What Could You Do with Three Uninterrupted Hours?

Published on: Friday, March 28, 2008       Comments (0)       Category: Organization & Logistics,  Reality Check, 

Last month, Starbucks closed all their U.S. stores for three hours for an employee training session. In our 24/7/365 world, this seems almost unthinkable, especially for an establishment that sells coffee — the fuel that enables us to live with little downtime.

This retail stoppage got me thinking about what life would be like if I were to shut down my operations for three hours. What could I accomplish in that time period without email, phone and visitors? Internet service would have to be suspended too, lest I become tempted to spend the time reading or watching videos.

I suspect I could get a significant amount of writing done in three hours, although my research tools would be limited. For a moment, I was going to add that my online thesaurus would be disabled but then realized an analog version was close at hand.

With a “closed” sign on my door and no Internet connectivity, I imagine a three-hour stream of consciousness writing session, which might yield some great business analysis or the foundation for a fictional novel. Either way, I can be quite productive during that block of quiet time, as long as there was coffee.