The Hidden Benefits Of A Holiday Work Week

00:00:00.000 | All right, and with that, I think we're ready to jump in.

00:00:05.000 | I want to start with a deep dive.

00:00:08.060 | I'm going to call this a world without busyness.

00:00:13.860 | It is inspired by the holiday break

00:00:17.880 | that especially in the American context,

00:00:20.100 | most workers get the week between Christmas and New Year's.

00:00:24.540 | So we have the holiday break just started

00:00:26.280 | when you're listening to this podcast.

00:00:27.580 | I want to talk about the week before.

00:00:30.160 | The week before the holiday break,

00:00:31.520 | that is the week that I'm in right now as I record this.

00:00:36.260 | For me, as for a lot of people,

00:00:39.000 | the week before this break is a really nice week of work.

00:00:43.680 | And the reason is is because it's 40% less busy

00:00:49.760 | than a typical work week.

00:00:51.980 | As people are getting ready for the holidays,

00:00:54.280 | people aren't starting new initiatives,

00:00:56.700 | people aren't scheduling as many meetings.

00:00:59.680 | This is particularly true in the academic context

00:01:02.000 | where I work, the semester is over,

00:01:05.120 | and people will wait till the new year

00:01:06.320 | to really get things ramped up.

00:01:07.320 | So it's like an easier week.

00:01:08.680 | You're still working, but the work doesn't seem as onerous.

00:01:12.480 | So what I have here, I'm going to switch to the tablet.

00:01:15.840 | So for those who are watching this on YouTube,

00:01:18.120 | you're going to see me drawing on the screen here.

00:01:20.880 | I have a very crudely drawn calendar.

00:01:23.700 | Those who are listening, you can imagine this

00:01:26.020 | being expertly drafted with beautiful penmanship

00:01:29.040 | and straight lines.

00:01:30.120 | Those who are watching online know that's not the case.

00:01:32.080 | I have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,

00:01:34.020 | just sort of blocked out here on this calendar.

00:01:36.320 | And what I wanted to do is roughly block out

00:01:38.520 | what my week looks like this week.

00:01:41.000 | And I have three categories here,

00:01:42.640 | deep work, admin, and appointment.

00:01:46.060 | So things that are sort of scheduled on the calendar

00:01:48.160 | that you have to go and go somewhere else.

00:01:50.600 | So this week, and I looked at my calendar this morning,

00:01:54.400 | so this is pretty accurate.

00:01:56.020 | Most mornings, Monday through Thursday,

00:01:59.180 | actually every morning this week, not most, every morning,

00:02:02.000 | I can just write in the morning.

00:02:03.600 | So I'm blocking that off for deep work.

00:02:06.480 | I'm only doing this if you're listening,

00:02:09.540 | Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

00:02:13.540 | Friday, we're leaving to go visit my parents.

00:02:17.900 | So we're not doing any work at all.

00:02:18.980 | So we're going to cross that off, no work on Friday.

00:02:21.080 | So we've got four days, can do deep work every morning,

00:02:24.900 | working on, I'm writing.

00:02:27.120 | All right, most afternoons,

00:02:30.140 | I'm gonna put Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,

00:02:32.300 | plenty of time to do another deep work session.

00:02:36.160 | So I'm blocking that off on my calendar.

00:02:38.160 | And for me this week, that's gonna be largely,

00:02:42.680 | I'm working on a particular new proof

00:02:44.460 | or computer science paper,

00:02:46.060 | something I'm working on with some collaborators.

00:02:49.220 | All right, what about appointments?

00:02:50.300 | So these are scheduled things.

00:02:51.180 | Well, because it's a week before a break,

00:02:54.420 | it's pretty light.

00:02:55.260 | It's basically today.

00:02:56.220 | So I'm blocking off most of Monday.

00:03:00.040 | And most of my appointments today

00:03:02.500 | are what I'm doing right now.

00:03:04.340 | I'm podcasting, I'm at the studio,

00:03:05.580 | I'm podcasting some other things I wanna get done.

00:03:08.420 | And I'm gonna put a little sliver of deep work

00:03:11.100 | 'cause I do wanna finish,

00:03:11.940 | I told Jesse has a little more writing I wanna do

00:03:13.940 | because I had to cut it short this morning.

