All right. Let's move on to a question from Kavindra, who says, Cal, I have been implementing ideas from digital minimalism in a world without email. And I have found that my workday has so much extra time in it. Aside, everyone finds this when they actually begin being much more intentional about their time allocation, when they become much more intentional about the processes by which they collaborate, they realize that I only need this much hours to get my work done.

It's a little bit of a secret. Going back to the question, I only need less than 3/4 of my work hours to be completely on top of my duties. Now that I have this time, I am realizing that there is much in my not work buckets that I can tackle.

However, I do not want to mix non-work things with being at the office for my own mental clarity. And I also don't want to look like a slacker. Do you have examples of how people handle this in between time? So Kavindra, my standard suggestion here is that you should take a phantom part-time job.

So this is my terminology for the very common occurrence among my listeners and readers, where they get very intentional about their time, realize that end processes, time and processes, realize they have a lot of extra time in their day. They can stay on top of their job with a lot of extra time, which again, is not surprising, because most people are terrible at the mechanics of what they do for a living.

So when you're not terrible, you realize you don't need as much time. And what I recommend is this idea of you really treat it like I have a part-time job, and that's what I do in that extra 1/4, in your case, 1/4 of my time that's free. And you schedule your work for this phantom part-time job just like you're scheduling your work for your main job.

And it happens during the workday. And you can decide if you want to, let's say, end your workday implicitly at 3 and then switch to your phantom part-time job or interleave your phantom part-time job during the day. Or like a lot of people will do their phantom part-time job first thing in the morning, then switch over to their other job because there's lots of meetings and stuff that happen more in the afternoon, the morning.

However you want to do it, but you really treat it systematically like I have two jobs. You call the second one a phantom part-time job because you don't make it visible and you don't talk about it. Now what do you do with your phantom part-time job? You have three options.

One, you use it to move to the next level or open up new opportunities in your existing work. So you could be dedicating this time to, let's say, cultivating a new rare and valuable skill that's going to give you a lot more options or control or autonomy once you do it.

Two, it could be a side hustle. I am starting-- I want to write a novel. I'm starting a business on the side. I'm starting a podcast, whatever it is. So you're working on a side hustle that may just be for interest or it may be that you want it to eventually generate enough income that you can renegotiate your main work situation to be maybe part-time itself.

Or three, your phantom part-time job is a completely non-professional personal interest. I want to master coffee appreciation. I want to master a genre of fiction or whatever, just something high-quality leisure that you really want to invest in and get better at. The key thing here about the phantom part-time job is that it's focused.

You are putting this time towards one thing repeatedly and carefully planning when it happens. That is going to get you away from this weird scattered feeling of just I'm slacking or doing lots of hobbies and work and or getting lost in rabbit holes on the internet. So I love the focus of the phantom part-time job.

Choose one thing. I am going to do this thing over the next six months during my work hours in the 1/4 of the work hours I have free. When you're that consistent and focused, you can do really cool things with that time. (upbeat music)