Edition 517 – Time Boxing
The phone pings. It’s a text message. I’d better check it.
The email preview pops up on the screen. I wonder who that’s from.
There’s a phone call. I’d better stop everything and take it.
What’s that? Someone has reached out on Messenger, or WhatsApp. I’ll click and see who it’s from.
Does this sound like you? It certainly sounds like a few people I know that run their own businesses at the moment. And, there’s a bit of spinning on their wheels happening with those individuals and hence, their businesses.
They’re focussing on the immediate, not the important. Whatever is most recent, gets dealt with.
I have two pieces of advice:
- Stop It!
- Time Box your day.
If I’m in the middle of something I need to work on, I don’t check emails, or answer phones, particularly if I’m deep in thought about a particular issue. I don’t have pop ups that appear on my phone for anything, other than a text message. Further to that, the phone is often on silent, particularly in meetings or when I’m engaging in what Cal Newport calls “Deep Work”.
Time Boxing is actually quite simple, yet I don’t see why people can’t get their head around it.
You have to time box your meetings. You book an appointment in your diary (and probably theirs), with a time, location and invitees. Simple. Effective. No one’s time is wasted.
If you’re travelling on a flight somewhere, you have to time box that. Be at the airport by a certain time, to catch a flight that departs at a certain time, and certainly won’t wait for you because you’ve been too busy uploading images of your latest meal on social media.
Weirdly, when people have more control over their day, in the office or the workshop, they get less done. It’s because they’re not definitive, and there’s limited intent, with the time they’re spending. They don’t time box their priorities for the day and, as a result, by the end of the day, not much gets done.
Whether you’re a person in business on your own, or running hundreds of staff, you need to be structured with how you set your day. Mark out time in your diary to get on with that proposal, or prepare the latest marketing blurb, or devote brain space to R&D.
The other tip that works for me, is I colour code different activities in my diary. Meetings are Dark Blue. Travel is Maroon. Marketing is Orange. Client Projects are Teal. The advantage of colour coding, is I can see what weeks look heavy, at a glance, by looking at the colours, rather than diving into each individual appointment and therefore where I have capacity to take on something else. Or, perhaps, where I need to dial it back a little, and be conscious that there’s no self care in there, anywhere.
Most people that go into business for themselves are incredibly entrepreneurial and, by and large, successful. Yet, I do wonder how many of them would survive if they worked for someone else, where their day would be more rigid and, as such, they’d be held accountable for what they’re doing, or not doing.
This Week’s Tip
“Try colour coding the various parts of your diary.
It makes a massive difference to seeing how busy, or how free, you might be.”