The opinions expressed by business taxpayers are their own.
There is a difference in the marketing of each city. Seoul wants to be advanced and technological advanced; Copenhagen wants to be an environmental leader and focused on design. That is fine, but the big cities are difficult to encapsulate, mainly because a well -developed city has many strengths.
However, what both cities share is something that entrepreneurs should pay attention would be: the 5 -minute principle that revolutionizes how my business manages.
Related: 5 simple productivity pirates that will make it more successful
The accidental commercial experiment
I live part of the year in the Hapjeong neighborhood in Seoul, South Korea. My eldest daughter’s school is on a stop on her bus, about ten minutes. That is so far that anyone in my family needs to go. The preschool of my youngest daughter is eight minutes on foot. And my office is on an elevator walk already 50 steps away, in the same complex as my residence.
At level B2 of the complex there is a hypermarket, and the mall that is between our hanger and that store is a true retail party: convenience stores, household items, pharmacies and wireless stores; Sporting articles such as Nike; Some wine stores; a restaurant issue (including an McDonald’s and one meter); And coffee shops, including two Starbucks (one per reserve). I forgot to mention the cinema, the family practitioner, the dentist, the halls and the Pilates studies?
As American who likes to drive, living here received adjustment. I have lived in metropolis as Boston before, where the CVS and JP Licks are a few steps away. But first here, I had never experienced a place where everything is on the axis of the elevator. Muding here felt magical, as if he were on vacation in an urban resort.
And after a few months of living in this way, I decided to double: I also put my office in the mall.
Related: 21 productive things to do on your trip
The productivity revolution that nobody is talking about
It is difficult to describe how convenient my Korean life is. How to eliminate the transit time required for any daily task has given me hours back every week.
The commercial impact was immediate and deep. With my time budget suddenly, I began to ask myself: What would happen if I could recreate this efficiency of 5 minutes for all my operation?
I appreciated it so much that I decided to sacrifice the opportunity to live the life of 5 minutes too. My recruiter presented a publication that seeks English -speaking people who live nearby; Now we have a team where eight people travel from a ten minutes walk. In the words of one, “this is a dream.”
The ROI of proximity: time is real money
Let’s make the calculations. The average American worker spends 52 minutes traveling every day, and some do much more. That is 225 hours per year, or six weeks of complete work, getting and getting out of work. For businessmen and business owners who invoice per hour or measure the productivity of the equipment meticulously, this repeats an extraordinary hidden cost.
When I implemented my hiring model based on proximity, our team recovered approximately:
- 960 hours of collective productive time annually (in all team members)
- 15% reduction in our disease day (people walking or walking to work get less frequently ill)
- 32% of the decrease in delay and programming interruptions
- Absences related to zero climate (a duration of the season of the Seoul monzón)
More importantly, we have seen a greater collaboration of the team and a greater retention of employees due to the shared neighborhood experience. Happy hours are easy. We can help each other to move. The dog sat each other. Everything is easy since team members who live and work in the same neighborhood develop stronger connections with the company and among them.
The 5 minutes principle: beyond real estate
When I explain this life to my friends and family, they have made me a devotee or a guru they do not trust. “But it’s not uncommon? You never really leave the neighborhood.” It is true that I rarely leave. Allando the other night, I took a 45-minute taxi trip on the other side of the city to catch the 30th anniversary concert of Park Jin-Young (JYP) (it is incredible live).
But for all American entrepreneurs who travel to crimes, fight against traffic to meetings and lose beautiful hours in transit, do we really need to see the landscape daring our transit to some daily destiny? Wouldn’t it be the easiest business if there were no possibilities for traffic, climate or accidents, and everything we needed was one block away? So, instead of maximizing your long trip or doing it more productive, why not eliminate it?
While not all companies can move to an autonomous complex, each entrepreneur can apply the 5 -minute principle:
- Strategic joint location: Place your office near where the key members of your team already live, not where it seems prestigious on a presentation card
- Recruitment based on proximity: Objective talent groups within specific geographical areas instead of launching wide networks
- Creating micro-hubs: Establish small satellite offices in neighborhoods where employee groups live
- Virtual proximity: Design digital workflows that minimize “travel time” between applications and functions: the digital equivalent of the elevator trip
- Proximity associations: Form alliances with nearby businesses to create your own service ecosystems
Related: Super displacement is increasing, here is why and how it works
What you earn when you stop traveling
I can think of one thing of my daily trip that I miss: Talk by phone with old friends. My long units to and from work were good for check-in calls; Now that I do not drive, I do not have much inactivity for the calls. But would I return my 5 -minute life for those calls? No.
Commercial applications of the 5 -minute principle extend beyond real estate. It is about reinventing productivity as a reduction in friction instead of time extension. While their competitors ask employees to work more hours, they can offer them the most time gift without sacrificing production.
For entrepreneurs, especially those construction equipment in competitive talent markets, the 5 -minute model creates a distinctive advantage. When candidates consider similar roles with similar compensation, the improvement of the quality of life of a 5 -minute trip becomes the decisive factor.
In a business scenario obsessed with digital transformation, perhaps the most revolutionary change we can do is analogous: bring things closer, do not do more, but travel less.