1: Question: What’s the first thing you do when you wake up each morning?
For many people, the answer is, “I check my email.”
“Do you catch yourself needing to ‘catch up on the day’ really fast before getting in the shower or getting dressed?” Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram ask in their book The 5 Gears.
If this is you, “do you know what you are doing to yourself?”
“I ask only because this is a habit I suffer from at times as well,” co-author Jeremie observes.
So what’s the big deal? Why not check your email as soon as you wake up?
Because . . . “if you start with email or your to-do list, you let tasks drive your priorities for the day,” the authors note.
Sure, there are some jobs that require you to check in and make sure the organization is in order after a night’s sleep.
But that’s not most jobs.
“When it becomes a pattern it truly can derail your true influence and mindset for the day,” Jeremie and Steve note.
2: Checking your email first thing when you wake up is what the authors call a “4th gear” activity.
The 5 Gears are the central metaphor of Jeremie and Steve’s book.
“Each gear has its purpose and place,” they note. “There is a right time and a right place for each gear.”
- 1st Gear involves taking the necessary time to be 100% recharged.
- 2nd Gear involves connecting with family, friends, or colleagues in a meaningful way.
- 3rd Gear is about being social and enjoying the company of others.
- 4th Gear is your task-driven work gear, where you juggle priorities, responsibilities, and to-do lists.
- 5th Gear is pure focus mode that allows you to “get in the zone” without interruption.
“Over the past two years, we have shared the 5 Gears with thousands of people,” the authors share. “Every time we share it, we ask leaders which gear they are normally in the most. Eighty-five percent of the time, it is 4th gear.”
“It’s no wonder,” they note. “We live in a task-driven, task-dominated world. To-do lists, task sheets, and productivity tools flood the market as adults try to get organized, stay organized, and become as proficient as possible in their world.”
“This desire for productivity from individuals, bosses, and organizations leads to a tendency to move from one task to the next, checking things off throughout the day without slowing down much, if at all. . .”
“Add to this style of working the dizzying speed of technology, the frenetic pace of social media, and the unrealistic expectations of others to make things happen on a moment’s notice and you have an exasperated, stressed-out workforce.”
That said, 4th gear is not a bad place to be. “In fact,” the authors note, “it’s a great one to know how to use well,” Jeremie and Steve explain.
But if you don’t manage 4th gear well, “it can take over our lives and begin to take us on a ride where we begin to lose our souls a bit. We wind up feeling like robots on an assembly line, or appearing that way to those around us.”
Which is why we don’t want to start our day in 4th gear by checking our email.
Starting your day or spending the entire day in 4th gear is neither wise nor healthy.
“From the moment your eyes open you have a choice. You can either wake up out of our sleeping recharge and warm up through a series of recharge exercises that could include reading or exercise or relational connection, or you can look at email and let it set the tone of our day.”
Imagine a highly anticipated game involving one of your favorite teams.
What do the players not do when they arrive at the stadium?
“They do not rush from the locker room to the field and begin playing,” Jeremie and Steve note.
Instead, “players need to warm up so they don’t injure themselves, and so they can get their bodies and minds synchronized before the competition begins.”
Their point? “Just like players need a warm-up, so do you—employees, leaders, families, students, humans in general. We need to start our days in the right gear, and 4th gear is simply not it,” Jeremie and Steve concur.
When we train our minds to take on multiple tasks for long periods of time, we generate “a garbled mix of data, people, and tasks.”
Imagine what would happen if you opened more and more files on your computer all day long without ever closing any of them.
“That is life when you are consumed by 4th gear,” Jeremie and Steve note.
Technology often makes things more intense.
We live in a world of “MORE.” As in . . . “more tasks, more emails, more actions, more conversations, more information, and more stress,” they note.
3: One of the authors’ colleagues, Mark Herringshaw, describes the internal culture of one of his manufacturing clients: “The engineers I’ve met in this company live in 4th gear. Their days on the remanufacturing lines are filled with reaction action.
“A problem arises; they adapt. A message arrives; they respond. Forget a “to do” list. Their agendas are improvised on the fly by others.”
After implementing the 5 Gears framework, the team changed dramatically.
“We are learning how to do 4th gear more effectively,” Mark says. “One of the best steps to improved productivity we’ve seen has been the simple injection of intentional 5th gear.
5th gear is uninterrupted time spent focusing on a single project or task.
“It’s a necessary luxury that if they don’t make happen, it never will,” Mark shares. “So, many are locking themselves away, perhaps for no more than an hour, three times a week. Some put signs up that say, ‘Go away until 3:00.’ Some leave the building to find time to get ahead to think.”
“In this case,” Jeremie and Steve note, “5th gear is the proper way to manage the over-stimulation of 4th gear, especially in a highly stressful manufacturing, to-do culture. 5th gear is a natural shift when you have so much on your plate that needs to be focused on.”
What happens when this occurs? “By simply disciplining yourself and letting other people know you will be out for a period of time, you can knock a big project off your list, feel better about yourself and get back into your 4th gear routine.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Who—or what—is setting the agenda for my day? Am I intentionally choosing my priorities, or am I allowing my inbox and other people’s requests to choose them for me?
Action: For the next week, delay checking email for the first 30–60 minutes after I wake up. Instead, use that time to recharge through reading, prayer, exercise, journaling, or connecting with someone I love. Then notice how it affects your focus, priorities, and mindset.
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