How's Your Puttering Time?

How's Your Puttering Time?

For alignment, Mr Google defines puttering as that period of time doing small tasks OR other things in a relaxed manner that are NOT essentially important.  BUT ask Elon Musk how does he start his day?  Oh Oh, you'll be surprised [if NOT shocked] to hear that Elon Musk works 80-100 hours per week.  And he often skips breakfast, whew!@#$%? He claims he DOESN'T have enough time in the morning despite being an early riser.  Let's swing over to his counterpart top billionaire Jeff Bezos WHO still wakes up early and then he spends his time till almost 10am PUTTERING around the house.  So WHAT does he do?  He wakes up, reads the newspaper, brews coffee, and if his kids woke up, he'd make breakfast for them.  So,  How's Your Puttering Time?

Jeff Bezos claims that his PUTTERING TIME is that important to him alongside catching at least eight hours of sleep at night before he buckles down to work, to attend his first meeting only at 10am.  And HOW did he maintained the quality of his PUTTERING TIME at the start of his day?  NO PHONES on the first hour of the day. And he explains he has banned that screen time even for himself for the first hour after waking up because he claims, we're too wired throughout the day, there are things in life [especially family time] that deserves that undisrupted attention and quality

And Bezos explains that his slow-burn, phone-free mornings do lead him to enjoy life much more, and with quality at that.  WHAT else can his family want?  Indeed, there have been countless books and studies exploring the benefits that can be wrought by slowing down and learning to take more [QUALITY] time for yourself.  And it's NO secret that doing stuff that makes you feel happy and more relaxed could have a knock-on effect on your performance for the next hours of your day

More than anything else, that means a mindset change rather than rushing to sit down for a quick to-go breakfast and get to work at 730am OR 8am.  In my years while residing in Singapore, as they say, DO AS THE ROMANS DO.  Seeing Singaporeans work and grind, rushing up early morning till evening, I [wrongly] thought that that was the way to go.  BUT way before I came across these sharings from Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, I told myself that every individual works and lives his life differently so it DIDN'T make sense for me to replicate every Tom, Dick, and Harry into my life

My takeaway:  Looking back, I am thankful I took that path WHERE I definitely thought I was living a more organized daily life, WHERE I had to think and properly plan my day.  I also felt more relaxed and generally less distracted during the work day because I was able to deal with any pressing matter early on.  Of course, that DOESN'T guarantee that I'll be more productive and DOESN'T remove the pressing deadlines that come up at work BUT again, with a clear mind, I had my own 'bragging rights' that I started off my days with my PUTTERING TIME spent even on the petty tasks that gave me a more balanced daily life.  So, HOW'S YOUR PUTTERING TIME???