Archives for 2019

May
1, 2019

8 min read

Americans …

• dislike abstraction in their daily lives.
• are slow workers and have fat fingers.
• live in a culture where children are showered with encouragement, leading to overconfidence.

These are just some of the beliefs about Americans that Chinese supervisors hilariously and alarmingly feed to their Chinese workers. The odd thing is that those briefings aren’t taking place in China but in the American heartland: Dayton, Ohio.

Related: Alibaba’s Billionaire Founder Jack Ma Says Companies Forcing Staff to Work Overtime Are ‘Foolish’

So begins American Factory, the intriguing new Tribeca Film Festival documentary (and upcoming Netflix offering) which had its New York premiere on April 26 and was one of five festival films curated by four New York-based film critics.

The story: In 2015, Cao Dewang, chairman of Fuyao Glass America, arrived in Dayton to check out the construction and hiring progress for the U.S. branch of his world-leading automobile-glass company, on the site of a shuttered GM plant. He was attempting to do the seemingly impossible: put Chinese workers to work alongside American workers and meld their two dramatically different cultures.

As filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert show, even well-meaning Chairman Cao seemed a tad gob-smacked two years into his bold experiment.

Here, after all, were American workers insisting on limiting themselves to an eight-hour workday; holding an election to consider inviting in the UAW union; and pressuring the company for a rigorously safe factory environment (1,200-degree glass furnaces and the very breakable product they produce being dangerous to human health.)

Are the struggles revealed in the film cause for alarm for American entrepreneurs working with or considering partnering with the Chinese companies? “We’re not making a promotional film to promote working with China or not working with China,” Steven Bognar told Entrepreneur following last week’s screening and Q&A.

“We’re not trying to make a scary movie,” Bognar continued. “We’re trying to make a movie about how hard it is. It wasn’t easy when the Japanese set up factories here, either, but there are ways you can build bridges or decide not to build bridges.”

In the film, executive-produced by Jeff Skoll, Participant Media’s founder (and eBay’s first president), we view an initially hopeful scene: Hundreds of workers are being promised new jobs, having been laid off by GM in 2008 ( a devastating event which Bognar and Reichert chronicled in their Oscar-nominated film The Last Truck).

In 2015, this sudden new influx of jobs, designed to revive that Rust Belt city from its long economic nightmare, are far better than those at the Payless distribution center or at McDonald’s. That’s why new energy and optimism abound at first in this Ohio city, which once had more automobile manufacturing than any metropolis outside Detroit.

No wonder Chairman Cao wants to document his great project: “The important thing is how this will change the American view of China,” Cao says in the film.

Bognar-Reichert were natural choices to be the filmmakers, but they insisted on and got editorial control. “He’s kind of a maverick,” Reichert said of the chairman during the Q&A. “It wasn’t as though many American CEOs would allow filmmakers to be in their plant for three years.” GM, she commented dryly, had allowed the filmmakers into its former Dayton plant for a grand total of 20 minutes.

Bognar echoed this upbeat view of Cao, saying “He believes in transparency.” That is apropos for a glass manufacturer but it also allowed for amazing insights into the lives of the workers the filmmakers profiled during the factory’s first three years. Among them were:

Wong He, a 20-year veteran furnace engineer at Fuyao China who has been brought to Dayton for a difficult two years away from his young family. In Dayton, he lives with four other Chinese men. During the day he’s so attuned to working that his “lunch” consists of a packet of Twinkies.

Rob Haerr, a furnace supervisor who invites his Chinese co-workers to his country home for an American Thanksgiving, where the men dine on turkey, try out Haerr’s Harley and practice target-shooting using his twin revolvers.

Jill Lamantia, a forklift operator, who was economically felled by the 2008 layoff and recession, but is able, thanks to her new Fuyao job, to move out of her sister’s basement. Delight turns to disenchantment, however; and Lamantia becomes a union supporter and is fired for it.

John Crane, a safety manager at Fuyao who grows frustrated at the safety issues at Fuyao and at being forced to lie to Fuyao’s automotive company clients. He eventually resigns.

