Setting up a structured day makes sense. It reduces decision-making and helps you prioritise your work. But how strict should you be with this structure? That’s the question I answer this week.

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Script | 320

Hello, and welcome to episode 320 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

The change that has given me the biggest productivity benefit over the years was giving my calendar priority over every other productivity tool. This means that if my calendar tells me it’s time to buckle down and do some focused work, I will do that. If a customer or boss asks for a meeting when I have scheduled time to work on a project, I will always suggest an alternative time. 

This single change has meant I get all my work done (with time to spare), I can plan my days and weeks with a reasonable amount of confidence, and I rarely, if ever, get backlogs. 

However, when you adopt this method, the temptation is to adhere to it rigidly. And that is where things begin to go wrong. 

This week’s question is on this very question. How strict should you be with the plan you have for the week? So, with that said, literally, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Lucas. Lucas asks, hi Carl, I love your idea of blocking time out for your core work each week. The problem I have is I feel guilty now whenever I ignore a message or refuse to meet someone when I have a time block. What do you do to overcome this feeling of guilt? 

Hi Lucas, thank you for your question. 

Having structure in your day (and week) lets you know with a strong degree of confidence that you have sufficient time each day to do your work. 

Let me give you an example. Pretty much all of us get email each day. It’s just one of those inevitable parts of life. Now, if you are a typical knowledge worker, you will be getting upwards of 80 emails each day. Let’s say, of those 80 emails, half of them are non-actionable, 10 of them are for reference, and the remaining emails (thirty) require a response of some sort from you. 

How long will it take for you to respond to thirty emails? An hour? An hour-and-a-half? However, how long it will take you is rather less important. What matters is that at some point in the day, you will need to deal with those emails. If you don’t allocate some time, you will require double the amount of time tomorrow because you will have to deal with all the emails you didn’t deal with today. 

That’s how backlogs build: by being unrealistic about the amount of time you need to protect to stay on top of things like email and your admin. 

It would be easy for me to sit here and tell you to find an hour a day and dedicate it to responding to your emails. In theory, this sounds great. In practice, life will get in the way. It always does. 

And even if life doesn’t get in the way, you may be exhausted, or something could be worrying you. All of which will conspire to slow you down and make you less efficient. 

Instead of strictly sticking to a plan, you will find it better to work on the principle that one is greater than zero. In other words, while you may like to have an hour to manage your emails, on those days that you don’t, give yourself twenty or thirty minutes instead.

The goal is not necessarily to clear your actionable email each day. The goal is to stay on top of it. This means that if you are unable to clear all your actionable emails today when you come to deal with your email tomorrow, you begin with the oldest and work from there. 

This way, no one will ever wait longer than twenty-four hours for a reply. 

This approach gives you the flexibility to deal with requests as and when they come in—and they will come in. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of waking up with a clear plan of action for the day, only to begin your work day and be told some catastrophic mistake has happened and all hands are required to get things back under control. 

That’s life for you. As the saying goes. “No plan survives the first shot being fired.”

Getting comfortable with this reality means you retain some degree of flexibility to deal with colleagues’ and friends’ requests in a way that doesn’t make you feel guilty. 

But let’s look at this a little deeper. 

Attending meetings and answering messages and emails is what Call Newport describes as the administrative tax you pay for agreeing to do a project. Unless you are working on your own project, there will always be some form of communication that, while important, will stop you from doing actual work on the project. 

Your colleagues may be very happy to see you in the meeting or to receive your message responses in a timely manner, but how will they feel if you are unable to meet your deadlines? 

Nobody will remember you skipped a meeting or two or were a little late responding to a message. But I can assure you they will remember if you cannot meet your deadlines. That will leave them feeling disappointed and tarnish your reputation as a productive and effective employee. 

Time blocking does not mean you block out every day for specific types of work. Allocating two hours for focused work and an hour each for communications and admin would only take four hours out of a typical eight-hour working day. 

That would ensure you are consistently on top of your work and still allow you four hours for meetings, responding to quick requests and answering your phone. 

The only area where someone may feel put out is if they want to hold a meeting at 10:00 am and you tell them you cannot do so but will be happy to meet at 11:30 am instead. Yet, with that said, I’ve never come across anyone who got offended because I suggested an alternative time. 

And remember, if they pull rank on you, so to speak—i.e. your boss tells you that you must attend the meeting at 10:00 am, okay, you have no choice so attend the meeting and readjust your focus time. Either you can reduce the time that day, or you reschedule it for another time in the day. 

When you plan your core work for the week, you do so knowing that your plan will likely need to change. That does not mean you don’t plan the week. 

Planning out when you will do your core work for the week means you know you begin the week with enough time to get that important work done. If, or rather, when something comes up that requires you to adjust your schedule, that’s fine. Look at your calendar and see where you can move a focused time block. If you cannot, look at reducing the time block. 

If none of that is possible, delete the time block altogether. It’s one day, and you may create a small backlog for a day or two. But if you are consistent and you stay with your plan where possible, you will soon find yourself clearing any backlog. 

It’s interesting that you assume there’s a feeling of “guilt”. I must admit I did feel uncomfortable when I began implementing these practices. I went from being always available for anyone to being selectively available. But I don’t remember ever feeling guilty. 

The people demanding my time wanted me to do some work for them. The thing is, talking about work is not doing work. Sitting in a meeting delayed the work. It was easy to overcome any risk of guilt by telling myself that by making it difficult for me to be in a meeting with them, I was able to do what they wanted me to do better and faster. 

Life is always going to be full of difficult choices. Do I take my dog for a walk now or later? When do I go to the supermarket? Do I work on this project or that one? It’s never-ending. 

Yet, a plan for the week reassures you you have the time set aside. And once that plan is in place, you do whatever you can to protect it. 

That does not mean you stubbornly stick to it. There will always be a need for flexibility. But, if you give yourself ten minutes or so before the end of the day, you can look at what you didn’t do and reschedule what you can. 

The best special forces teams always begin a mission with a clear plan of action. Yet they know that once the mission begins, that plan will change. Part of their training is to learn how to adapt to the changing nature of the battlefield quickly. Intelligence may have been incorrect, a weapon may malfunction, or a team member may take a hit and be rendered out of action. The skill is in quickly evaluating the changing nature of the plan and adapting your actions to adapt to the new set of circumstances you face. 

You will not be able to do that in a week or a month. It’s something you will always be working on. But with practice and focus, you will soon find yourself becoming more adaptable. Better at making decisions about where to apply your time and feeling less guilty about being less available than you used to be. 

Good luck, Lucas and thank you for your question. 

Thank you to you, too, for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.