00:03:16.220 | All right, and then on most other days,

00:03:18.780 | there's a little bit of admin work.

00:03:21.140 | If I do 30 to 60 minutes,

00:03:22.940 | most of these on Tuesday, on Wednesday and Thursday,

00:03:27.700 | that is enough to keep on top of things

00:03:30.180 | that are coming via email, things on my calendar,

00:03:31.900 | things that need to get done.

00:03:32.740 | There's still a little details that have to get done.

00:03:34.900 | I have a doctoral student who's defending a dissertation

00:03:37.660 | pretty soon after the break, for example,

00:03:39.100 | there's some paperwork to be filed.

00:03:41.460 | There's a web designer working on an update to our website.

00:03:45.180 | I have a couple of things to send her.

00:03:46.340 | So about 30 to 60 minutes on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

00:03:50.340 | will keep me very much on top of administrative work,

00:03:53.780 | email requests, et cetera.

00:03:54.900 | So here we have a calendar that if you're looking online,

00:03:58.060 | you'll see deep work every morning,

00:04:01.100 | Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,

00:04:02.580 | is sort of modest admin block.

00:04:04.100 | And then another deep work session in the afternoon,

00:04:05.820 | space in between, plenty of breathing room,

00:04:07.980 | go for a walk, whatever.

00:04:09.220 | These days can all end at three or four o'clock.

00:04:12.740 | Monday is the one day where I have sort of appointments

00:04:15.100 | during the day after a morning deep work session,

00:04:16.740 | I'm not even working on Friday.

00:04:18.780 | And that's my holiday schedule.

00:04:20.380 | Now here's the thought experiment I want you to follow.

00:04:24.260 | What if this was my schedule every week?

00:04:27.540 | What would happen to my observable productivity

00:04:34.340 | if I had more or less a schedule like this every week,

00:04:36.580 | two deep work sessions a day,

00:04:38.500 | 30 to 60 minutes admin, one day with appointments,

00:04:40.820 | and on a regular basis,

00:04:41.860 | maybe an entire day just taken off to do other things.

00:04:44.140 | I would argue that my visible productivity

00:04:46.540 | and the things that people at the scale of years

00:04:48.940 | would notice about me, which is books, academic articles,

00:04:53.580 | New Yorker articles, and this podcast,

00:04:56.540 | the big visible things that define my impact,

00:05:00.380 | that productivity would not only be preserved

00:05:03.780 | with this schedule,

00:05:04.620 | it would almost certainly be increased.

00:05:06.780 | More articles, books at a faster rate,

00:05:09.860 | higher quality probably for this podcast

00:05:11.660 | just because of the more than enough time

00:05:13.660 | to work on these things,

00:05:14.620 | consistency working on these things,

00:05:16.100 | and more than enough time for the mind to refract

00:05:18.860 | and reconfigure between things,

00:05:20.700 | I would probably be more productive.

00:05:22.660 | I think a lot of people would have a similar conclusion

00:05:26.660 | that if they could take the pre-holiday week schedule

00:05:29.300 | and do that every week of the year,

00:05:31.060 | their observable important productivity

00:05:34.340 | would not diminish.

00:05:35.180 | If anything, it would probably increase.

00:05:37.180 | Now let's compare this to a normal week.

00:05:42.060 | Let's grab a week in mid-January.

00:05:44.700 | What goes wrong with this sort of pre-holiday week schedule

00:05:47.460 | I put down here?

00:05:48.300 | Well, there's two things that change.

00:05:49.460 | One, the number of appointments would rapidly increase.

00:05:53.860 | The idea that I've just consolidated them

00:05:55.660 | for the half a day on one day would be unrealistic

00:05:59.500 | under my normal scheduling demands.

00:06:01.500 | So there would be, I would say, three to four,

00:06:03.180 | at least three to four other non-trivial appointments

00:06:05.180 | scattered throughout these days.

00:06:07.300 | I would also say these admin blocks would have to double

00:06:09.620 | or sometimes triple in length.

00:06:11.220 | There's just way more things pulling at my attention

00:06:14.780 | that I have to do that are time consuming.