Image Credit: Fuyao Glass America | Facebook

Culture clash among workers

Things quickly went south at the Dayton plant. “All the Chinese workers were so loyal to the company,” Lulu Men, a Chinese field producer for the film, said during the Q&A. “They had this culture of having been trained to dedicate their lives to the company. The difference is, Chinese culture is all about unity, and the American [culture] is about individuality. So I think that made a huge difference, and a culture clash.”

Serious injuries proliferated. OSHA fines were levied. American supervisors were replaced by Chinese. The American workers complained about being forced to train off the clock and about their wages — pre-treatment inspector Shawnea Rosser tells the filmmakers she used to make $29-plus an hour at GM; at Fuyao, she says, her wage is $12.84. 

The Chinese workers also complain; their American workers are heading home after eight hours while they work 10 and 12 hours and come in weekends, they say. “I think they are hostile to the Chinese,” Chairman Cao tells his board members, noting a $40 million loss in the plant’s first months of operation.

Another overall difference: “Workers in China are given orders, and they tackle them,” Reichert says in the film’s production notes. “Here in the U.S., workers want to know why they’re being asked to do something; they also expect there will be some praise.”

More happily, the film chronicles a big Chinese New Year’s party at Fuyao’s Chinese headquarters in Fujian Province, to which about a dozen U.S. supervisors are invited. These scenes in the film are somewhat comic to Western eyes: big-bellied Midwestern white men towering over their Chinese bosses. Chinese workers lining up for their morning check-in, in military formation, and singing out motivational company slogans (“To stand still is to fall back.”)

Meanwhile, the party itself is an over-the-top three hours of garish costumes, fervent songs about the company’s “blessings” and even a wedding of five employee-couples. “We’re one big planet. A world somewhat divided but one,” a teary-eyed U.S. supervisor says to the camera late in the alcohol-fueled evening.

But back in Dayton, there is no partying. Workers are unhappy (“Everybody is upset in their own language and everybody just walks away,” Lamantia, the forklift operator, says.) The workers set an election to try to bring the union in.

The company, for its part, is not amused, spending $1.25 million to hire the Labor Relations Institute (its motto: “Winning NLRB elections for almost four decades”) to dissuade a “yes” vote. Ultimately, the union is rejected, 868-444, but its supporters are fired — an illegal action in the United States, Reichert says, but hardly an uncommon one.

The film ends with flows of workers, Americans and Chinese alike, entering and leaving their shifts. Added in are voiceovers by workers — with comments like, “We’re never going to make that kind of [GM] money again,” versus, “I believe in the American Dream; we can’t give up on that.”

Back in China, Chairman Cao is also filmed, making the extraordinary statement that when he looks back on his life’s journey from intense poverty and the Cultural Revolution to today’s capitalism, he asks himself, “Am I a criminal or a contributor?”

Related: China Blocks Microsoft’s Bing, Despite Offering Censored Search

“One thing we tried to do is not root this film in Midwestern unease about China,” Bognar said at the Q&A. “I think China is a miracle in many ways: Millions of people are no longer in poverty because of this amazing last 30 years. So we hope this movie sparks conversations and gets people talking about these issues, with the hope that they’ll focus on people, whether they’re Chinese or American.

“Is this global hypercapitalism sustainable?” Bognar continued, repeating the question he asked himself throughout production. “And what is the impact on the environment and working people?”

April
30, 2019

5 min read

Most Americans are aware of China’s one-child policy, the population-control rule that from 1979 to 2013 sharply limited the number of Chinese births. Less well known outside China is an offshoot campaign currently being run by the government that targets and shames sheng nu (leftover women) for the “crime” of being an unmarried educated professional woman older than 27. 

The systematic disparagement and discrimination these women face is the subject of Leftover Women, an affecting new documentary by Israeli filmmakers Shosh Schlam and Hilla Medalia which had its New York premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this week.

Related: 4 Mistakes We All Make to Perpetuate Gender Bias

Due to its one-child policy, China today has 30 million more men than women of marriageable age. The government views this gender imbalance as a threat to the social order. In an interview with Entrepreneur, the filmmakers detailed its effects. “One side effect is women trafficking,” said Shosh Schlam. “Another side effect is that more men will not have the traditional role of head of the family,” meaning the opportunity to father children and continue the family name. The government, Schlam said, fears that a glut of unmarried men could cause violence or, worse, that these men might “turn” gay — which is illegal in China and subject to harsh penalties.

