get more things done at good enough.  But then you’re just on the treadmill.  You’re not getting anywhere.

Don’t get things done.  Put them off to work on something better.  Be remarkable.

Flickr photo credit: williamallthing

And if you can’t see it, maybe it’s worth looking for.

I’ve always been a believer that we have two voices—the one where we want our companion to hear us and the one where we want others around to listen in.  The one where we’re talking to blend in with the surroundings, and the one where those outside our group can catch the whole story.

I don’t know if I’m right about this.  But I catch myself using the different voices, especially when the one I’d like to hear me isn’t the person to whom I’m speaking.

It’s not just the volume that’s different.  I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I think that as my intention changes so does my voice.  And in all our actions we run into this subtle distinction of intent.

Sometimes that intention is to make something happen, other times it’s to follow the steps that would make something happen.  In some ways it looks the same, but in others it’s all the difference.

There’s someone I’ve worked with recently who never finishes things.  She completes all the steps, but somehow things aren’t done.  We could make a checklist, we could do the tasks together, but it’s not finished.

The steps are checked off, but the result is incomplete.  The intention just wasn’t there.  At least that’s how I see it.

People know when I’m using those different voices.  People can see when we’re just following the steps.  I think we have to recognize when it is that we’re just following the steps, because we’re never going to get there.

The essential requires balancing the details and making what feels like sacrifices…but aren’t.  The right might not be good enough when the clock ticks on.

Zoom in enough, and you can refine to a state of perfection.  The color of that logo can be just right on the homepage, the hollandaise has just the right spice, there’s nothing  I’d want to change about the last minutes.

But taken as a whole, there’s always room for improvement.  That color doesn’t print well, the food’s only lukewarm, the day would’ve been better if you’d gotten up two minutes earlier and not missed the morning train.

There are details worth sweating, and moments where the best option is to look the other way.

We become experts and get to the point where we understand those perfect details.  We think of our learned and tested approach as the right one.  We learn the hard way that cutting corners will get us in trouble.  So we do things the right way.

But what’s right to you isn’t really the right way.  It’s just a way that works, and may even work well, but it’s just one way.  And certainly not right by any real governing standard.

As we get older and develop more refined tastes it’s important to accept that there are times when we can’t follow what we consider the right path.  No, we shouldn’t do something outright wrong, but we do have to adjust to the circumstances.

When you’re running a business or building a life, it’s not just about doing things right.  It’s also about knowing which details to ignore, which things to put off, and when it’s okay to make mistakes.

Part of executing on the essential is letting go of certain details.  It feels like compromise and sacrifice now, but it’s actually the best decision today.  Sometimes doing what you thought of as most right isn’t good enough.

Flickr Photo credit: FlickrDelusions

Pick your thing.  Show up.  Stick with it.

Book club was the company of friends.  Dancing was the company of friends.  Riding up 17th street for the first time just wasn’t that bad.  Putting that together, even the casual lunch at Yerba Buena and reading on the Embarcadero at Red’s…  It all felt good.  It felt almost…like home.

There was a book we discussed a lot about on a group trip to Israel in 1997.  It was called Alex Building a Life.  The story is a potent and tragic one of an American who died fighting for the IDF, told through his letters, describing how he made a big change and did in fact build a new life.  That image of constructing oneself has always stuck with me.

What strikes me is that today was the result of deliberate choices and time.  It’s taken a LONG time for me to really enjoy dance here, for instance.  But those are both necessary ingredients—pick a hobby, give it time.  Join a group, give it time.  Exercise, give it time.  Soon enough, the rewards will vastly outweigh the time required for maintenance.

It’s 27 days into the new year, which is just enough time for a resolution to start sticking.  I’ve been in San Francisco just shy of five months, and things now feel pretty good.  Five months is time enough for an ambition to be a reality.

Show up.  Stick with it.  Things will come together.  This time it won’t be luck.

But there is a reliable process for building the right habits.  In The 4-Hour Body, Tim Ferriss pulls from lifehacking and game mechanics to break it down.

The 4-Hour Body may seem like hype, but at its core it’s a disciplined approach to physical transformation.  Whether or not you take Tim’s specific advice on weight loss/karmic sex/whatever, his approach is a guide toward coaxing yourself into new behaviors.

Aristotle talks a lot about habit, but was rarely prescriptive in his advice around it.  Rather, he discussed in detail about making habits of things and how that will change who you are—the whole “we are what we repeatedly do” bit you hear quoted all the time.  The 4-Hour Body goes into detail on how to get there.

The meat of the discussion begins on page 58, in “From Photos to Fear.”  It starts with a story of someone who lost 40 pounds and went from running barely a mile to several half-marathons.  I usually take these with a grain of salt, but it happens to be a story of a mutual friend, and the story was accurate.

Then the book digs into the “four principles of failure-proofing” your transformation:

1. Make it conscious.
2. Make it a game.
3. Make it competitive.
4. Make it small and temporary.

You’ve probably heard of “lifehacking.”  Jon Evans credits Tim Ferriss with “promulgating the [lifehacker] ethos to the general population.”  And though I’ve written for Lifehacker.com and spoke many-a-time on personal productivity, changing my behavior and that of those around me has always been murky business.  “Okay, great, that’s what I should be doing…but I’m going to go back to how I was before.”

And that’s where Tim steps in.  He’s taking the measurement ideas that are core to lifehacking and lean startups and throwing in a bit of gamification.  And it works.

A Brief Summary of the Points

Make it conscious: establish a baseline for where you are, and find a way to remind yourself of it regularly.  When it comes to weight, that means taking a “before” photo and placing it somewhere you’re going to see regularly.

Make it a game: it’s less about what you measure, and more that you measure at all.  Measuring is what makes you aware of what change is taking place.  Tim recommends specifically that you track something at least five times to get in the habit of being aware of it.  And that game bit is that you give yourself bite-sized goals around it—i.e., track your miles and then aim for 25 in a week, etc.  (Say what you want about this, but when I run with my Nike Plus, my times are faster and distances greater. – see chart to the right)

Make it competitive: rely on peer pressure, involve other people through websites like DailyBurn, a newsletter to a group of friends, or a regularly scheduled call…preferably where you’re working toward the same thing.  (There’s a bit more to this in the book)

Make it small and temporary: don’t set an ambitious short term goal, but start with one part of it.  Maybe it’s changing your breakfast.  Maybe it’s writing for 15 minutes one day per week.  But it’s definitely not trying to take on the whole kahuna at once.

So What About the Rest of the Book…

The 4-Hour Body brings together a lot of different information that are worthwhile to understand.  Some complain parts of it are variations on popular science in various fields, but I don’t think most people know enough about those fields or topics.

For instance, I’m familiar with today’s research with carbs and newer theories around long-distance running… but I was woken up on how much bodyfat percentage plays into appearance, things that only a serious weight-lifter would understand as fundamentally as Tim lays out.

The thing is, Tim pulls information from a lot of sources—some popular, some unfamiliar.  And he brings them together in a fun way while adding a prescription for taking advantage of them.

In 2007, The 4-Hour Workweek changed my perspective on balance and making a living.  I think The 4-Hour Body (along with Born to Run and Good Calories, Bad Calories) will play a big role in my health and energy-level in 2011.

I hope you’ll use pieces of Tim’s formula above and do believe the book is a worthwhile read.