All right, moving on now, we have a question from Wei, who says, how do I keep balance among a full-time job graduate school and teenage kids? All right, so this is kind of similar to Nana's question from right before. When you have a lot going on-- well, we just told Nana, deep work is something to keep in mind.

The things that have to get done that are important, do it with intense, unbroken concentration. Do it well, but do it fast, and then move on. Two, if you have a bunch of competing demands, you have to give every minute of your day a job. You cannot go through your day in the list-reactive method, where you react to things like email and Slack and the internet and whatever is going on on Twitter, where you discover that Donald Trump has just selected Omicron as his running mate, and they're running on a platform that says, your kids have to be infected or something.

You don't want to just be doing that, and then, as you get around to it, looking at a to-do list and saying, do I want to do something from it? You have to give every minute of your day a job if you're going to make this possible. And that's going to be something like time block planning.

Here's the hours I have. Here's the meetings and classes I have. All this time's off limits, like whatever, I'm doing child care or something like that. But here's where I actually have time to work. What do I want to do with that time to get the most out of it?

I'm working on this here and that there and this here. I'm going to be very clear about this way. This does not mean that if you time block, you'll be able to fit everything in and get everything done. Yes, time blocking is going to get you way more out of your time than if you don't.

But the other thing it's going to give you is a reality check. It forces you to use a phrase from earlier episodes of this show. It forces you to face the productivity dragon. It forces you to actually see, here's what's on my plate and how long it really takes.

I like to put down here, oh, do my email in 15 minutes, but it takes me 90. Got to face that reality. I got to study for my class. I give it 30 minutes between lunch and this other meeting. I'm frazzled in that 30 minutes. I never get it done.

OK, that needs a whole afternoon block. And you see how long things really take, for better or for worse. But knowing what you're facing and how long it takes allows you to be realistic. And there might be hard choices you have to face, but at least you'll be making those hard choices from a really informed place.

You're going to be making those hard choices from, like, I know what's possible. I know what things take. I can get this and this done, but I can't do this at the same time as this. Or I have to put this off. Going to have to quit this. You got to face the productivity dragon and then get as much out of the time that you can.

Time block planning is what you're going to have to do. You're doing something hard. Don't let anyone tell you it's not hard. And it might not be possible. But there is no scenario in which ignoring that reality, avoiding the productivity dragon, just doing list reactive and being stressed, there's no scenario in which that's going to be the best thing to do.

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