Your first 48 hours in New York
What to do with the two days that decide whether the rest of the week works.
Almost everyone who has a bad week in New York had a bad first two days, and almost always for the same three reasons: they landed and went to bed, they booked their hardest meeting for the first morning, and they stayed above 42nd Street.
Day one: do not sleep
If you land before three in the afternoon, you do not get to sleep. Drop your bag, get outside, and walk — the light is the only thing that will move your body clock, and an hour of it now saves you three days. Walk south. Anywhere south.
Day one, evening: eat early, at a bar
- Sit at a bar, not a table. You will be out in an hour instead of two.
- Eat by seven. A late first dinner is what turns one bad night into three.
- One drink. Not none — one. Then stop.
Day two: the hard thing, but not first
Put your most important meeting on the second day, mid-morning. You will be sharper than you were twelve hours earlier and you will not yet be running on the fumes that arrive on day four. Leave the first morning for a walk and a coffee with someone you like.
Stay below 42nd if you can
Midtown is where the meetings are and downtown is where the evenings are, and the distance between them is twenty minutes you will pay four times a day. Sleeping downtown means you commute once, in the direction everyone else is going.
Sample content for the RAVL beta. This article is test data on the staging environment, written for the seed rather than published — the byline is a test account and is not a real person.