Whatever the government’s motive, sheng nu is stigmatizing urban professional women who want to start businesses or pursue careers in law, media and academia as being selfish.

“When these women [from China’s educated class] are growing up, they have a lot of pressure to succeed — to be the best in their class,” said Hilla Medalia. “And their parents really push; the whole society pushes them to succeed and go to university. Then they start their career. But then they have to stop everything and get married. Their entire value is based on this one thing.”

Related: Sexist Job Ads Discriminate Against Women in China — Even Specifying Applicants’ Required Height, Weight and Facial Structure

To document the impact, Shlam and Medalia returned to China, site of their first, 2014, collaboration, Web Junkie. They conducted a lengthy search for single women using Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. Dozens of women came forward, the filmmakers said, but the vast majority wanted only to discuss their woes with sheng nu off camera, for fear of bringing shame to their families. Ultimately, the filmmakers found and focused on three ambitious and brave Beijing women:

Qiu Hua Mei, age 34, is a lawyer who faces an uphill battle for finding an educated mate given her (socially lower) rural village roots. She is cruelly criticized by her family (“Schooling makes you dumb,” her illiterate father says, expressing regret for having paid her university tuition). In another disturbing scene, a dating counselor tells her, “You’re not beautiful in the traditional sense. You have a tough personality and need to soften yourself.” A prospective match, meanwhile, who’s similarly well educated and similarly from a rural village, announces that once he marries, he intends to be the “dominant” spouse.

Xu Min, 28, is a radio talk show host who lives with an overbearing mother who tells her, “You’re not old. You’re not a ‘leftover woman’ yet.”

Gai Qi, 36, is an assistant professor of film. She does marry and has a daughter during the course of the film, with a husband the filmmakers call “extraordinary” for his social faux pas — marrying a woman older than himself — and for his willingness to follow her to a better job in Guangzhou.

Over the span of three years, Hua Mei and Xu Min are individually followed by cameras as they attend a massive government-sponsored “annual blind date event,” check out a Valentine’s Day dating party and visit a gynecologist’s office (where Hua Mei is told it’s illegal to freeze her eggs). Then there’s the “relationship expert” Xu Min consults, who ends up delving deeply into her emotions. Breaking into tears, she admits that she is so obedient to her mother, she can’t actually date a man her mom dislikes.

A happier note is the joyful wedding of Gai Qi, who tells the filmmakers she was so worried her marriage might threaten her career that, “I was not planning on a happy ending.” That happy ending, however, is short-lived; later in the film, Gai Qi admits she finds marriage boring.

Hua Mei, meanwhile, is the polar opposite. She wants to date, but not marry, she tells her parents back home in their impoverished village. But, after months of sitting alone in desolate bars and getting the third degree from mothers of sons in public parks advertising their sons’ eligibility, Hua Mei gives up: She abandons her home country altogether to study in far-off France: “There are voices all around me,” she tells the filmmakers. “I want to have a life without those voices, just to live my life.

“I could live a wonderful life,” Hua Mei continues. “All this [grief occurs] because I’m not getting married. I live in a constant fight, a life of exile.” She even compares sheng nu to China’s infamous practice of foot-binding: “I have big feet,” she sighs, describing herself and her ambition, borne out by the fact that she has recently moved to Munich to start a business.

Related: China Considers Law Against Sexual Harassment at Workplace

April
29, 2019

2 min read

This story originally appeared on PCMag

Mark Zuckerberg will forever be associated with Facebook and social networks, but we can’t forget he’s also an engineer and he just put his talent to good use helping his wife get a good night’s sleep.

Posting on Instagram, Zuckerberg explained how he spent some time recently building a light-emitting wooden box. It sounds strange until you hear why he created such an unusual object.

His wife Priscilla knows that their children usually wake up between 6-7am, so she got into the habit during the night of checking her phone to see what time it is and whether she needed to get up. The problem is, knowing the time “stresses her out and she can’t fall back asleep.”

The solution, as Zuckerberg viewed it, was to create a new device that indicates when it’s the right time to get up for the kids, but isn’t a distraction at any other time. The end result is a “sleep box.” It’s a very simple wooden box that emits a faint light focused downwards, but only turns the light on between 6-7am each morning. If Priscilla wakes up and the light isn’t on, she knows to go right back to sleep, where as the light being on won’t wake her, but if she wakes and sees it she knows it’s time to get up.

