Master your time and escape the hamster wheel
This article is part of Dare Be's Leadership Handbook, a guide to help people lead with impact and heart
Do you ever feel like a hamster in a wheel, scurrying to keep up?
You may spend your week putting out fires instead of working on longer-term, strategic topics. Or, when you do have a precious, meeting-free moment, it’s taken up by responding to messages or simply catching up.
Thankfully, it is possible to manage your time, instead of chasing after it. Read on for 7 principles to help you become a master of your time.
1. Intend, plan, and retrospect
Brian Tracy, author of The Psychology of Success, states that 10 minutes of planning is worth 100 minutes spent in tasks. I can’t back him up on the maths, but I think he’s got the right idea!
To plan for your week, establish the amount of meeting-free time you have each day. Then subtract ~2 hours per day to attend to your messages and address the urgent stuff.
The remainder is your time to progress on your priority goal(s). Block out that time and make it sacred. It’s non-negotiable. Save the messaging and last-minute surprises for the 2 hours you built in as buffer time.
To plan for each day, start with a written intention. Ask yourself the question: “What do I want from and for myself today?” For example, if you want to make progress on an important project, write down: “I will make progress on project X.”
To add structure to that plan, block out your work in intervals (which we’ll get to next!).
2. Work in intervals
An interval is a chunk of time dedicated to a single type of task, such as reading your emails or doing 1-1s. Schedule your intervals in your calendar so that you’ve got dedicated time for each kind of task.
You will likely have 5 types of intervals:
1. Recurring meetings & calls
2. Emails / Slack
3. Urgent tasks
4. Planning
5. Priority goals
Each type of task will require a different amount of energy and focus from you. Switching between them also incurs a "switching cost," as your brain needs time to shift attention and mental context.
The switching cost is particularly important for complex tasks, such as creating a presentation or writing a thoughtful answer over email. So when you’re planning your intervals, make those for complex tasks as long as you are able to stay in the zone.
Of course, you’ll have meetings. Plan around them. For example, if you have a recurring meeting every Tuesday at 10am that someone else is hosting, make the meetings you schedule Tuesday at 9am and 11am, to consolidate that time.
Here’s an example of what your ideal calendar could look like:
When you’re getting ready to start each interval:
Turn off your notifications on your laptop and your phone - no more sounds or pop-ups!
Set your status as busy if you are using Teams or Slack.
Set an objective - what do you want to achieve during this time?
Set an end with a timer. Some people use a pomodoro timer, which is set at 25 minutes. The clock on Windows 11 now has a feature called “focus session,” which is handy too.
Close all non-relevant applications and tabs, including mail, calendar, etc. This will reduce the temptation to get distracted.
3. Build in recovery time
When you work in focused intervals, you are putting your brain to work more effectively and intensely. This gets tiring, so create the space in your day to recover.
Make your meetings and intervals 25 or 50-minutes long. Our calendars are organised in 30 and 60 min increments. As a result, at home we’re click-rushing from one call to the next, and in the office we’re running from meeting to meeting.
You need breaks! You can shorten your default calendar event length in Outlook and Google.
During the breaks, stand up, take a short walk, and get some fresh air and sunlight if you can. Do not look at your phone or emails! Take a few minutes to set an intention and prepare for your following meeting or interval.
4. Attend to messages only in fixed intervals
Imagine that you’re working on a presentation. You receive an email from your boss or an investor asking you a simple question, and you respond immediately. It may make you feel useful or look good to the boss, but it breaks your concentration and slows you down.
In most cases, your boss won’t need your response immediately. In fact, they’d probably prefer you to be productive!
Let your boss know that when she has a really urgent request, she can call you instead.
5. Swallow the frog
‘Swallow the Frog’ means taking the biggest or most difficult task of the day and getting it done first. Because if you have to eat a frog, you’d want to get it over with fast!
Identify your 1 or 2 priority goals for the next weeks or quarter. They are the important and non-urgent tasks that take at least weeks of work to deliver something meaningful. They could come from your OKRs.
Dedicate at least 2 hours per week to them, in intervals of at least 60 minutes. Work on these at the start of your day, before the urgent stuff grabs your attention.
6. Prevent recurring fires
Recurring fires waste your time and drain your energy. They could be team members not following the right process, or products that are consistently delivered late.
First, identify the issues that you have solved in the past but come back like a boomerang. Then make them one of your few goals to make progress on in the next weeks, or delegate the issue to someone.
Do not let the issues persist. They set you and your team back.
7. Learn to say no
You won’t have full control of your agenda. There will always be pesky meetings that you didn’t plan for.
To get back some control, only join meetings where you can be 100% focused and where you can gain or deliver value.
Meeting invites too often come only with a title and a list of invitees. If that’s the case, before accepting, ask for a desired outcome and what is the expected value of your participation.
If there’s nothing you can get from or contribute to the meeting, decline the invitation. Do it as kindly as possible, stating for example that you have other priorities at the moment, and you cannot add much value to the meeting.
If it’s a presentation or session where the information is important but not the meeting itself, ask for the deck and the recording.
Leave space for growth
I believe in learning continuously. Self-reflection is one of the best sources of new and relevant insights - so use it!
At the end of your day, list 3 things that you are proud of and what each implies about you. Also, list one or two learnings and how you can use these insights going forward.
At the end of the week, look at all your growth and appreciate it. This will nourish and guide you going forward, so you’re able to tackle the troubles as they come.