Avoid This TRAP With Your Time Management System

00:00:00.000 | What do we got next?

00:00:01.700 | Next question is from Marathon Sprinter.

00:00:04.240 | My company does a two week sprint

00:00:07.300 | starting in the middle of the week Thursday.

00:00:09.300 | Should I switch my weekly plan to a two week long sprint?

00:00:12.960 | We plan probably. Yes.

00:00:16.040 | So in my multiplayer, multi scale planning philosophy

00:00:20.740 | where you do quarterly semester plans, weekly plans and then daily plans.

00:00:24.860 | The weekly has a little bit of give.

00:00:28.760 | You know, it is important to have a scale of planning

00:00:32.100 | where you can see multiple days in a row.

00:00:34.140 | That's what allows you to figure out how to move these bigger chess pieces around.

00:00:39.300 | That's what gives you the insight to move things, to open up bigger time.

00:00:42.440 | That's what allows you to see, oh, early in the week, I need to really push on this

00:00:46.100 | because later in the week is worse.

00:00:47.800 | You need some sort of planning scale that looks at multiple days at a time.

00:00:51.300 | If you go all the way to just say, what do I want to do today?

00:00:54.200 | You're missing some of this bigger structure to your available time

00:00:58.040 | and your available opportunities to get things done.

00:01:00.500 | Exactly one week isn't so critical.

00:01:03.200 | So if your company has a two week cycle, I think two weeks would be fine.

00:01:06.000 | Build it around the sprints.

00:01:07.700 | In fact, you should probably put some specific structure

00:01:09.840 | into your weekly plans that take into account.

00:01:12.000 | This is sprint work.

00:01:13.460 | And then this is the non sprint administrative work.

00:01:15.660 | And I keep track of, OK, you know, these days I do the administrative work

00:01:18.940 | and then here's the sprint.

00:01:19.900 | And you could even have like a special format built around it.

00:01:22.460 | If you went much longer than two weeks, you're going to start to get into trouble.

00:01:26.640 | I do know people who do monthly plans, monthly plans aren't that useful.

00:01:29.600 | It's not enough time to do the big picture quarterly semester planning.

00:01:33.840 | It's too much time to meaningfully like move around the appointments

00:01:38.040 | or think about when you're going to work is this too many days, two weeks fine.

00:01:41.600 | Three weeks iffy, one month too much, one week fine.

00:01:46.160 | If you're doing just a couple of days at a time, not enough.

00:01:49.100 | So let's get like a one to two week window.

00:01:51.700 | That window of scales, I think.

00:01:55.300 | I think that would all be fine.

00:01:57.100 | But Jesse, you were telling me before the show, you had a

00:01:59.300 | a recent breakthrough in your weekly plans.

00:02:02.000 | Yeah. So I think everything is iterative.

00:02:05.560 | And the more you know, you're just talking about, you know, once you're a convert,

00:02:09.060 | then you just hear the preaches.

00:02:10.260 | So I hear you talk about weekly plans a lot.

00:02:12.540 | And I was looking at mine and it was getting jumbled.

00:02:16.740 | And there was a lot of stuff in there that should have been over in Trello,

00:02:20.260 | for instance, just because there were stuff

00:02:23.640 | that I wasn't actually going to get to that particular week.

00:02:25.580 | So then when I went to the plant, I see all this stuff.

00:02:27.200 | And I like for whatever.

00:02:28.700 | You're talking like tasks related or objectives related to a bigger project.

00:02:33.300 | Yeah. For like a certain job that I have.

00:02:35.200 | And were you carrying these over?

00:02:37.580 | Yeah. So you put a, you know,

00:02:40.000 | here's the six things this project needs done on your weekly plan.

00:02:43.100 | Yeah. And maybe just one of those gets done.

00:02:45.280 | You just carry over.

00:02:46.440 | Yeah. And rewrite or copy and paste.

00:02:48.540 | As opposed to just sticking it over and Trello and then pulling it

00:02:53.280 | and then be like, oh, this week, I'm just going to do this.

00:02:54.980 | And then because then that kind of gets along with the slow productivity

00:02:58.800 | stuff that you're doing.

00:02:59.640 | And then you're actually making some progress on like a certain job

00:03:03.400 | or a task or whatever it is that you have in that plan.

00:03:06.040 | Do you focus now each week on the I'm going to do one project or two projects

00:03:11.100 | like you hone in on exactly which projects are going to make progress on?

00:03:13.940 | Yeah, well, I have it divided into different jobs.

00:03:17.740 | So then for like those whatever specific job, then it would be this one thing.

00:03:22.600 | Yeah, that I wanted to like make progress on, as opposed to like,

00:03:25.000 | for instance, to say job a I didn't want to like

00:03:28.080 | I would have three things in there and then.

00:03:31.540 | Wouldn't necessarily make great progress, but now like with one thing in there

00:03:34.700 | doing a few things, it's like the slow productivity mindset

00:03:37.280 | and like getting some stuff done.

00:03:38.540 | And do you pull over?

00:03:39.340 | So you've identified a particular job you're working on this week.

00:03:41.700 | Do you pull in from Trello?

00:03:45.040 | This is the one or two tasks I want to get done, or is it you're identifying

00:03:48.000 | this is a job I want to do as you work on it in the week.

00:03:50.840 | Keep pulling stuff from Trello.

