Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is that there will be time to clear the
Speaker 1: decks later. Don't try to finish all the little things
Speaker 1: before starting in on a big project. You can trust
Speaker 1: that you will have time to get to everything if
Speaker 1: you go in the right order. Last week I shared
Speaker 1: a tip about mapping out your focused work time on
Speaker 1: a recent week. Knowing I had carved out eight fifteen
Speaker 1: am to two forty five pm on Thursday for a
Speaker 1: big project made this time seem real and made me
Speaker 1: more motivated to protect it. It also kept me from
Speaker 1: feeling too unhappy about seeing my afternoon chopped up to
Speaker 1: do some required driving for the camp schedule. I think
Speaker 1: seeing the actual deep work time that is available can
Speaker 1: help lots of people. It may not be six and
Speaker 1: a half hours, but it is probably something. Of course,
Speaker 1: when I talk about this, people ask, well, when are
Speaker 1: you supposed to do all the other things you need
Speaker 1: to do on a day like that? And when do
Speaker 1: you deal with the things that come up during the day.
Speaker 1: Good questions, but here's what I promise. If you do
Speaker 1: the big stuff first, there will be time to clear
Speaker 1: the decks later if you start with all the other
Speaker 1: stuff though during your open time. That is, if you
Speaker 1: try to clear the decks first, it's quite possible that
Speaker 1: you won't get to the big things, or at least
Speaker 1: won't have as much time for the big things, And
Speaker 1: given how hard it is to come by open time,
Speaker 1: that would be a shame. In my case on that
Speaker 1: particular Thursday, what I did is that I knew the
Speaker 1: emails and tasks were going to be stacking up. But
Speaker 1: when I came back from camp driving at three thirty PM,
Speaker 1: I was able to spend about ninety minutes dealing with
Speaker 1: all those things amid the various interruptions that kept happening.
Speaker 1: That was okay, those tasks didn't require intense focus. By
Speaker 1: using that chopped up time, I didn't need to sacrifice
Speaker 1: my deep work time, thinking that was more responsible. If
Speaker 1: I had used ninety minutes of my deep work time
Speaker 1: for the little stuff, though, I would have had ninety
Speaker 1: minutes less of deep work time, and I probably would
Speaker 1: still have had a lot of small to dos to
Speaker 1: deal with later. Because my general sense is that administrative
Speaker 1: tasks expand to fill the available space I was still
Speaker 1: going to have to answer emails, whether I had done
Speaker 1: that before or hadn't. I think it's still wise to
Speaker 1: wait to clear the decks, even if you generally do
Speaker 1: need to be quite responsible in your job. You might
Speaker 1: be able to quickly scan email or other messages for
Speaker 1: emergencies once every hour or so, but tell yourself you
Speaker 1: won't deal with anything that isn't an emergency until after
Speaker 1: your big projects and focused work time is over. I
Speaker 1: bet if you take thirty to forty five minutes before
Speaker 1: lunch and an hour at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you will be able to get through most of your list,
Speaker 1: and you will have had the benefit of giving yourself
Speaker 1: any available thinking space. Now for some tough talk. Why
Speaker 1: do we sometimes think we need to clear the decks
Speaker 1: first before we get to our focused work. People might
Speaker 1: think they are being responsible by doing everything else first,
Speaker 1: but to be honest, I think it's often that the
Speaker 1: lure of easy wins is so strong. If you've got
Speaker 1: five things on your to do list and one is large,
Speaker 1: and we'll take several hours and four are short, it
Speaker 1: is so tempting to do those four easy things first.
Speaker 1: And who knows, I mean, maybe those wins will be motivational.
Speaker 1: But sometimes those tasks turned out to be longer than
Speaker 1: we thought, or they lead to other things and we
Speaker 1: get distracted, or we feel like we've done something and
Speaker 1: so we don't do the big thing because hey, haven't
Speaker 1: we done enough already today? If you clear the decks later, though,
Speaker 1: I promise there will be time and then you truly
Speaker 1: will get through everything. Often the little things can be
Speaker 1: done in crevices of time or in interrupted time. Big
Speaker 1: things not so much. So it's important to keep this
Speaker 1: in mind in the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeart Meatia.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.