Tactics intersecting awareness and productivity

Do you ever fall into the trap of blocking time on your calendar, only to completely ignore what you planned to do because you got pinged on Slack, another email came in, or someone knocked on your office door?

This is a common pitfall many leaders fall into.

You blocked your time to be present with an important task at hand but just as you start to get into flow you feel the friction and challenge in the work. Because, you know, it's the hard thing on your list for today.

And you get relief when instead you:

• check your email and fire off a few responses
• answer an incoming phone call from a team member
• scroll through social media
• read newsletters (like this one!)

Contrary to popular belief, multi-tasking makes most people?worse?in their performance (don't listen to me, Stanford1, Cleveland Clinic2, & American Psychological Association3 seem to agree).

When you fragment your attention across multiple things at once, it becomes difficult to do what you originally set out to do, especially if it’s your “hard thing."

If you struggle with this, you're not alone. To be honest, this is something I still wrestle with to this day. I, and others, ask myself questions like:

• "How can I keep myself focused, motivated, and productive?"
• "At the same time, how do I prevent myself from burning out or feeling overwhelmed?"
• "How can I clarify what I need to be working on (versus all the other things that I?could?be working on)?
• "How can I foster deeper relationships and be more present with my family, friends, and colleagues?"

Here are six strategies that have personally helped me (and the leaders I work with) have their cake and eat it too.

#1 Align to your circadian rhythm.

Every human has a natural circadian rhythm mostly rooted in our genetics. It’s inherited from our parents. It dictates the natural peaks and valleys in your energy as the day unfolds.?Yes, you can shift it, but it’s better if you start by accepting it and going from there.?Being consciously aware of these peaks and valleys allow you to take advantage of them. This goes for your work and personal life. Closely related to your circadian rhythm is your chronotype which is your propensity to sleep at particular times within a 24-hour period. If you're unsure of your chronotype check out the Auto MEQ?here .

For me, I scored a 50. My morningness-eveningness type is considered to be intermediate. It suggests my natural bedtime is 11:45 pm.

#2 Do the hard thing at peak energy.

Once you know your chronotype, do your hard thing when you have the highest level of energy.

What is the?hard?thing?

It is the task or priority that you want to create time to do, but it's often easily interruptible because it's hard for you to focus and get it done. Give yourself a chunk of time to?work on the thing that?only you can do?as the founder or team leader. You'll be able to create the outcome quicker because you aren’t being interrupted by pings, rings, and knocks on your office door.

For me, I experience peak energy between the hours of 8 am - 11 am, so that's the time of day I plan to do my hard thing.

#3 Time block.

The amount of time that it takes to complete a task will fill the container that you give it. This is called Parkinson's Law and verywellmind^ expands,?"If you give yourself a week to finish something that would only take an hour to complete, then that one-hour task will grow in complexity, requiring more time and resources than were originally needed."

Blocking off your calendar to predict the amount of time a task will take will help you to?avoid the excuses to push the thing off?and complete it in the allowed amount of time.

Estimating the amount of time you spend on every task can be challenging and will show you where your bias is. Many founders will under-estimate how long a task will take instead of over-estimating. Meaning, they may estimate being done in two hours but in reality it will be fully completed within four hours. I believe this is one of the root causes for a feeling of having an infinite to-do list. Simply due to a perceptual bias in which the founder believes they can get more done than they actually have capacity for leading to a sense of frustration or incompleteness in that gap.

This more about becoming more aware of your bias than it is being correct.

#4 Batch like-work.

Batching like-work takes time blocking to a whole other level. When you batch like-work you organize your day and week to stack similarly-related tasks next to each other. This will?minimize the mental switching costs?discussed in last week's newsletter.

Take a look at this example:

On the left, this individual's hard thing is "Create client proposal". They start and stop working on the proposal seven different times throughout the day. Also laced in the day is checking email and social media, and having meetings.

Batching like-work means organizing your schedule more like the right. Hard thing all at once. Social media all at once. Meetings all at once. And emails and messages all at once. This creates an easier flow to the day through segmentation.

#5 Set boundaries and say no.

The most-often canceled meeting is the meeting that you have with yourself.

Meaning that for any dedicated commitment that you make to get something done, it is easiest to interrupt yourself in doing it when something else comes up. Typically due to the following mental narratives:

• "I have time now. Let's meet."
• "I can always do this later. This new thing sounds important. Let me switch gears."

Just because you can say “yes” to whatever interruption appears, doesn’t mean that you should. Allowing yourself to be interrupted results in your attention being taken away from taking care of that big project looming over your head.?Let your team know that you’re unavailable?and provide them with a block of time for when they can come to you with questions. Consider having office hours at a dedicated time of day so your team can come to you with questions and for you to give them feedback. You’ll be able to focus both on the highest priorities of the company?and?be more mentally available for your team at the same time.

#6 No notifications.

Leaders often fear that if they turn all notifications off, they may miss something crucial. When in fact, true emergency events in the business rarely occur. If you’re the one person in the business who can solve any and the most important problems, then every challenge that arises will require your opinion and input before moving forward.

Break this cycle by?giving your team the chance to solve problems without you.?Do this by creating space between the time when a notification comes in and the time that you reply.

When you become less available to your team to solve their problems a few magical things happen.

1. Suddenly the barrier for your team to get any issue solved on demand has just been raised. Now they sit with the problem longer before asking. Which inspires...
2. most problems resolving themselves because the team leverages other available resources to solve that problem (aka you're no longer the internal wiki or google for your company. Which in turn...
3. helps your team to develop critical-thinking and problem-solving skills which are valuable in entrepreneurial organizations, and...
4. keeps you focused on higher-order challenges and opportunities that drive growth. It's a win for everybody.

Ready to implement some of these strategies? Then start with a plan. Here's a tool to help.

The?Ideal Workday Planner ?will help you:

• plot your sleep schedule so you can align to your circadian rhythm.
• plan to do the hard thing at peak energy (so you can get more done).
• forecast and limit the amount of time you spend on recurring activities every week so you can resolve your perceptual bias).
• think in larger chunks and batch like-work.
• clarify and communicate work boundaries (to increase focus), and
• renegotiate your availability (to help your team think through their own solutions).

Download the?Ideal Workday Planner?template here (plus see examples of how several other leaders have structured their workdays).

1Why Multi-tasking Does More Harm Than Good , Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, Stanford University

2Why Multi-Tasking Doesn't Work , Cleveland Clinic

3Multi-Tasking Switching Costs , American Psychological Association

^What is Parkinson's Law? , verywellmind