00:03:52.180 | So what do you mean?

00:03:53.140 | I pulled in one in the beginning of the week.

00:03:55.140 | And then if that gets done early, you might update the weekly plan.

00:03:57.640 | Yeah, usually it's something that's going to take.

00:04:00.700 | It hasn't gotten done early yet,

00:04:03.980 | so usually it will take the whole week based on my other schedule.

00:04:06.700 | So like a common experience people have, let's see if you had the same experience.

00:04:09.580 | A common experience people have is let's say they have

00:04:11.740 | three or four major projects going on.

00:04:14.800 | They're really worried about the idea of just working on one per week

00:04:18.680 | because they think I can't look, I'm not going to get to this other project

00:04:21.680 | for another three weeks like it's impossible.

00:04:23.200 | I need to make progress.

00:04:24.440 | But what they realize if they do that, they end up getting things done

00:04:27.440 | just as quickly as if they instead tried to sort of quixotically

00:04:31.500 | do a little bit of every project every week that when you slow down

00:04:35.100 | and do one thing at a time, it doesn't actually necessarily slow down

00:04:39.340 | completion times for each of these projects on average.

00:04:42.180 | And it tends to raise quality.

00:04:43.540 | So was it was it stressful at first or a little anxiety producing to say,

00:04:47.300 | let me just choose one thing, because when you're making that plan,

00:04:50.800 | like I'm only putting one project on this and it feels

00:04:53.840 | was that anxiety producing at first?

00:04:57.340 | It was it reduced like anxiety, actually,

00:05:03.080 | after I looked at the weekly plan and had less stuff on there,

00:05:05.500 | I was like, oh, this is very doable.

00:05:06.940 | Oh, interesting. Yeah.

00:05:08.040 | So and you've had no problem getting these things done.

00:05:10.780 | It's not like it's not like you were actually getting all these things

00:05:15.640 | done each week, you were just writing them down.

00:05:17.080 | Yeah. And it was carrying over and it was like making my weekly plan jumbled.

00:05:20.600 | Yeah. So that's good.

00:05:22.100 | I like that. Clear and concise and better.

00:05:24.580 | Be realistic in your weekly plan.

00:05:26.900 | Yeah. Don't use your weekly plan to store things.

00:05:30.140 | It's actually exactly store, store things elsewhere.

00:05:33.240 | Weekly plans, what you actually want to get done

00:05:36.040 | and don't use it as a wish list.

00:05:37.400 | Mm hmm. Because there is a little burst you get.

00:05:40.300 | This is like the such a devilish little burst of pleasure you get

00:05:44.600 | when you're making a weekly plan.

00:05:45.880 | If you put a bunch of stuff on it for 10 minutes,

00:05:49.380 | you get the little pleasure that comes from imagining, man,

00:05:52.460 | if I got all of these things done this week, wouldn't that be great?

00:05:56.280 | Yeah. And then you trade that like 10 minutes of like

00:05:59.260 | enjoying this fantasy you created for five days of stressfully

00:06:03.520 | coming nowhere near close to actually getting it done.

00:06:05.280 | Yeah. So also so much planning.

00:06:07.780 | I don't make it a wish list. Don't make it a wish list.

00:06:09.660 | Yeah. The same with time block planning.

00:06:11.360 | Early time block planners do this when they're planning their day.

00:06:13.820 | They first they plan the day, you know, the perfect day.

00:06:17.620 | It's if you'll excuse a nerdy reference.

00:06:21.720 | It's Harry Potter in Harry Potter

00:06:25.720 | and the Half-Blood Prince when he takes the Felix Felicius potion.

00:06:31.660 | Jesse's looking at me like, what the hell are you talking about?

00:06:34.920 | It's a it's a potion that it gives you good luck.

00:06:38.060 | Like everything goes just the best way possible when you take this potion.

00:06:41.120 | So if you take this potion and I think time block planning for a lot of people

00:06:45.020 | and this is the type of like really cool, gritty analogy

00:06:47.920 | that gets us like a really cool fan base,

00:06:50.880 | time block planning for a lot of people just becomes a productivity

00:06:53.520 | Felix Felicius potion where it's like, wouldn't this be great

00:06:57.960 | if this only took a half hour and then this 20 minutes between these two meetings?

00:07:01.920 | I took this off my plate and then this hour I finished that memo.

00:07:05.420 | And you look at this plan, you're like, man, that would be awesome.

00:07:07.660 | And like nine minutes into your day, your laptop's on fire.

00:07:12.460 | The the company just went out of business.

00:07:14.860 | You know, your child just gave lice to your pediatrician

00:07:18.720 | who's now left the left the industry altogether.

00:07:21.860 | And, you know, seven new projects just fell on your plate.

00:07:27.460 | And also you forgot you were supposed to be writing a book and it's due on Friday.

00:07:30.160 | Like it takes about nine minutes before this like miraculous plan you have

00:07:34.560 | where you're like, this is great.

00:07:35.520 | Everything will take 20 minutes and of all this energy.

00:07:38.320 | So be realistic. Don't make a wish list.

00:07:40.420 | You'll feel better actually being able to get a reasonable plan done with time to spare.

00:07:44.720 | In the end, it's going to make you feel much better

00:07:46.660 | than that 10 minutes of like, oh, this would be great.

00:07:49.720 | [Music]

Avoid This TRAP With Your Time Management System

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