There are 168 hours in a week. No one gets more than another. How we spend our finite and valuable time defines the quality of our life.
In Cal Newport’s book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, he defines two core abilities to thrive in this New Economy – the ability to master hard things and the ability to produce at an elite level in terms of quality and speed. To master hard things and perform at an elite level requires uninterrupted time and rapt attention, both are in short supply in our busy, distracted world.
According to research, we are spending up to 23 hours per week in meetings. My daily calendar consists of one meeting after another with few breaks in between, so the actual work that needs to get done is completed after hours and in between cracks of time. Certainly not the right conditions for deep work or a balanced life. Changing this pattern is on my priority list.
If structured correctly, meetings can make us more productive. A well-designed meeting provides needed context, uncovers obstacles and facilitates quality conversations that foster insights that can’t be achieved in a series of ping-pong email communications that create more interruptions and misdirection.
In addition to reducing time in meetings, effective time management principles can lead to the space we need to be able to do our best work and still have a life.
In Erich C. Dierdorff’s time management research, he defines three skills and tactics for each to time management performance – awareness, arrangement and adaption.
Awareness - understanding that your time is a limited resource;
Find your peak performance time;
Treat time like it’s money and create a time budget categorizing “must dos” and “want to dos;”
Evaluate how you assess time – compare how long you thought it would take to do a task to what it actually took;
Take a “future time perspective” – how are the tasks that you are doing now will help or hurt you in the future;
Avoid “sunk cost fallacy” – when you are spending a lot of time on a task, step back and determine whether it’s worth finishing.
Arrangement (scheduling and planning) - designing and organizing goals, plans, schedules and tasks to effectively use time;
Prioritize activities and obligations – a to-do list is not enough, not all tasks are equal;
Avoid the “mere urgency effect” – urgent and important tasks should be done first, avoid the trap of only dealing with the urgent which are often not important and thrown at you by others who don’t know how to manage their own time;
Schedule protected time – book uninterrupted time with yourself to do important work that requires attention and focus;
Reduce underestimation errors – “check the math” on your forecasted time requirements by asking someone else for their perspective on your estimate;
Try half-sized goals –if you’re not attaining the goal, dial it back by making it less difficult so you can achieve it.
Adaption (priorities) – monitoring your use of time and adjusting to interruptions and changing priorities.
Try “habit stacking” – track daily progress;
Use short bursts of effort – do the work for 15 to 30 minute chunks to make it “doable”;
Try time-tracker apps – only use tools if they keep you focused;
Seek to reduce time wasters – commit to open blocks of time to do critical work every day. Less social media and series binging and more “life binging” to achieve your purpose.
In To-Do Lists Don’t Work, Daniel Markovitz builds the case for time boxing – putting your “to-do” list on the calendar to actually book time to do the work. Try a few of these tactics for a few weeks and see if you make progress creating space to do deep and fulfilling work. Find the formula that works for you.
And when you leave work at the end of the day, leave it behind until the next day. According to Newport, “if you keep interrupting your evening to check and respond to e-mail, or put aside a few hours after dinner to catch up on an approaching deadline, you’re robbing your directed attention centers of the uninterrupted rest they need for restoration. Even if these work dashes consume only a small amount of time, they prevent you from reaching the levels of deeper relaxation in which attention restoration can occur. Only the confidence that you’re done with work until the next day can convince your brain to downshift to the level where it can begin to recharge for the next day to follow. Put another way, trying to squeeze a little more work out of your evenings might reduce your effectiveness the next day enough that you end up getting less done than if you had instead respected a shutdown.”
According to The Busier You Are, the More You Need Quiet Time by Justin Talbot-Zorn and Leigh Marz, “recent studies are showing that taking time for silence restores the nervous system, helps sustain energy, and conditions our minds to be more adaptive and responsive to the complex environments in which so many of us now live, work, and lead. Duke Medical School’s Imke Kirste recently found that silence is associated with the development of new cells in the hippocampus, the key brain region associated with learning and memory.”
Be proactive and intentional on what you invest your time in. Change and create new habits, say “yes” to the right things and “no” to activities that take you off track.
3 Things to Try to Get the Most Out of Your 168 hours per Week:
Beyond the To-Do List podcast
Productivity Straight Talk podcast
Brain.fm is an app that improves focus in 15 minutes
“Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.”― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World