How Do You Tiime-block with a job Requiring Deep Work and Reactive Parts?

00:00:00.000 | [music]

00:00:05.000 | Our next question comes from JK.

00:00:08.120 | JK asks, "How do you plan your day or week or time block

00:00:13.200 | when you have a job that has reactive parts

00:00:16.080 | and parts requiring deep work?"

00:00:18.720 | JK elaborates, "I'm a pharmacist manager

00:00:22.400 | working in a busy hospital environment

00:00:25.200 | managing a team of 15 to 20 people at any one time.

00:00:28.160 | This means I can be interrupted with questions

00:00:29.960 | at any time of the day by my staff

00:00:31.840 | as well as by other hospital staff outside of my team.

00:00:34.520 | These interruptions sometimes can be delayed,

00:00:37.400 | but mostly they are in the moment questions

00:00:39.360 | requiring an answer for them

00:00:40.640 | to proceed with their hands-on work.

00:00:42.920 | At the same time, I have non-reactive

00:00:44.480 | and deep-thinking work that needs to get done,

00:00:47.320 | but that gets pushed aside due to mental overload

00:00:50.000 | or lack of time."

00:00:51.400 | She gives examples like doing quality improvement work,

00:00:53.920 | analyzing data, et cetera.

00:00:56.560 | Well, JK, this is a problem in general with the medical field

00:01:01.960 | and in particular hospital work.

00:01:03.640 | I have given talks to hospitals in person virtually.

00:01:09.120 | I have worked with various hospital administrators

00:01:12.240 | on this problem. So just to lay out that foundation,

00:01:15.000 | you are not alone in this issue.

00:01:16.600 | There is a fundamental reactive nature

00:01:18.560 | about the way that hospitals run right now,

00:01:21.040 | which is quite degrading to the cognitive capacity

00:01:24.800 | of the individual practitioners,

00:01:26.320 | and it is a real problem.

00:01:27.760 | We do need more structure,

00:01:29.400 | and a lot of hospitals are thinking about this.

00:01:31.960 | So let me just lay that out there now.

00:01:33.680 | It's a big problem that hospitals

00:01:34.880 | are starting to think about.

00:01:36.440 | In terms of what you can do before those solutions

00:01:39.200 | actually happen is, number one, I would go easy on yourself.

00:01:44.200 | You aren't going to be able to do a lot of deep work

00:01:48.040 | in this environment.

00:01:49.760 | The cognitive context switching created

00:01:52.640 | by all these interruptions is draining.

00:01:55.600 | It's going to make it hard, even if later

00:01:57.640 | you do have time for you to get things done.

00:01:59.200 | So you might have to actually lower to some degrees

00:02:02.280 | your aspirations about how much deep work

00:02:04.080 | you're going to get done.

00:02:05.040 | Two, put aside that time early in the day,

00:02:08.440 | first time in the day.

00:02:10.400 | I've negotiated with whatever, my supervisor,

00:02:13.680 | my attending, the fellowship director,

00:02:16.320 | that I'm working on my data analysis

00:02:18.440 | Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

00:02:19.960 | I do it from 8 to 10, and then I'm on call.

00:02:22.800 | You figure this, you probably are going to have

00:02:24.840 | to figure out times that are protected much more officially.

00:02:28.760 | And there might be less of those times than you would like,

00:02:30.920 | but at least those times are protected.

00:02:32.440 | They're first thing if possible,

00:02:33.840 | so you have all your energy and you try to get

00:02:35.640 | as much done as possible in those windows

00:02:37.480 | when you get there.

00:02:38.440 | A surprising amount of deep work can get done

00:02:40.400 | if you consistently do that.

00:02:41.520 | That's probably what you're left at right now,

00:02:43.200 | because the rest of your day is going to be pretty frenzy.

00:02:45.680 | As for time blocking, I think it just depends

00:02:47.800 | on the nature of your work.

00:02:49.280 | Some inherently reactive jobs aren't well-suited

00:02:52.200 | for detailed time blocking.

00:02:54.560 | You might time block out the big things

00:02:56.280 | that you know have to happen,

00:02:57.520 | so you can see the character of your day,

00:02:59.040 | but you will be frustrated if it's impossible to know

00:03:02.560 | if you're going to get the next hour free,

00:03:04.320 | or if the next hour is going to be dealing with something

00:03:06.480 | that you had no idea was going to happen.

00:03:08.080 | And in that case, you might not be doing

00:03:09.680 | fine grain time blocking.

00:03:12.080 | So just to quickly summarize,

00:03:13.400 | hospitals are terrible for this,

00:03:14.840 | but they are getting better, hopefully.

00:03:18.320 | Knock on wood.

00:03:19.880 | I think we have to start with probably banning

00:03:21.840 | the inter-messaging feature that was added

00:03:23.720 | to Epic EMR record software.

00:03:26.160 | I've heard a lot about this,

00:03:27.160 | that you can now instant message people in the EMR software,

00:03:29.920 | but that's a whole nother argument.

00:03:30.920 | Number two, negotiate for the deep work time

00:03:33.800 | so it's protected.

00:03:35.320 | Use the right vocabulary,

00:03:37.040 | explain why this is important,

00:03:38.720 | that you want to fit this in,

00:03:40.480 | point them towards my work, blame it on me,

00:03:42.680 | get that time negotiated.

00:03:44.000 | It'll be less time than you hope,

00:03:45.180 | but you'll get more done in that time than you think.

00:03:47.200 | All right, that's my advice, JK, so good luck.

00:03:49.280 | (upbeat music)

00:03:51.860 | (upbeat music)

00:03:54.440 | (upbeat music)

How Do You Tiime-block with a job Requiring Deep Work and Reactive Parts?

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