Some work has demanding hours; some has demanding deadlines. Proposals have both.
If you don’t manage the work, it will roll right over you. Right over your team.
In honour of Labour Day, and in memory of one too many weekends worked straight through, here is the final excerpt and video in my virtual book launch.
When he was a university student, my cousin (who later rose to be Treasurer of B.C. Hydro, although we would never have thought him capable of that at the time) worked a summer job as a dining steward on the CPR trains that ran to Winnipeg, sometimes to St. Paul, MN. As I remember it, he got up before 4:00 every morning to set the tables for breakfast, finished washing up around midnight every night, non stop all day. He’d get back to our house, and regularly sleep for 24 hours. My mother thought there was something wrong with him; maybe he was sick….
I’ve never been able to sleep more than ten hours myself, but I guess when you’re running on adrenaline and not much else, there does come a time.
Jim T
Jim – I’ve only had Big Sleeps a few times – and only slept around the clock this once. Not a smart way to work. Or to live. It was, in fact, this proposal that led me to institute what became known as Isabel’s Rule for teams: No more than 10 hours/day and 6 days/week. Still not good, especially over an extended period, but better.