Vicky Tsai’s work life is travel-intensive.
The founder and CEO of skin care brand Tatcha splits her time between the company’s headquarters in San Francisco and its research and development lab in Tokyo.
So, when she’s regularly logging 12-plus hours in the sky, overcoming the time difference to power through work is crucial.
Her secret to beating jet lag? Making sure she sees the sunrise and sunset in every new place.
“Even if that means I only get three hours of sleep, I’ll wake up to watch the sunrise in that city,” Tsai tells CNBC Make It.
In addition to visits to Japan quarterly, she also periodically flies to Hong Kong, Australia and Canada. Each year, she visits a Room to Read market, where sales of Tatcha products help fund girls’ education at a school in another country. Her recent trips have taken her to Cambodia, India and South Africa.
Physical and mental fitness are also key to her international-travel routine. In addition to jogging and jump-roping, Tsai credits meditation to helping her manage a demanding schedule.
“I prefer the quiet of a self-guided meditation with incense,” Tsai says. “I have been fortunate enough to study with a Zen monk in Kyoto who teaches me about the mind-body connection and different meditation practices, including walking meditation.”
Tsai is in good company of leaders who see the value in meditation. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff credits the practice with helping him become a better listener and decision-maker. Thrive Global CEO Arianna Huffington says that, following sleep, mediation is the most effective tool for productivity and performance. Bill Gates, meanwhile, is a recent adopter and says even 10 minutes at a time, two or three times a week, has improved his focus.
“I now see that meditation is simply exercise for the mind, similar to the way we exercise our muscles when we play sports,” he wrote on his blog in 2018. “For me, it has nothing to do with faith or mysticism. It’s about taking a few minutes out of my day, learning how to pay attention to the thoughts in my head and gaining a little bit of distance from them.”
The science backs up the benefits of a meditation practice, even for those who’ve never done it before. Researchers recently concluded that taking a 20-minute break to meditate could help you pay closer attention to tasks and ultimately make fewer mistakes.
Precision and high-powered decision-making are important when Tsai travels for business. Her luxury beauty brand with fans in Kim Kardashian and Meghan Markle is on track to make $100 million in sales in 2019, reports WWD. It was acquired by Unilever this summer for a deal approaching $500 million, according to industry sources.
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