White Space
I have long been fascinated and absorbed with optimising my time. It is one of the skill sets that can make an incredible impact on both your personal life and your professional life. My pursuit is not about squeezing more into less time but rather ensuring I am enjoying the time I have.
It is this pursuit that helped me stumble upon a simple strategy that has made one of the largest and most significant differences. I am very prone to something I call the “Superman Syndrome” - the belief that I can (should be able to) complete a lot more in a day than humanly possible. This rears its ugly head in multiple ways: Planning report writing to be done in 20 mins rather than 1 hour (because once I managed it in 20 mins and figured that should now be the gold standard. It has led to me only scheduling the minimum amount of travel time between appointments - not allowing for any meeting to run overtime (I now know this to be insanity for a people-person who loves to connect) and expecting the road to be clear with green lights the whole way (school traffic is the ultimate reality check to this!).
Arriving at a client meeting 20 mins late one day forced me to accept that something needed to change. I identified my unrealistic expectations as the culprit and started to plan realistic amounts of time into my calendar. This helped a lot. I use Google calendar and have it colour coded for meetings, travel, admin tasks, course writing and training. This worked well but was easily derailed by the unexpected.
Procrastination and interruptions are regularly cited as being the top cause for delays and drops in productivity. Companies going to 4 day weeks without losing output and maintaining their productivity regularly highlight how people are more focused and less prone to interrupting others or entertaining interruptions. Focus inside of “blocked time” remains my no.1 tip for high productivity. The challenge I needed to overcome extended beyond this “focus time”.
Using a 15min time tracker for 2 weeks very quickly highlighted the challenge, putting a spotlight on the ‘obvious’. The problem was not the working time but rather the transition time. The space between one task and another. Two things immediately became clear. Not having a clear plan for the day would mean that once a task was finished I would waste time and energy deciding what to do next. The easy fix for that was to plan the day and week ahead. The second observation became an epiphany moment that has made the single greatest difference since discovering the power of focus in block time - the power of white space.
The concept is simple and, in hindsight, logical. Put white space between activities. This allows for meetings and tasks that run over time. It allows for refreshment breaks. It removes the pressure and rush from a day. This factor alone increased productivity. I had clear space to think. I was not ending meetings thinking of the next thing I was rushing to. It allowed time for team members to ask questions, get quick answers and feedback.
When you look at your calendar and your teams could you do with having some white space?
