Gin & Tonic for Breakfast on Monday

When did summer get so busy? When I did B2C marketing, summer was a blur as we geared up for back-to-school and Christmas. In B2B, it’s supposed to be a slower, gentler time. Time for golf, patio lunches and sneaking out early on Fridays. But the past few summers have looked just like the past few winters and autumns: a frantic scramble from one day to the next with meal replacement bars in the elevator standing in for a civilized lunch.

Through recent conversations, it seems we’re all having difficulty seeing through the emails, irrelevant meetings, piles of reports and other stuff to get to what we should be doing.  I propose the following: let’s treat the work week as a great gin and tonic. And a great drink, as we all know, is built thoughtfully and in a certain order. What better way to start the week than with a yummy G&T?

The glass:
Other than the usual attention to cleanliness, the glass need be nothing more than something with a leak-proof bottom. This represents your week. The 35 or 37 or 40 hours you rent yourself out to your Corporate Overlords.  Even if you routinely put in way more time, build your drink on what they actually pay you for.

The ice:
The ice is your first ingredient, and each cube needs to be carefully selected because it represents your strategic priorities in the bigger scheme. This can be earning revenue, landing new accounts, reducing costs, hiring the right people, expanding markets and all that. This is the stuff you and your boss and your team are measured on. They need to be aligned with the bigger corporate ice cubes. But remember, too much ice waters the whole thing down and doesn’t leave room for other stuff; too little and the drink is a warm, soupy mess. If you try to add ice at the end, the whole drink overflows.

The gin:
The gin is what you actually do. The reason you show up. The reason they hired you in the first place. Ideally it’s also the stuff you like doing the mos — selling, writing, planning, building products, solving problems and so forth. By volume it’s not so much but in effect, it’s really the whole point of the drink. Make sure you put in a good, healthy shot.  Remember, too much gin makes you only briefly the life of the party, and after that it’s really just a night on the bathroom floor. It’s also important to put it in second; gin added at the end, floats on top and makes the week taste like a gas station.

The lemon:
Or lime, if you prefer.  On its own it’s not all that nice to stick in your mouth, but without it, the drink would be a flat, boring affair. The lemon represents the stuff you have to do: the boss’s weekly meeting, your expenses, progress reports, and that sort of thing. It’s easy to end up with a huge piece of citrus so if your drink is tasting like Sprite, you’re loading up on too much busywork.

The tonic:
Tonic water is a pretty nasty thing all by itself, but it has the power to turn ice, lemon and  greasy distilled juniper berries into a magical and refreshing experience, so let’s give its due.  Tonic is all the other stuff you put in your week. Tonic is meetings you choose to attend, training sessions you need, email you want to read and respond to thoughtfully. It’s the reading you must  do, the presentations you make, the customer time, the product testing, the trade shows. Tonic is never wasted: you want fresh, bubbly tonic in your glass or the drink will suck. But too much and it will be a complete waste of perfectly good gin. In my view, it’s the tonic that’s hardest to manage.

Save the Wine for the Weekend
I think the reason so many of us have trouble managing our time at work is that we view it like it’s a glass of wine. In other words, the same thing from top to bottom, every element the same squished old grape. Which may be true of your personal time (though I hope it isn’t) but really isn’t helpful when you’re trying to decide what to do first on Tuesday morning.

A Boozy Outlook
Here’s what I did. In Outlook you can make your own labels and colour code them however you like. So I made blue for ice, green for gin, yellow for lemon and pink for tonic. And as I put stuff in my calendar or accept meetings, I code them in one of these four colours. Then I use the View Week option so I can see my entire drink. While any given day may be heavy on the gin or the tonic or the ice, the week, if I’m doing it right, should resemble a lovely, balanced G&T. And if it doesn’t, I start declining meetings, adding in some gin and restoring balance.

Here is a handy picture.

Space is Okay
Every good G&T has lots of air and gas in it. There’s the air in the ice cubes that makes that nice popping sound as they melt. There are the bubbles in the tonic and, of course, there’s the half inch or so of room at the top so you can carry your drink without spilling. This is the rest of the time. And I think it’s just fine to have some white space in your week. That’s where you can deal with the junk email, the useless voice messages, the odd smell in your second drawer and the co-worker you are secretly stalking. It’s a gift, in its way, so make the most of it.

I know there are similar metaphors involving rocks and sand so if that is your work, I apologize. I just think gin tastes better than sand.

Let me know if this helps you or simply inspires you to drink more at work.

BizMarketer is written by Elizabeth Williams
I help companies have better conversations
Drop me a line at ewilliams@candlerchase.com
Or follow me @bizmkter