Episode Details
Back to EpisodesHow to Stick with Time Blocking the Right Way
Description
There’s a conflict in time management and productivity that few people ever talk about. That’s the conflict between being productive and being responsive.
It’s almost like the Ying and Yang of life. A sort of Newtonian “everything has an equal and opposite reaction.”
While we may want to shut ourselves away and give our full focus to an important piece of work, there’s always someone, somewhere, who wants to interrupt us and keep us from being productive.
It’s this that we will be looking at this week.
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Script | 417
Hello, and welcome to episode 417 of the Your Time, Your Way 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.
I’m sure we’ve all been there. We have an important piece of work to complete, and we need a good two or three hours of uninterrupted focus to do it.
We block our calendars and pre-plan our day to minimise the risk of anything happening that will interrupt our plan.
And then the day starts, you turn up for work, and all hell has broken loose. Bosses and colleagues are in a panic, and you’re told you must attend an urgent meeting in twenty minutes. No ifs or buts, you must attend.
Argh! It’s enough to have you asking what the point is in making plans when this always happens.
Well, not so fast. It’s just Newton’s third law of Motion acting in a way Sir Isaac Newton never expected.
The pressure of needing two or three hours of quiet, focused work is matched by the force of people needing your attention right now.
Finding the antidote to this phenomenon is what this week’s question is all about.
So, without further ado, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Tim. Tim asks, “ Hi Carl, I’ve tried to do time blocking for years and have never found a way to stick with it. My colleagues always seem to have urgent questions or need me to do something right now. Do you have any ideas to avoid this from happening?
Hi Tim, thank you for your question.
You may have heard of the concept of manager vs maker (or sometimes producer). A manager’s role is to ensure the work is getting done, allocate resources, and hold meetings.
A maker’s role is to produce the work.
The conflict is between the manager’s need to know what’s happening and the maker’s need for uninterrupted time to produce the work the manager is chasing.
In my experience working with teams, the best teams are those where managers trust their teams to get the work done. Where the flow of information is smooth and works both ways, and the need for “update” meetings is minimal.
The mo