Why blocking a day is an amazing gift to give yourself as a leader
The cold hard facts are that humans are limited to 24 hours in a day. No matter who you are, or how much you try, you can’t make or create more hours in a day, which is probably one of the many reasons I spend a lot of time with leaders thinking about where they spend their time.
This time of year, I’m thinking a lot about how to use time as a leader when you may be thinking:
“I’m so behind! I meant to start thinking about/working on X months ago…”
“This idea I just had is amazing–but do I have time to implement it for next school year?”
“Ugh, I know X really needs to be overhauled–that’s become clear to me–but how, given the time constraints?”
I like a good time hack like many leaders (although I try not to get too obsessed) and one of my all-time favorites is this one: Block a day to tackle something. I talked a little bit about this last week, but I love to use this.
Before I get into specifics, a little background on WHY I love this hack so much.
I think about where a leader’s time and energy goes using what I think of a bucket metaphor, a visual way to consider this. For this, think about all the areas of content and types of work you do, and for each example (like “Managing My Team” or “Strategic Direction”), picture a bucket with that labeled on the side.
Consider all your professional buckets, your personal buckets, and basically–any place in a given week where your time, energy or attention might go. Truly, jot a little list off next to you on a piece of scratch paper. Even if you literally take one minute, trust me--jot them down; it's time well spent.
How many buckets are there? Tens? Hundreds? A handful?
Now, picture your time and energy as water coming from a hose. You have all those buckets lined up next to each other, and when you work on each one, you fill it up from the hose. So, if you’re spending an hour in a check-in, that “water” goes into the “Managing My Team” bucket.
Then, when you switch buckets (maybe to “Hiring”), you move the hose and start filling that up. A little water sloshes out and gets on the sidewalk, there’s a bit of a minimal mess but you fill that bucket up. When the “Hiring” bucket work is done, you switch it again: maybe over to “Financial Stewardship '' and shift the hose to that bucket, sloping a little water and then putting the water in there while you review the monthly financials.
So, what are you noticing? Maybe…
Every time you switch buckets, a little bit of your time/energy/attention is lost on the sidewalk. Or, in less metaphorical terms, there is a cost to switching buckets.
There’s a lot of buckets!! Since you’re a leader, I am 100% not surprised that this is true–part of it is the nature of the role and the complexity. And, when you are a leader you become more popular–so people always want to give you more buckets. It adds up!
What I LOVE about the block a day strategy is that leaders reduce the number of buckets they are focusing on. You can just fill up one bucket with that hose–not worry about switching back and forth, or checking your email, or preparing for that lunch–you are focused on just one thing.
You get many benefits from this–not only the impact of dedicating time to this particular area of focus, but also the benefit of not losing your valuable brain space and focus as you switch tasks. It helps you go deeper on fewer things so you don’t deplete time, energy and resources. Cal Newport talks about it as “attention residue” issues.
There are merits to both approaches–there can be value in letting ideas marinate in the back of your mind, or getting input and thoughts and ideas from other people. I usually reserve the last hour of the day for thinking about how I want to share this with people–put it on an upcoming agenda or send an email with updates soliciting feedback. But at key times of the year, when the horizon for potential change seems shorter than you would like, blocking a day can help kick-start any stalling you may be feeling!
This focus–even just for a day–helps you dig in and make deeper traction. Let’s say that for 2 months you were hoping to work on something for an hour a week: 8 hours total. Spending one focused day working on it actually yields more than 8 hours worth of focus: because you don't have to spend time refamiliarizing yourself with the content at the beginning, remembering where you were at and what you were working or writing next steps for yourself for the in-between time. I don’t know exactly what the ratio is–maybe 2 1-hour meetings equals 90 minutes of uninterrupted work time–but what’s most important isn’t the ratio–it’s that you are going get further faster than you might have thought–and likely way sooner. If you’re reading this on a Monday and can block Friday to work uninterrupted on this, in seven short days you will have made as much or more traction as you might have in weekly meetings for the last 2 months!
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