00:06:16.180 | So now maybe I need on average two hours a day of admin.

00:06:19.820 | So you expand the admin,

00:06:21.500 | you throw in a lot more of these appointments,

00:06:23.740 | and maybe you can preserve, let's say,

00:06:26.260 | like the morning deep work session.

00:06:27.580 | But what you really lose is two things.

00:06:30.300 | A, a lot of those afternoon deep work sessions go away

00:06:33.540 | and the length of your workday increases.

00:06:35.920 | When I'm in my normal schedule,

00:06:37.260 | the only way to actually make that all work

00:06:38.820 | is I have to also aggressively time block plan

00:06:41.540 | just to try to make every piece fit.

00:06:43.540 | I have to combine that with a weekly plan

00:06:45.500 | and a strategic plan to try to make everything fit.

00:06:48.580 | In this holiday schedule that's on, that I drew on the screen

00:06:51.820 | I don't even have to be that on my game,

00:06:53.980 | productivity speaking.

00:06:55.360 | It's a pretty simple schedule.

00:06:56.940 | I work, take my time, do some admin, go for a breather,

00:06:59.500 | do a little more work, I'm done.

00:07:01.940 | So that's what we lose in a normal schedule.

00:07:03.900 | A lot less deep work, a lot longer working hours,

00:07:06.820 | and just a lot more grinding organizational skill required

00:07:10.380 | even to just sort of get through the day, which is draining.

00:07:13.540 | And what do we gain from that?

00:07:15.260 | Less visible productivity in the sense of producing things

00:07:19.640 | that the world notices and would assess as being valuable.

00:07:23.300 | That actually goes down.

00:07:24.500 | So in some sense, this is my question

00:07:29.300 | in this holiday period.

00:07:30.940 | And this is, I would say, probably the question

00:07:34.260 | in knowledge, work, productivity,

00:07:35.600 | the one that we're not answering,

00:07:36.940 | the one that we're ignoring to instead focus on the minutia.

00:07:40.600 | Well, is Slack more efficient than email?

00:07:44.280 | What's our rules around setting up meetings?

00:07:46.900 | Are you a bullet journal person or a time block planner?

00:07:49.460 | As we look at the particular leaves on the trees,

00:07:54.220 | we're missing the outline of the whole forest.

00:07:56.380 | And this is the question that we're not asking,

00:07:57.940 | but I think we should.

00:07:59.660 | Why don't we have every week be like the week

00:08:02.660 | before the holiday break?

00:08:05.500 | What is preventing us from doing it?

00:08:07.440 | What would we have to change to make that the standard?

00:08:10.460 | And if we did, what are organizations or universities

00:08:14.220 | or companies or small entrepreneurial endeavors?

00:08:16.500 | Would they fall apart or would they actually become better

00:08:19.700 | at what they do?

00:08:20.540 | That's the question we should be asking.

00:08:22.220 | So I thought I would pose it to you, my audience,

00:08:24.620 | because you have a week to actually think about it.

00:08:27.460 | - Is there a reason why you draw the morning blocks

00:08:32.340 | on the bottom?

00:08:34.180 | - Yeah, that's an interesting question.

00:08:37.500 | That matches, I have kind of reversed it, haven't I?

00:08:42.500 | - I just didn't know if there was some.

00:08:45.100 | - Yeah, 'cause in my time block planner, I go down.

00:08:48.120 | In Google Calendar, time also goes down.

00:08:51.900 | And yet in my mind, I think this is interesting.

00:08:54.780 | When I visualize my schedule in my mind,

00:08:57.660 | I think about time moving upwards.

00:09:00.940 | Yeah, so this is, if you're watching this on the YouTube,

00:09:03.060 | you'll see an interesting artifact of the way my mind works.

00:09:07.100 | My mind visualizes schedules as time moving up.

00:09:09.980 | - Yeah, you're climbing a ladder.

00:09:11.220 | - You're climbing the ladder,

00:09:12.180 | you're piling things on top of each other.

00:09:14.780 | That's an interesting observation.

00:09:16.580 | Yeah, so maybe I'll label this.

00:09:18.100 | All right, for those who are watching,

00:09:19.540 | I'm gonna add an expository label here.

