I have a fairly busy job as a director at a Fortune 10 company. I have a 12 person team, 9 major projects, three massive initiates for the year, and teams in three states and two countries. It got to be where my job was managing me. Here’s a look at a typical day:
6:00 am – Wake up, shower, feed the dog.
6:45 am – Leave to catch the train
7:15 am – Board train. Quick planning call with my team or sort email
8:15 am – Arrive at the office. Make coffee and get settled.
8:30 am – Process email
9:00 am – Meeting
9:30 am – Process email. Team is arriving, so I’m starting to field questions here and there
10:30 am – Meeting
11:00 am – Impromptu feedback with some of the team
11:30 am – Brief firefighting call with someone on my team
12:00 pm – Lunch
12:45 pm – Email meeting minutes and do a few other small tasks I signed up for from past meetings
1:00 pm – No meeting, awesome. Now… what should I do….
1:15 pm – Quick status chat with someone on the team
1:50 pm – Right, back to email
2:00 pm – One-on-one with someone on the team
2:30 pm – Meeting
3:30 pm – Catch up on email, and answer a few questions and provide a bit of feedback
4:00 pm – Meeting
5:00 pm – Catch the train home, wrapping up email or small tasks
Looking at that schedule, you’d think email is a primary initiative, right? Of course it’s not.
With such a fragmented day, I had no time to focus. The only thing I could complete in the short 15 minutes of free time was one or two emails.
My productivity went down, night-time working went up, and overall job satisfaction went down. Time to inflict some changes
Make Time for Work
First change I made was blocking out time in the morning and evening to do actual work. For this, that means creating repeating ‘Work’ blocks on my calendar. One wonderful-yet-terrible feature of Outlook is that it allows people to see your calendar is free so they can schedule a meeting. Similar to Parkinson's Law where work expands to fill the time available, the number of meetings will expand to fill your day if you allow it.
High Priority Work First
Now that I had dedicated time to work, I made sure to working on the highest-priority tasks first when I’m fresh and thinking clearest. I’ll fit the low-priority tasks in the small windows of time between meetings or in my evening work block. I use Things to constantly track tasks that need doing.
Plan the Day
The last thing I do (normally on the train) is review my schedule and to-do list for the next day. I choose the high-priority items and assign time-slots in my morning work-blocks for the next day. Now I relax for the night, knowing what tomorrow holds.
First thing I do when I start my workday is block my calendar for the day. I don’t accept any day-of meetings, unless it’s with my team or mission critical. This keeps me proactive throughout the day and keeps my plan mostly on track.
New Schedule
6:00 am – Wake up, shower, dog, train, etc.
8:00 am – Work!
11:00 am – Meetings, ad-hoc team feedback, etc.
2:00 pm – Every day I have a 1 hour one-on-one with someone on my team. Everyone rotates on a two-week cycle.
2:30 pm – Meetings, ad-hoc team feedback, etc.
4:00 pm – Work!
5:00 pm – Catch the train home and plan tomorrow’s work
Ahhhh, that’s better, right? Well, so far so good. I’ve only been doing this a month or two, but it’s already feeling better.