Schedule Deep Work Appointments with Yourself and Create Space for the Shallows and Serendipity
The Fulling team is watching a new video series! Each week in our staff meetings, we watch a culture & leadership video to aid in our professional and personal development. We are diving into the series called Redeeming Your Time At Work by Jordan Raynor
Managing our time wisely and effectively is one of the most important things we can do to advance our careers. When we institute the right lifestyle changes—not just adopting some habits—we can begin to reach our full potential. In this ten-session series, bestselling author Jordan Raynor will cover ten simple practices that will help us manage our time wisely and clear out the distractions that keep us from making progress with our work.
In these videos, Jordan talked about how getting important work done during the day is going to require long stretches of focus. If we want to make progress toward our goals, we must make time for work without distraction.
Deep work should be done when our energy is still high. For some people, their best energy comes first thing in the morning. Others can focus much better in the afternoon. Our best work comes when we are at our best. Therefore, we should guard the times when we can focus the most deeply.
In the same way that uninterrupted time should be scheduled for deep work, we should also schedule a time to get our less-than-urgent tasks done, or what Jordan calls shallow work. These responsibilities should be scheduled during a time when your energy is lower and less focus is required.
Our group discussed how it’s helpful for us to have a bit of time scheduled at the beginning and end of our day for catch up work and to prepare for our day. We like to schedule/block our focused work in our Outlook calendar and have some gaps throughout our day for shallow work.
Join us as we hear more from Jordan about clearing distractions and managing our time wisely!
Food for Thought
What is your current sweet spot for focused work? What would it take for you to push yourself into a longer stretch of intentional, uninterrupted time?
Does scheduling time for shallow work sound helpful or unhelpful? Explain your answer.
Consider your regular shallow work. What is the best time for you to schedule these activities?