Send your employees to New York

While everyone is debating remote vs. in-office work, I recommend something that could be far more consequential. Get people out of their routines!

Some of the most productive thinking time I’ve had has been on train rides to New York. Here’s the basic schedule.

• Pick a topic to research, print out relevant white papers and articles, find links to YouTube videos, podcasts, etc., and get them all ready for your trip.
• Devour it all on the ride out, highlighting, taking notes, asking questions, etc. It’s good to switch between reading, watching, and listening. Then go do whatever you had planned in New York and forget all about it.
• Relax on the ride back. Get a beer and start a very light attempt at organizing your notes and comments from the morning. But don’t organize too much. The point of this exercise is to be creative. You want your brain in big-picture mode. You’ll find you have ideas that have nothing to do with the topic you studied in the morning. That’s a good thing.
• Jot down notes. Start on a rough outline. Capture as much of your creative insights as you can. But be relaxed about it. Your subconscious mind is doing a lot of work you’re not even aware of.
• Go home and sleep. This might be the most important part. While you’re sleeping, your brain does amazing things.
• The next day, look at your notes and your outline with fresh eyes. You’ll discover that your sleeping brain came up with new thoughts and insights.
• Refine the outline, extract takeaways, and note new areas to study and new questions to ask. You’ll be amazed at what you come up with.

A few things to consider about this method.

Part of the value of this exercise is simply getting out of your normal routine. You could do something similar with a walk in the park, although it’s easier to read and take notes in a seat on a train.

There doesn’t have to be an event. You can just go to New York and have coffee with one friend and lunch with another.

The crucial components are to have enforced periods of time in which you (in this order) …

1. Focus your attention,
2. Are distracted,
3. Think creatively,
4. Sleep on it, and
5. Summarize and organize.

The value you’ll get as a business owner by sending your employees off to New York for a day will far exceed the cost of the trip and the lost day of in-office productivity.