I know it’s only Tuesday, but these are probably going to be the most helpful things you read this week.
The Chokehold Of Calendars
I sure needed to read this, and I’m grateful Lynn shared it.
Just give it two paragraphs and see if you agree… not only is it an important subject, it’s well-written by Mike Monteiro:
Meetings may be toxic, but calendars are the superfund sites that allow that toxicity to thrive. All calendars suck. And they all suck in the same way. Calendars are a record of interruptions. And quite often they’re a battlefield over who owns whose time.
In my experience, most people don’t schedule their work. They schedule the interruptions that prevent their work from happening. In the case of a business like ours, what clients pay us to make and do happens in the cracks between meetings, or worse, after business hours.
Click me to read the rest of The Chokehold of Calendars over on Medium.
I was just telling an old friend and mentor how much more productive we have gotten as a company. We write about it regularly here, but we can all do better.
Focus Days
I just signed up for blogging expert Jon Morrow’s class, and in our first session, he shared his productivity strategy that’s not dissimilar from Monteiro’s:
I’ll tell you what works for me, though. I use a system from Dan Sullivan where there are two types of workdays:
1. Focus days where I concentrate on one big task, such as writing a blog post or a report like this. The whole day, I work on nothing but that one task. I don’t take phone calls. I don’t answer email. I don’t go anywhere. I also turn off my cell phone and disconnect from the Internet. And then I focus.
2. Buffer days where I group up a whole bunch of little tasks into the same day, including staff meetings, interviews, coaching calls, financial matters, whatever. I schedule them back-to-back, so I’m forced to move quickly and get everything done fast. It’s exhausting, but it also frees me up to ignore that stuff on my focus days.
For me, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are focus days. Tuesday and Thursday are buffer days. I try (keyword: try) to take the weekends off.
I can’t share the rest of Morrow’s advice because it’s only for his students, but you can join me in his class.
What Works For You?
Do have you focus days? Do you schedule your work time? We’d love to hear about it.
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