00:09:21.860 | Let's do, I'll put like 9 a.m. at the bottom

00:09:27.780 | and then I'll make the very top here like 4 p.m.

00:09:33.580 | This is my ideal schedule.

00:09:35.500 | Now I can't complain because I actually get to do this

00:09:38.300 | during the summer every year.

00:09:40.700 | So I get my taste of this.

00:09:42.260 | So it's not just the week before.

00:09:44.180 | For most people, it's like just one or two weeks

00:09:45.860 | where this is true.

00:09:46.700 | I get this all summer, this schedule,

00:09:48.620 | and I love this schedule.

00:09:50.060 | - So in the evenings, you'll like read

00:09:52.500 | or like before nine o'clock, you'll read a little bit?

00:09:54.340 | - Yeah, I mean, it's kids.

00:09:56.020 | Well, it's exercise, kids, other stuff, kids.

00:09:59.220 | - Yeah.

00:10:00.380 | - So it's family stuff.

00:10:01.540 | - Well, people would probably be curious

00:10:04.540 | about when you read your five books on that schedule.

00:10:08.500 | - So typically, if I'm up, I'm reading in the morning,

00:10:13.300 | like this morning I was up.

00:10:16.260 | So I write in the morning, I read in bed.

00:10:18.820 | And then yeah, we put together,

00:10:19.780 | we do reading sessions in the evening.

00:10:22.140 | So now if I, usually at least one of my books

00:10:26.120 | will be for work, like I need it for a New Yorker article

00:10:28.900 | or something like that.

00:10:29.740 | And because that's work for those, I'll put aside time,

00:10:32.860 | you know, hey, this is what I'm gonna do in the afternoon.

00:10:35.740 | - Yeah.

00:10:36.580 | - I'm gonna put aside an hour here, an hour there.

00:10:37.900 | - Yeah.

00:10:38.960 | - We'll see.

00:10:40.260 | Did we talk about Thriller December last week?

00:10:42.020 | We did, right?

00:10:42.860 | - Yeah.

00:10:43.680 | - Yeah, okay.

00:10:44.520 | So hopefully people, this is your week.

00:10:45.940 | The week that you're off is the week

00:10:47.220 | to really make progress on Thriller December.

00:10:49.060 | So hopefully people are going well.

00:10:51.060 | I'm three thrillers deep now.

00:10:53.120 | I'm now reading, I added to my list.

00:10:55.940 | I went back, I aborted from one thriller.

00:10:58.260 | I'll talk about that when we do our reading roundup

00:11:00.420 | next month.

00:11:01.260 | I was like, okay, I gotta get the bad taste out of my mouth.

00:11:03.820 | So I went back and I'm reading Robin Cook's original novel,

00:11:08.820 | Coma from 1976, invented the medical.

00:11:12.100 | He says it invented the medical thriller genre,

00:11:14.580 | like him and Crichton might argue about that,

00:11:16.060 | but it's really good.

00:11:17.340 | It's really good.

00:11:19.140 | They haven't even got to the thrillery parts yet.

00:11:20.820 | It's like third year med students

00:11:23.560 | at Boston Memorial Hospital.

00:11:25.600 | And there's two cases in a row of young,

00:11:30.600 | young, healthy patients going in for surgery

00:11:33.220 | and something happens during the surgery

00:11:34.820 | and they get brain dead.

00:11:36.500 | And you're starting to realize,

00:11:37.580 | and they get, but so Cook gets into the details

00:11:39.260 | of all the science of how anesthesia works.

00:11:42.500 | And so it's like brings you into the hospital world.

00:11:44.460 | It's like ER in a book.

00:11:46.060 | You're starting to realize like there's something

00:11:47.560 | going afoul here.

00:11:49.080 | I think someone's organs are being harvested

00:11:51.380 | and it's cool.

00:11:52.480 | I'm enjoying it.

00:11:53.320 | All right, anyways, Thriller December,

00:11:55.020 | we got one more week, read.

00:11:56.780 | (upbeat music)

00:11:59.360 | (upbeat music)

00:12:01.940 | (upbeat music)

00:12:04.520 | (upbeat music)

00:12:07.100 | (upbeat music)

The Hidden Benefits Of A Holiday Work Week

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