Do you find yourself easily distracted? Would you like better focus?
Here’s a productivity tip for time allocation. I use Gmail for work. If you look at the calendar view, each slot is separated by half-hour chunks. For a typical 9-6 day, there are 18 half-hour slots for a total of 85 slots a week. 1 slot per day is always consumed by lunch. I prefer to use this time to socialize. Lunch is when I get to meet other people in other business units or engineering departments.
I create a theme every day. I want to have an idea what I want to accomplish for the day. This idea came out of a discussion with another manager mentioning how easy the days would slip by not knowing what should be accomplished. Mondays for me are always labeled “Team.” This day includes 1 on 1s, team syncs, and technical group meetings. Fridays are usually “Bugs” – I fix issues and end the week on a good note.
I review my allocation every month to see how I’m doing. My first month looks like:
- Product
- Recruiting
- Metrics
- Documentation
- Team
- Bugs
- Planning
- Conference
- Transition (delegating former role)
For the next month I de-allocated time from product (that’s my product manager’s job) and spent more time on the team by coaching engineers. I also record every half hour as time progresses to mark what I’ve been doing. Including chit-chat. This shows the team what I’m working on. I also keep my calendar public for transparency.
So every day you have 17 slots to allocate if you need to eat lunch like me. Not everything neatly fits in a half-hour chunk. Sometimes I need to think or help debug an issue. Then I’ll block off 2-3 chunks of time of 60-90 min.
You have more time than you think you have – but don’t waste it. Make every slot count. I briefly Googled for similar tips and learned Elon Musk splits his time in 5 minute chunks so he has at least 108 slots to fill. [1] I also don’t think he only works 9-6..
I encourage you to take a high-level view of how you’re spending your time. If you’re not seeing results or other areas of your team’s domain is lacking, then you need to reallocate your time. I see parallels to rebalancing a financial portfolio. When stocks are going up, you shift money into bonds.
If you end up using more than 85 slots/week, you must record all that time. Every month, evaluate how you can delegate or cut down on tasks that don’t matter. Maybe you are taking on too much. Maybe you need to grow your team. Always ask yourself if you are working on things that matter. By recording everything on your calendar, you’ll have an idea if you need to adjust your time strategy.
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