If You Are Lazy, Come to Work Early.
Recently, the editors of Lifehacker and our subsidiary sites needed to meet in the office at exactly 10 am. The people who announced this thanked us for appearing “at such a wicked hour.” I chuckled and arrived as usual at 8:55 am. I am regularly the first Lifehacker employee in the office. Partly because it looks good, but mainly because I am lazy and self-indulgent.
Arriving at 9 is not quite what is needed for dawn and for matinees. But regardless of your official start time, if you have the opportunity to surpass it by 10 or 30 minutes, I invite you. It’s so relaxing.
Your ride to work … less awful
Start your trip early and ahead of rush hour and you can skip 20 minutes of traffic, or have room to get your phone on the subway, or take an empty seat on the train. The worst part of your morning becomes mediocre. You can read a book, or approach the highway without putting on the brakes, or walk slowly like a carefree country child.
Your morning routine has its own deadline.
If you are in a hurry in the morning to work on time, you are angry at your stupid job on his stupid boss and its stupid commuting. If you are in a rush to get to work at an early time of your choosing , you are a strong and independent hardworking person with your own schedule. You have no one to disappoint or impress other than yourself. Knowing this, you are more likely to skip your morning routine than let your fear drag it out.
You feel like a part of the club
An early start in minutes introduces you as you step into apple-fresh air with a whole different set of morning people. Maybe you catch some school kids on their really godless morning trail or parents thinking, “Damn, a lot of us have to get up early, asshole,” but you don’t know that! You just smile, wave your hand, and feel camaraderie with your early morning siblings. We are few, we are happy!
You can make a pit stop
Since you are no longer in a rush, you have time to grab a coffee, grab a bun, take a slightly longer but more scenic route, get off the bus one stop early, and walk the last few blocks. Earn on the extra minutes you bought. “Bonjour, bonjour!” you cry at the barista, the cashier, the cigarette seller in the wine cellar. You know each other, you are a regular.These are people from your area.
You are the morning queen
When you come to work early of your own free will, you come across as an authority. You greet your colleagues like the benevolent philosopher king. You do not hunch over your work, but relax during the day by drinking coffee from your pit stop. Maybe you are really doing some kind of work, or maybe not.
Your early person’s glow dims by the time the last person comes in, but it resumes when they hook into the morning conversation you started half an hour ago. You set the tone for the day.
You can be wrong
If you don’t arrive early, you just arrive on time. When you’re really late, everyone thinks you have a good reason. After all, you come early. Obviously, any break in this scheme is the fault of some external force, some monster blocking your path.
Are you preparing for an early check-in
Email and Slack are pushing us into a constant cycle of work and pulling the ground from under the wage-based work base. But if you are stuck with this game of “who might look busy at the start,” you can also play it strategically. During your work day, find something that does not require an answer until tomorrow, and write it in the morning. Schedule a Boomerang email or IFTTT Slack message for a few minutes after you wake up. (There is no need to spread the truth further.) This is deceit and more pressure on everyone else to match you, but before the revolution of all workers, this is their problem. The point is to relieve the pressure on evening responses, which are truly disgusting and cannot even be faked. You want to look like a hard worker, not a fool.
You can leave early
If you are fortunate enough to have this kind of flexibility, this is the Holy Grail. If you come early, you have earned the social capital to leave early. You can make it explicit – you probably shouldn’t blog about it – or you can just come to an understanding. When people see you leaving while they are finishing work, they will remember that you were already in full swing when they arrived. Especially after you gently remind them by saying, “Phew, it’s too early to start again tomorrow!” I don’t like to think of it as “overtly transparent” but “crystal clear”. It’s all about looks and how we exploit our cultural biases.
Being late in our society shows weakness of spirit. Leaving early shows autonomy and self-reliance, as well as work-life balance. People who leave early are influencers. They “have everything.” Each one has been profiled in the Times Style section. They go to bake their own bread and teach the children with cards. They reduce screen time. This is you .
Sure, you flop on the couch at 6 with pizza and Hulu, which is equally relevant and which you earned.