While this round the clock timetable gives new meaning to “it’s been a long day” or a “short week”, it actually helps me to elude the effects of jet lag. One of my greatest joys is that I travel to meet clients frequently. Not being cognitively entrenched in any single time zone makes it all the easier to be keenly on-point and sharp. Time is somewhat amorphous for me, which is a paradox, because I live and breathe by deadlines.
Sometimes, when time flies, it’s because I’m traveling west to arrive in the east and nearly a day is lost before the 16 hour flight even takes off. When a day “drags” it’s nearly always because I’m on a plane chasing the sun. Even though I’ve been productive or managed to nap on the plane, I arrive at nearly the same time as I left and find the full day still lies ahead. Working around the clock doesn’t always mean 24/7. Sometimes it’s 10 a hour day and I lose a day (10/6) or I have a 28 hour day in what beomes an 8 day week (28/8).
On Sunday, I left Los Angeles at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, and it was already Monday morning in Phuket, 4am. With a change of planes in Beijing, it was 25 hours door to door arriving Tuesday morning a few hours before before dawn. I’ll return from Seoul on Friday at 2pm and I’ll land in Los Angeles at 10am on the same day… 5 hours before I left. This begs the question… If “time waits for no one,” then why is it still today… tomorrow?