By solving the problem in this way, the time never needs to be known and the physical process of interacting with a phone (and its very bright display) is no longer required. It’s true that Priscilla could oversleep, but the same was true of checking the phone. It’s also easy to avoid oversleeping by simply setting an alarm that goes off at some point after 7am each morning as a last resort.

With the experiment deemed a success, Zuckerberg has responded to his friends wanting their own version by putting the idea out there for “another entrepreneur” in case they want to run with it. It seems likely the sleep box will be turned into a product now, although I suspect it may get a few smart home feature upgrades in the process.

April
28, 2019

2 min read

Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.

Stress is inevitable when you’re starting your own business. Long hours at your desk, lengthy drives to meet new clients and high-energy brainstorming sessions in front of a whiteboard can leave you with sore, overextended muscles.

Regular massages can cure your muscular woes, but it’s tough to find an hour (and the budget) to spend on a masseuse when you’re getting your feet wet with a new venture. These four personal massagers will relax you from head to toe at home, so you’ll be at your best at work. Plus, they’re all on sale.

Shiatsu Portable Back Massager with Heat – $56.99 (56% off)

This massager targets the stress points in your shoulders and neck. It fits in most office chairs and car seats. Three speed levels, a heating element and a convenient remote help you tailor this massage to your needs. It also has a 15-minute auto-shutoff to prevent over-stimulation.

Belmint Heated Shiatsu Foot Massager – $99.99 (28% off)

Chronic foot pain and aggravation from stiff shoes and long days of walking don’t stand a chance against this heated Shiatsu foot massager. It’s engineered with powerful massage nodes for a deep tissue foot massage that dissolves knots and promotes circulation. It’s easy to choose your mode with the built-in toe control panel.

10-Motor Full-Body Massage Mat with Heat – $59.99 (14% off)

This luxury massage mat can beat any knot or tension. It’s perfect for fighting aches and pains throughout your body after a long day. The flexible plush mat comes equipped with 10 massage motors, targeting all of your pain points from your neck to your legs. The built-in heater and interactive controller give this mat a spa vibe every time you unroll it.

Full Body Stretch Massage Mat – $109.99 (26% off)

Combine the health-boosting effects of yoga with soothing vibrations with this full body massage mat. After you’ve finished your invigorating yoga session, just lie back and let precision-controlled air chambers help you emulate yoga-style stretches. It’s pre-programmed with four relaxing functions that target acupuncture points. Use it to relieve fatigue and improve circulation as part of your self-care routine.

April
26, 2019

7 min read

Five years ago this July, Hannah and Marian Cheng took a big leap and opened the first location of Mimi Cheng’s in New York City’s East Village.

The pair had decided to open a restaurant dedicated to the delicacy they most loved, growing up: handmade Taiwanese dumplings. They missed their mom’s cooking terribly and figured that if they were hungry for those dumplings — and couldn’t find them — others might share that culinary plight.

But their parents, who had been the inspiration for their choice of cuisine, weren’t exactly thrilled. Hannah and Marian told Entrepreneur, their parents were “horrified”  at the prospect of their girls leaving solid jobs — Hannah was a VP at JPMorgan Chase, and Marian, an account executive at the luxury fashion brand Burberry — to jump into the food world, an industry fraught with uncertainty. 

“You both have your dream jobs; you worked so hard to get there; and now you’re leaving to open a takeout restaurant?” Hannah recalled her parents saying. “You didn’t have to go to college to do that.” But with the conviction of their vision, they forged ahead, and named the restaurant Mimi Cheng’s, after their mom Shirley’s nickname, Mimi. 

After about a year, seeing that their daughters were serious and committed to making their business happen, Mom and Dad came on board, too.

Related: What’s the Biggest Challenge of Starting a Restaurant?

The learning curve

With their family in their corner, the next big hurdle was the steep learning curve the sisters needed to master for actually opening and running an operational restaurant. The Chengs say tht it took about three years to get a handle on the process, right up to the point they were poised to open their second location, in Nolita, in 2016.

