The power move of working the 5-to-9 before the 9-to-5
As a competitive rower in my long-ago prime I sometimes used a racing strategy called fly and die. Sprinting to an early lead often yielded a fast overall time, even if I couldn’t hold my torrid pace through the finish line. Some professionals take a similar approach to their desk jobs, starting their workdays with a 5 a.m.
to 9 a.m. shift. They are up before the sun—and, more important, before their co-workers—to get a jump on the workday and impress the boss.
Nothing screams go-getter like a predawn email! Getting stuff done early allows them to clock out midafternoon and still look like stars, even if their routines require Ben Franklin-esque sleep schedules and vats of caffeine. Melissa O’Blenis rises by 4:30 a.m. for prayer and Peloton time before starting her job at the digital consulting firm Argano.
“I just love checking things off my list," she says. “I need that focus time away from Teams messages, email notifications and text alerts." A mother with two sets of twins, O’Blenis, 48, often breaks for her kids’ afternoon sports without feeling guilty or judged. Colleagues jokingly call her Granny because her 9 p.m.
bedtime makes the early starts possible. But Granny got the last laugh when she was promoted to a director-level role in March. More than 90% of knowledge workers want to flex their hours, according to surveys by Slack’s Future Forum.
In the pandemic many of us got in the habit of handling personal commitments during standard business hours, then catching up on work tasks later. Now that the office battle is largely over, fighting a return to rigid, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
schedules might be workers’ last stand. But managers complain about afternoon dead zones when employees are out of pocket. The solution for
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