The Grandma and Grampa Routine
Or how not to lose $1.2 million dollars
Writer Tim Denning has this story about the time that he lost $1.2 million dollars.
What the what? Right? $1.2 million dollars! But also how? How did he do that.
It turns out that it was because he worked too late at night.
I have never done that (maybe because I don’t have a random $1.2 million in crypto hanging around), but I have done some stupid things at the end of a long day. Things like:
Sent a cranky email
Sent a too-nice email
Purchased 18 jars of kimchi because they were on sale.
Denning tells this story in a post about building online empires by focusing on one hour a day and not having that hour be at the end of an already exhausting, full day.
He first quotes Brunello Cucinelli who said,“Do you think that during the first five hours of the day you are the same as you are in the last five hours? No way.”
And then, Denning himself wrote,
“At the end of the day you’re tired. This means if you work on your online empire after your job, you’ll have no energy and the quality of work will suffer.
“The riskiest decisions are made when you’re tired.
“I lost $1.2M because of tiredness. It had been a long day. I was messing around with some crypto stuff. Instead of going to bed at 10 PM like normal, I was still awake.
“Because of this tiredness I made a series of accidental decisions that led me to lose $1.2M in about 30 minutes. If I’d gone to bed this never would’ve happened.
“When we’re tired we also stop listening to customers and people we’re building alongside with and just do whatever. The lens of tiredness makes everything online look impossible to build.
“After work we’ve had our dopamine levels depleted, and been doing boring admin like replying to emails all day.
“It’s the worst frame of mind you can get — yet this is when most people build.”
THE SCIENCE
There’s science to back up Denning’s anecdote.
There’s an article about that in Business Insider by Hilary Brueck where she writes a bit about Daniel Pink’s 2018 New York Times bestseller "When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing."
Pink said, "Sharp-minded analytic capacities peak in the late morning or around noon."
“Scientists who've studied this effect have shown that speed and accuracy at completing tasks are both better in the morning, and that the ability to remain alert tracks closely with sleep and wake schedules, which tend to peak twice a day: once in the late morning, and then again in the evening,” Brueck wrote.
THE TAKEAWAY
So, what does this mean? It means to be careful buying kimchi or selling crypto or organizing a new business when you’re tired at night. It means that if you’re trying to build something up, maybe focus on creating an hour in the morning where you can get that done. For most of us that means getting up an hour earlier.
Ugh. I know!
But that just means that you have to refocus and think about why you want that hour, what it is that you’re trying to create or do or build? Do you really want it? If so, you might have to take that hour.
Denning calls this the Grandma and Grampa routine. He’s talking about building online, but it might be just as easily applied for building a better life.
“If you want to build online you must adopt a grandma and grandpa routine. Watch less TV. Exercise daily. Go on long walks for creativity. Have an early dinner. Go to bed early,” he writes.
And don’t forget to drink water and have your fiber!