Thanks to author and blogger, Tim Ferris, for this post about lifestyle investing. Tim talks about an exchange he had with a reader who asked if you could invest time the way you invest money. If you can have “compound interest”, then why not “compound time” as well?

We think the answer is “yes” and here’s a story from our experiences with ROWE at Best Buy that shows you why.

One of the managers we migrated at Best Buy was very, very old school. He was older, he used to be in the service, and his entire mentality about work was based on hours. You showed up on time or early. You never left early or took a long lunch or ran personal errands during the day. You put in your time and you respected the structure - no questions asked.

As he went through the migration process, this manager began to see the business and personal benefits of a ROWE. He saw his employees blossom under this new way of working, and this got him challenging his own attitudes about time. Most importantly, he realized that if he didn’t change his behavior, then he would stifle the change. Your boss can verbally support you having control over your time, but if he or she still sticks to the old ways, then that sends a counterproductive message.

So the manager started running. Instead of going to work at 8:00 a.m. every day, he went jogging through his neighborhood. This was not easy for him. At first, he felt guilty and uncomfortable. But gradually, he realized that the work was still getting done. And he saw that his employees were more comfortable working nontraditional hours. The “compound” effect didn’t put more hours in the day, but soon the team enjoyed more control over the time they had.

The traditional mindset about time will always express things in terms of amount. And if you’re trying to get “more” time in your life, you will never win. That mythical “more” doesn’t exist. But more control over your time is very doable. It feels good, it’s something you can share with others, and it creates a new culture of abundance. The fact that there are only “so many hours in the day” doesn’t have to feel like a limitation.

As ROWE started to take hold at Best Buy, we collected stories from teams who had already migrated. We wanted to keep a record of the change, and also give the non-ROWE teams a glimpse at what life in a ROWE was like. Here are three comments from actual employees. We’ll run this feature occasionally to give you a sense of what the movement looks like from the ground.

Enjoy.

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I have had employees tell me very openly that they were certain they had increased the number of hours they worked – voluntarily – after embarking on the ROWE road. This seems unusual, until you learn that the number of hours they worked was not the root cause of their satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The biggest job satisfaction actually came from having greater control over their schedules. This led to greater productivity and job satisfaction simultaneously.

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This way of working actually feels like more hours in a day have been created because of the flexibility element that is engineered into ROWE. Sometimes, I don’t have the energy to do my best work in the morning or afternoon.  So, I’ll take that time to do personal things around the house, workout, or whatever, and then I will work on my “work” in the evening in my home office after everyone else in the family has gone to bed. I have more creative energy because I have less constraints – most importantly, no perceived requirement to work at the campus in my cubicle.  I can choose my own working environment that is most productive for ME.

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Last week, while I was out on vacation [a coworker] had a family situation come up that she needed to attend to. Her mother was going into the hospital for surgery. [My coworker] worked from her mother’s hospital room via the high speed internet connection, and took meetings via telephone. She did not miss a beat. She kept moving on our business outcomes.

We don’t just preach about the joys of a Results-Only Work Environment. We live them every day. And so we’d like to offer a story of our own ROWE.  As we mentioned before, we’re currently working on the ROWE Launch Kit: Office Edition, a tool we’re creating so teams, departments and organizations can transform their workplace from one that focuses on time and physical presence, to one that focuses only on results. To make this happen, we have assembled a team of writers, designers, manufacturers, project managers and so forth. The expectation is that they will drive outcomes on their own, without constant supervision, or scheduled check-ins, or tons of meetings.

Of course, we still meet. But meetings work a little differently in a ROWE, where one of the rules (we call them Guideposts) is that Every Meeting is Optional. Last Friday, we called a meeting to review some materials from the printer. What happened will give you an idea of a ROWE in action.

1. The entire Kit team was invited, but not everyone came. Key people (designer, creative director, etc.) showed up because they knew their input was essential. We trusted them to recognize this fact, and they came through. In a ROWE, people treat the business as their own. You don’t have to mark the meeting “mandatory.” People are adults. They get it.

2. We covered for the people who didn’t make it. Even though the project manager wasn’t there, that didn’t mean that we didn’t cover project management issues. When those points came up, another member of the team stepped up and filled that role. A ROWE naturally creates this kind of cross-functional performance. I fill in for you at this meeting, because I know you’ll fill in for me the next time I’m not present.

3. Some people stayed for the whole hour; others didn’t. The outcome of the meeting was to finalize color and proofread some content. The designer was only responsible for the color, so once that was done, he left. The rest of us stayed for another 45 minutes. When design issues came up later in the meeting, we handled it the same as we did with the project management issues. The team figured it out. What we couldn’t figure out we put in an e-mail to the designer, who answered our questions later that day. If it were something urgent, we could have called him. He has a phone.

4. No one questioned where the missing people were. We were getting results. Period. What does it accomplish to gossip about the whereabouts of the “missing” team members?

5. We had fun. Because we don’t meet as often, or have as many meetings, the meetings we have are productive and fun. No one in that coffee shop had sat through four pointless, overly long meetings already that day. Everyone was cheerful, rested and fresh.

Every Meeting is Optional does not mean that no one meets anymore. Or that no one cares. In fact, anyone walking past our table would have looked at us and thought, “Oh, they’re having a perfectly ordinary, everyday, normal business meeting.”

With one small difference.

None of us looked like we’d rather be dead.