20 Things Before 6 AM - It's Just More Macho B******t

It started a while back but recently there have been an avalanche of blogs and news articles about Senior Execs, often at Silicon Valley tech companies, who advocate rather grueling lifestyles. Here's a few examples:

• The 95 things I do before 6 am blogs, there's a lot of these - Now I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with a quick jog around the park before work. But a gym workout, a meditation session and all your email before the sun is up?
• The weekend workers - I read a blog about senior execs and the work they do at the weekend - every weekend. (Jeez guys it's called a weekend for a reason). Apparently this is when they get their creative thinking for work done, that they can't do during the working week.
• Extreme fasting - the 'extreme' here may be my addition but what do you call not eating for 3-4 days a week on a regular basis? They even have a club for it, the members being like-minded Silicon Valley types. Oh it doesn't hamper their lifestyle, they still go to dinner with friends and sip water, and then they feel full!

But why should I care if people want to indulge in such out there lifestyle choices? I don't really care if they do - what I care about is when they promote it as the key to success. They are advertising that they're not like everyone else they hold the keys to the club. They're successful because they can do things that everyone else can't, they aim to make the rest of us feel inadequate.

We slump out of bed at 8 am on a good day and grab a Maccy D's on the way home from the office while juggling 3 kids and the dry cleaning. We can't expect to be senior leaders with that kind of un-disciplined approach.

Here's the thing - these proponents of extreme lifestyle choices can afford to make these choices and mostly it's because they belong to a very important club - they're white, priviledged and male. There maybe the odd woman or person of colour that joins in, but in the same way as the golf club and the squash court were the proving grounds of the 80's and 90's business man the extreme lifestyle blog is now the place to strut your credentials.

So leaders of today - feel free to carry on with your 3 day a week on coffee only diet, run a marathon and have a mindfulness session before dawn and sit at your desk all weekend. However don't tell us about it. It's just the same old macho BS and it's not what made you successful - tell us about that instead, maybe help a few of your co-workers onto the ladder of success, instead of making them feel bad that the closest thing they get to exercise is chasing their toddler round a jungle gym!

All views expressed in this blog are my own