Speaker 1: Ah the to do list. If you hear the word productivity,
Speaker 1: the to do list is probably the first thing that
Speaker 1: comes to mind. It's a symbol of organizational ambition, and
Speaker 1: it's at the heart of almost all productivity advice in
Speaker 1: one way or another. If the goal is to improve
Speaker 1: the way we work, then the to do list is
Speaker 1: the most important tool in the get But you know
Speaker 1: that already, don't you. And you also probably know that
Speaker 1: even the best to do list doesn't really work on
Speaker 1: its own. You can nail down exactly what the most
Speaker 1: important tasks on your plate are on any given day
Speaker 1: and still goes up shop at five point thirty feeling
Speaker 1: like you barely made a dent. Nailing the to do
Speaker 1: list is one thing, but how do you nail the execution.
Speaker 1: My name is doctor Amantha Imba. I'm an organizational psychologist
Speaker 1: and the founder of behavioral science consultancy invent Him, and
Speaker 1: this is how I work, a show about how to
Speaker 1: help you do your best work. Welcome to your favorite
Speaker 1: tips across ten bite size episodes. I'll be sharing tips
Speaker 1: from some of the world's best thinkers that you, the listeners,
Speaker 1: have found the most useful. We're covering everything from creating
Speaker 1: better to do lists to setting more effective boundaries around
Speaker 1: your time, and you'll be hearing from people like best
Speaker 1: selling author Sally Hepworth, Corona Cast host and journalist Norman Swan,
Speaker 1: and Google's executive productivity advisor Laura may Martin. Today's favorite
Speaker 1: tip comes from Trudy, and she writes, I loved hearing
Speaker 1: Callen Newport talk about how he uses time blocking and
Speaker 1: his weekly system around diary planning. Well, I love this too, Trudy.
Speaker 1: This excerpt is back from twenty nineteen when I first
Speaker 1: had cal on the show, where he shared his method
Speaker 1: for weekly and daily planning.
Speaker 2: I'm a big believer in both weekly and daily. I
Speaker 2: think you need to spend time to understand the contours
Speaker 2: of your week, what's happening on each day, what day
Speaker 2: is really crowded, what days have open space, so that
Speaker 2: you can start moving things around at that scale and recognize, Hey,
Speaker 2: Monday is pretty open. That's probably going to be a
Speaker 2: good time to make a lot of progress on this
Speaker 2: hard thing, even though that hard thing's not due till Friday.
Speaker 2: But you're seeing on the calendar that Wednesday and Thursday
Speaker 2: have a lot of meetings, right, and so looking at
Speaker 2: the whole week and trying to plan out what's going
Speaker 2: to happen when I think that's important. Believer in time
Speaker 2: blocking on a particular day. Give your time a job.
Speaker 2: Here's the hours i've available. What am I doing with
Speaker 2: this hour? What am I doing with this thirty minutes?
Speaker 2: What am I doing with this three hour block? Give
Speaker 2: your time a job. As opposed to just approaching your
Speaker 2: day with a generic to do list, you're much more
Speaker 2: effective at getting things out of your day if again,
Speaker 2: you look at the free hours of the day and
Speaker 2: reconfigure them, move them around, and figure out how can
Speaker 2: I get the most out of this? And then I
Speaker 2: often am a believer in ad hoc systems and rituals
Speaker 2: that match what's going on at the time. So if
Speaker 2: you have, let's say, a big event coming up, do
Speaker 2: you have to do a lot of planning for you
Speaker 2: might just say, here's what I'm doing. It's thirty minutes
Speaker 2: after launch every single day, thirty minutes every single day
Speaker 2: just checking in, moving things, seeing what's going on or whatever.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But this idea of having temporary systems that you put
Speaker 2: into place to help you make a lot of progress
Speaker 2: on important non permanent things in a way that doesn't
Speaker 2: have you just completely an ad hoc looking at a
Speaker 2: tasklic type mode. So if you do weekly planning, daily
Speaker 2: time blocking, build temporary systems and rituals as needed for
Speaker 2: temporary but large obligations, that usually combines to help you
Speaker 2: get a pretty effective use of the time available.
Speaker 1: And can I ask with time blocking because it's something
Speaker 1: I've experimented with myself and I feel like the cognitive
Speaker 1: biases that either cause you to overestimate or underestimate how
Speaker 1: long something takes, I've found can be my downfall with
Speaker 1: time blocking, where let's just say I've completely overestimated how
Speaker 1: long something will take, but I set aside three hour.