Mimi Cheng’s Dumpling Making

Image credit Nicole Franzen

Flash-forward to today: The sisters now manage both locations and oversee a team of 40 but say there are always new surprises and challenges to deal with. “When we were opening our second location, it’s like you have a newborn and you have to pay attention to the newborn a lot, so it’s trying to balance both of them,” said Marian. “And when we were opening up the first location, [we tried] to get insight from other restaurateurs and others in the industry about things like  contracting, licenses and permits. Everyone says it’s a nightmare dealing with the city and stuff — but you have to go through it yourself and learn what the nuances are.”

Along the way, the sisters knew they couldn’t do it alone, given their lack of restaurant experience. So, they worked with a city organization, the NYC New Business Acceleration Team (NBAT), an initiative that helps new restaurants and bars get up and running. Before launching Mimi Cheng’s, Marian also took a detour of her own, leaving the fashion world to gain direct experience in hospitality by joining salad chain Sweetgreen’s opening team.

Opening up

The sisters say that one of the biggest early challenges of opening that first location was, quite literally, keeping the lights on.

They were set to open in May of 2014 but actually opened the doors in July. The reason? Not enough electricity to power everything. Their wait for a promised electrical upgrade stretched from weeks into months. They were frustrated. But then came help: their community of fellow restaurateurs advised them to end the waiting game by contacting their local representatives, who connected them with the right Con Edison supervisor who made the upgrade happen.

Mimi Cheng’s Dumplings

Image credit Nicole Franzen

In the weeks leading up to opening day, sleep was in short supply, the sisters remember. They also remember the mixed benefit that a teaser write-up in the New York Times gave them — the day before they opened.

“It was very exciting. But we also didn’t know what that meant,” Hannah recalled. “And what that meant was hundreds of people showing up at our door the first day of opening. It was amazing, but also terrifying. We could not wrap dumplings or cook dumplings fast enough to meet the demand. We actually had to close in the middle of the day, because we knew that there were going to be more people coming in at night.

“We said to ourselves, ‘If we keep selling at this pace, we’re going to be sold out before everybody shows up.’ So we had to close in the middle of the day to restock everything. We are so thankful to the people who still came after they had been there the first day. There is no way that was a good experience, and no way did everything meet our expectations.”

Hitting their stride

At this point, with Mimi Cheng’s having been on the books now nearly five years, the Cheng sisters say that their main advice for entrepreneurs feeling discouragement in their own early stages is to “listen to your gut” and then do the due diligence to back it up — no matter what advice you hear from your support system, no matter what the naysayers believe.

“If it’s something that you can’t stop thinking about, then you also have to realize that these people are speaking from their own point of view. And nobody’s in your shoes, with your experience, with your dream, with your passion,” Hannah said. “So nobody will ever be able to speak to that.

Related: There Are 2,000 Empty Restaurants During the Day in New York — and This Startup Is Doing Something About It

“You have to also realize that they care about you, but they are only speaking from their perspective. We’ve had so many people tell us, ‘Don’t open a restaurant, you have no idea what you’re doing.’ — which is all true. But at the end of the day, it was something that we couldn’t stop thinking about. And I’m glad we did it without that knowledge because it would have been scary. Once you’re in, you realize, ‘Crap, I don’t know anything.’ But once you’re in it, you’ve figured out how to do it.”

That philosophy extends to their hiring approach: they don’t feel beholden to bring on only those with two to five years’ restaurant experience under their belts. “It’s the same with hiring some of our team members,” Marian explained. “Some of them don’t have experience in the food industry. But we give them a chance if they seem like they’re very quick to learn and they have great personalities — because you have to start somewhere.”

The sisters say that their partnership works because they each bring different skills to the table — Hannah often focuses on scheduling, finances and payroll; Marian’s specialties are inventory and ordering. The two, meanwhile, handle day-to-day operations and recipe development together.

The key ingredient, they say, is implicit trust.

“I wouldn’t recommend every sibling [duo] work together; it really depends on the kind of relationship you have. But even growing up we were never competitive,” Hannah said. “We’ve always been on the same team.

“And because of that, and also because we’re siblings, we trust each other inherently. So we always know that we have each other’s best interests in mind. And I think, when you’re starting a business with somebody, that is the hardest part: finding a business partner you can trust completely.”

