It is 12.34 AM on Wednesday and I've just shut off my laptop after finishing off some work emails. It hits me that I've been working this routine more often now then I did 4 months ago. I'm at work from 9am-6.30pm, head home, have dinner, chat on the phone and then start working again around 9pm till about midnight. The thing is, I don't mind it.
I kinda have this military style work ethic, which isn't necessarily good. I like to get things done and out of the way immediately. I was telling Sara the other day that I would like to create an efficiency list (someone criticised me for sounding like the antagonist in a George Orwell novel). So in every company, you have people who move at a snails pace, and you have others who get things done within minutes. This efficiency list would contain the names of my "go to people" whenever I need to gather information from different departments.
So going back to this recent work routine I have, I've just been analysing this change and owe it all to my dual role I've just transitioned into.
Firstly, I work with our Mdrive team. My go to tech guy is in Australia, 6 hours ahead of London. I hate long turnaround times, so I make it a point to send emails with questions that have come up during the day by midnight my time. That way I wake up to a nice email back from him and can get on with the day.
Secondly, my Mdrive team consists of members from Sweden and Finland and they start work around 2-3 hours ahead of me. Same concept, I email everything to them the night before and when I get to work at 9, they have already read through my email and have had time to think about it and are prepared to discuss those items with me. Additionally sometimes I work on projects where I need to correspond with other teams in US, so I use the night to get answers from them.
Thirdly, my other role is with the buzz support team. My go to guy is in San Fran, another time zone to work with. :S he starts work around 8am Cali time, 4pm my time. But he's ALWAYS on conference calls for two hours so I can never get hold of him. So I go home and try to catch him online around 10pm my time. The thing is, I've learnt not to send emails to him because he gets hundreds, so I resort to instant messaging him to get an "instant" response. If for some reason I miss him during this time, I have to wait ages before being able to get IM time with him.
So you see, I don't mind this at all because it fits within my personality of getting things done. Nothing more frustrating then being unable to finish off a task just because a piece of information is missing. I also love the international aspect of my job as it demands for interaction with colleagues from all over the globe.
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