(upbeat music) All right, let's do some questions. As always, we start with questions about deep work. Our first question comes from Tanner. Tanner says, "Can you implement your productivity tips without time blocking?" He elaborates, "I'm a public defender, and I have implemented a capture configure control setup that has greatly helped me reign in my caseload." I'm skipping here a little bit, but he says he generally finds it hard to time block, however, because there's aspects of his day that are so out of control.

He says, "Often things bubble up throughout the day, and I have more small tasks than can be easily scheduled. Is it possible to implement the patented Cal Newport productivity system while mostly eschewing time blocking?" So yes, Tanner, you can. So what is the patented Cal Newport productivity system? Well, here is where I can point everyone to a video in which I explain this step-by-step, a core ideas video.

If you go to the YouTube page for the show, youtube.com/calnewportmedia, you go to the core idea playlist, and I have a core idea video on time management where I say, "Here is my philosophy for time management. What are the high-level principles?" And then I explain my specific system for implementing those high-level principles.

So the high-level principles, as you mentioned, Tanner, are capture, configure, control. Time blocking is part of how I specifically implement that last piece, control. So you can certainly take those high-level principles and implement them in a way that makes the most sense for your job. And for your job, that might mean, for that control piece, not having time blocking.

That's actually quite common. I would say the most commonly occurring example I get or hear from in terms of individuals who use that system but don't use time blocking in implementing control is people who do support work. So IT professionals, for example, will often run their days off a ticketing system.

So control, time blocking is not that relevant for control. What they typically do is have, what they worry about is there's a small amount of non-urgent, personally initiated work that has to happen in addition to just servicing tickets. There's always some stuff you have to do. And they typically put aside a certain amount of time, set time every day where they do that work.

And otherwise they're just running through their ticketing system. And so they are definitely controlling their time but they don't have to time block every minute. It doesn't make sense 'cause most of their day is actually executing one ticket after another. So it could be similar for you, Tanner, that you have a different method of controlling.

The key is just making sure that these three principles are implemented. And so capture is about not having things in your head, be it small obligations or big projects. You're not keeping track of things in your head. They're entrusted systems. Configure is wrangling with and making sense of all the stuff on your plate, simplifying, getting rid of things, clarifying, taking things off, moving things around.

So you really understand what's on your plate. You have plans at multiple scales. You're not just winging it. And control is making sure that you are not reactively just going through your day, saying what's next in a way that is unintentional. So however you wanna implement that is fine by me.

I will say though, Tanner, looking at your elaboration, I'm not sure that time blocking is not gonna work for you. It looks like to me, and again, I'm basing this off of just two paragraphs of description I have here. But it looks like to me that if you put a little bit more emphasis into configure, you might be able to use time blocking and control because you talk about here that, you know, you have all these small, more small tasks that can easily be scheduled.

Well, you don't need all the small tasks on your plate to be scheduled. You need them to be captured and configured in a way that you can make intelligent decisions about what's gonna happen this week and what's gonna happen this day. So if you potentially had a better handle over the small tasks, they're grouped, they're categorized, you automate some, they're in separate particular lists.

You have certain times where you work on certain things. You can make decisions about which of these things do I need to get done this week and when am I gonna do them, that time blocking might actually work. So what might be happening here is that you're getting to your time outside of cases where you're presenting in court and then just feeling so overwhelmed that you just fall back to reactive mode.

So I'm gonna say, and I don't know if this will work for you because again, I only have two paragraphs here, but I'm gonna say, lean in more into the configure step because you're telling me you just have one large Word document where you try to keep track of everything.

Lean more into the configure step, go watch that video and hear about how I implement configure. And you might be able to get a better handle on all of this stuff so that you can get to a time blocking level of intentionality. It's not necessary and maybe not best for your job, but it might be.

I wouldn't dismiss it so quickly. (upbeat music)