April
26, 2019

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Starting a new business is both an exciting and daunting experience. The typical entrepreneur is racing toward the goal of being successful, but the truth is,he or she will likely struggle to get there. If you consider yourself an entrepreneur, you need to understand your customers’ psychological profile, as well as how you can manage, even manipulate, your own psychological state to become a more productive business owner.

Related: 5 Brain Hacks to Boost Your Motivation

Below are some of the ways you can start your business on the right foot by delving into some excellent brain hacks to improve your chances of creating a worldwide recognized brand.

These hacks are gaining ground owing to the scientific research surrounding them. When you combine more than one of these methods together, you have the chance to drastically improve your odds in what today are so many overpopulated industry segments — with so much noise.

Now, here’s how to dive in to those hacks:

1.Use your brand’s colors to your advantage.

Color plays an important role in the way we perceive companies and their functionality. A revealing study by the University of Winnipeg found that 62 to 90 percent of buyers surveyed said they make up their minds whether they are interested in a brand, or its offerings, based on the colors used in the brand’s design.

Related: Neuroscience Tells Us How to Hack Our Brains for Success

How can you use colors to convince your customers that your product is the right choice? Here is a chart that shows colors and what kinds of emotions they evoke.

Image Source: CoSchedule blog

You should think about the kind of product you’re creating, and how you expect customers to feel when they see your brand. In the example above, the brands that promote creativity or have products designed to increase creativity have used the color purple. The SyFy channel, which thrives on creative (and sometimes hilarious) ideas, uses purple to create a brand that is instantly recognizable.

2. Make complicated topics easy to understand.

One of the best ways to win over your audience is by explaining a process or idea in terms that virtually everyone can understand. Think about the last time you had a question about a topic, looked up what other people were saying and found some articles that left you scratching your head even more than when you started.

You never, ever want to leave potential customers more confused than they were before. Use the power of storytelling in combination with simple language to make complicated topics easy to understand.

If the topic you’re covering requires multiple pieces of content, don’t forget to intertwine the content as it comes out. If readers come to your business site and get an answer to their question bolstered by facts and confidence, they are more likely to convert — because they trust your brand.

3. Make an impression, using imagery.

We have all heard about how first impressions are everything. This rule applies to your business, too! According to a study titled Behaviour and Information Technology, most users decide whether or not they are going to stay on a website in 50 milliseconds! In other words, you have to let potential customers know exactly what your product does when they land on your website.

Along with the first impressions advice, we’re also told throughout life that a picture is worth a 1,000 words. It turns out that this is true! You can tell your customers more about what your product or service does, how it will make them feel and what problems your product will solve — using just your imagery.

Quick, check out the following image.

Image Source: Crazy Egg blog

What did you think when you merely glanced at this Coca-Cola ad?

As it happens, the color red encourages feelings of excitement. But this imagery manages to do so much more than that. At first glance, the image is of two happy people. At the same time, the word “happiness” is right next to the Coca-Cola logo. If someone, for whatever reason, has never heard of Coca-Cola, his or her first experience with this ad will promote positive emotions and, hopefully, create a positive customer.

4. Keep your inner monologue in check

As someone who wants to start a business, you’re probably feeling confident and excited. Sadly, however, more of us struggle with feelings of self-doubt, even if we are doing something well. You need to learn to hack your mind and keep your inner monologue in check when it starts hampering your progress as an entrepreneur.

The best way to keep your self-doubt in check is by focusing on the positive outcome you hope to achieve. It’s a difficult process, to be honest. But here’s the thing. When you start focusing on positive things, you train your brain to push out negative feelings and emotions.

Obviously, we are only human and sometimes have doubts and negative emotions. But learning to control our thinking and focusing on productive, positive thoughts can breed positivity and increase our chances of success.

5. Hack your time-management abilities

Time management is one of the most challenging, but important, aspects of any business. You’re going to have a million things going on at once and you’ll need to learn to manage your time properly.

One great way to manage your time is by using The Pomodoro Technique. Basically, the Pomodoro technique involves your managing your time by working in short bursts of extreme productivity, followed by a short break.

Related: Science-Backed Brain Hacks to Crush Your Goals

When you use this schedule over time, you’ll hack your brain into entering productivity mode when the timer is going; and then you can relax on your breaks. The Pomodoro method helps you build discipline and use your time wisely, which helps you get things done in a timely manner.