Speaker 1: Is I finished it in an hour and a half,
Speaker 1: and then like what like how does that work.
Speaker 2: In your will? Right? Well, I mean I should say
Speaker 2: at the bigger point is that one of the nice
Speaker 2: things about time blocking is that it's practiced to make
Speaker 2: you better at estimating how long things take because there
Speaker 2: is some pain to when you get it wrong. It
Speaker 2: requires some extra effort and so you have an to
Speaker 2: try to get it right, and you get a lot
Speaker 2: of feedback, so you see consistently not giving myself enough
Speaker 2: time for this type of activity, you get that feedback
Speaker 2: or I'm always giving myself too much time, so that
Speaker 2: gets better. But then what do you do in the moment, Well,
Speaker 2: if you don't give yourself enough time, then you know
Speaker 2: if you keep going till you finish what needs to
Speaker 2: get done, and then you just adjust your schedule for
Speaker 2: the rest of the day, which is fine. And one
Speaker 2: of the ways that people get time blocking wrong is
Speaker 2: they think that it's a game where you win the
Speaker 2: gold medal if you never have to change your schedule.
Speaker 2: But there's actually no prize you get for getting your
Speaker 2: schedule exactly right and never having to change it. You
Speaker 2: probably might have to change it three, four or five times.
Speaker 2: The goal is not to have a perfect schedule. It's
Speaker 2: to always have some intention about what you're doing with
Speaker 2: the time that remains of the day. Same thing if
Speaker 2: you underschedule, so you have a couple options here. You
Speaker 2: could add something new, or you could take advantage of
Speaker 2: that time just to relax, or to do something that's
Speaker 2: going to get you a dogative rest like that's actually
Speaker 2: kind of a nice scenario. But the point I always
Speaker 2: make about time blocking is that regardless of what you do.
Speaker 2: Having a good understanding of how long things take is
Speaker 2: crucial because if you don't, regardless you're time blocking or not,
Speaker 2: you're just going to keep getting yourself in the trouble,
Speaker 2: and you're going to keep having colliding deadlines, You're going
Speaker 2: to keep having late nights, You're going to keep having
Speaker 2: these sort of stressful moments when you realize a lot
Speaker 2: still needs to get done and I'm not there. And
Speaker 2: time blocking trains you to better appreciate how long things
Speaker 2: take and then otherwise just be comfortable with the fact
Speaker 2: that you might have to change your schedule several times
Speaker 2: throughout the day and that that's not negative, that's actually
Speaker 2: how the system works.
Speaker 1: I must say, after all the different productivity tips that
Speaker 1: I hear is part of my work. Time blocking has
Speaker 1: got to be one of the most fundamental things that
Speaker 1: has transformed my work. So if you have not tried
Speaker 1: time blocking in your life, I wholeheartedly recommend that you
Speaker 1: give it a go today. As the listener of How
Speaker 1: I Work, you've hopefully picked up a few tips on
Speaker 1: this show to help you work better, But do you
Speaker 1: want more? And maybe in a book form, because let's
Speaker 1: face it, books are the most awesome thing on the planet. Well,
Speaker 1: now you can. In my new book, time Wise, I
Speaker 1: uncover a wealth of proven strategies that anyone can use
Speaker 1: to improve their productivity, work, and lifestyle. Time Wise brings
Speaker 1: together all of the gems that I've learned from conversations
Speaker 1: with the world's greatest thinkers, including Adam Grant, Dan Pink,
Speaker 1: Mia Friedman, and Turia Pitt and many many others. Time
Speaker 1: Wise is launching on July five, but you can pre
Speaker 1: order it now from Amantha dot com. And if you
Speaker 1: pre ordered time Wise, I have a couple of bonuses
Speaker 1: view First, you'll receive an ebook that details my top
Speaker 1: twenty favorite apps and software for being time wise with email, calendar, passwords, reading,
Speaker 1: cooking ideas and more. You will also get a complementary
Speaker 1: spot in a webinar that I'm running on June twenty nine,
Speaker 1: where I will be sharing the tactics from time Wise
Speaker 1: that I use most often, and also some bonus ones
Speaker 1: that are not in the book that I use and love.
Speaker 1: Hop onto Amantha dot com to pre order now. How
Speaker 1: I Work is produced by Inventium with production support from
Speaker 1: Dead Set Studios and thank you to Matt Nimba. Who
Speaker 1: does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything
Speaker 1: sound so much better than it would have otherwise. See
Speaker 1: you next time.