Page 57 - Benjamin Franklin\'s The Way to Wealth: A 52 brilliant ideas interpretation - PDFDrive.com

24 MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR WORKING

WEEK

‘Employ thy time well if thou meanest to gain leisure,’ said Benjamin and
I, for one, take that to mean don’t spend days of your life sitting in
rock-solid traffic.

Let’s presume for a moment that your work is rewarding, challenging and
deeply pleasurable with nary a wasted moment. It’s a stretch I know, but
work with me. Even if all the above is true then it’s pretty much a certainty
that there’s one major part of your working day that is, at best, dead time…
the commute.

DEFINING IDEA…
Companies today cannot afford to ignore the issue of work/life
balance. Providing employees with the flexibility to address personal
commitments, without compromising the needs of the business, can
make the difference between a good working environment and a great
one.
~ DIANE DOMEYER, DIRECTOR OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST TEMPORARY STAFF

AGENCY

Naturally there will be somebody out there who is carried to work in a
sedan chair borne aloft by a bevy of attractive members of the opposite sex.
That person is disagreeing with this right now. For the rest of us, crammed
into late trains or sitting in traffic, the commute is one of the worst parts of
the day. It doesn’t take long to do the maths. If you spend about a hour
each way getting to work then you’re losing the equivalent of a working
day a week sitting, stressing, swearing—and, what’s even worse, paying for
the privilege. So how about working from home instead?

Strictly speaking, I’d advise you to avoid the phrase ‘working from home’
because to management ears that sounds indistinguishable from the ‘food
poisoning’ so often suffered on Monday mornings. Indeed the biggest single
problem of anyone who wants to stop wasting their time on transport is that