Patrick and I have been meeting for a Monday morning coffee for years now. It’s an excellent way to start the week. As good as it is, it still fell by the wayside when my new daughter was born. Once we reconvened, he asked me what I found valuable about our conversations.
Without thinking I replied, “How it reduces my available time.”
This is to say, the longer Patrick and I are discussing long term goals, world-changing projects, and how we’re striving to be better the less time I have available to get sucked into drama du jour/Twitter/Facebook/Hacker News. Priceless.
Six weeks ago, I came up with an experiment to see where this idea breaks.
- Monday – Thursday: No client work before lunch.
- Friday: No client work after lunch.
- No client work on weekends.
I now have recurring appointments in my calendar for: strategic thinking, reading, writing, attending my favorite class at the local gym. Sure, even in these short 6 weeks the time for these things have been constrained due to, well, life; compiling documents for the accountant, meeting with prospective clients, attending the end-of-unit preschool party, taking the baby to the doctor, even some client work snuck in this week.
- The biggest benefit?
- With rules for when I do client work, I’m much more protective and focused on generating value for my clients during those hours.
- I always break for lunch
Even with my current 62.5% success rate [1], I’ve found myself focused and motivated at reaching project milestones within the scheduled time. Yes, I’ve had some late lunches on recent Fridays. I’m OK with that. This model is something like a really long reverse Pomodoro (focus on play for 3 hours then on work for 4 hours) though I prefer to think of it as the Oxygen Mask Principle (take care of yourself first, then you’ll be better able to take care of others).
1. My inbox zero success rate for this same time period is 75%. I believe they are directed related.