Optimizing your workday

Now that you can classify if some work is strategic or tactical, the next step is to start tracking time.

This will help you understand how you’re spending your work hours and highlight what to improve.

I prefer to do that directly on my calendar, but you can choose any method that works best for you.

The key is to find a system that you’ll stick with.

I schedule my work blocks first:

Work Block A: 8.30 - 11.30 (3 h) Work Block B: 12.30 - 15.00 (2.5h) Work Block C: 21.30 - 22.30 (1h)

Minus the scheduled meetings, which I try to push to the end of the work day.

At the end of the day, I retroactively fill in what I was working on. I have different-colored calendars for each type of work.

Strategic, ops, meetings, client work …

It makes it easy to see where my time is going (just by looking at the week).

Realistically, there’s not much time for deep work left in a day once you cut out everything you need to do.

So, if you want to spend 2 hours deep on strategic work, you must carve that time out.

But to do that, you first need to identify candidate tasks to remove. And that means having a good overview of where you’re currently investing your effort.

P.S. I believe the first focus block is the most important one. If you’re scheduling a bunch of meetings in that time, like standups, sync meetings, and planning meetings, you’re likely hampering the productivity of the entire team.

I prefer to have meetingless mornings with my teams and schedule all the group meetings and planning after lunch (for teams in the same-ish timezone).

Yours,

Taj