We'll start, as always, with questions about deep work. Our first question comes from Sabine, who asks, in your opinion, is it worth time blocking days that don't involve jumping around with different types of tasks? There's some elaboration here. Sabine says, I am self-employed and on a regular basis have days when I work on my routine work projects that can take two days to finish without having to switch to anything else.

I think that's completely fine to non-time block really focused days, or days where maybe you're not doing too much professionally, except for maybe one thing. So it's a weekend day that you largely aren't working, but you're going to write for three hours. No need to time block that. Or if it's a regular weekday and you're coding all day, you know what you're doing.

You use Scrum, here's the feature story you're working on, and that's what you're locked into. I think the time block in those occasions, though it's fine to do, might feel like it's an exercise in just formalism. I think it's completely fine not to time block those days. I probably time block 90% of my work days.

But there's work days I don't have to. I mean, sometimes it's because it's routine, too. That's the other thing I'll throw in. I mean, I know if it's a Monday for me, I got to drive to campus, I'm going to teach, then teaching is followed almost immediately by office hours.

And then office hours actually take me pretty late into the day, and sometimes it's pretty clear. I prep in the morning, I go to campus, I teach, I do office hours. I'll often have maybe one variable block in that day. What do I do right after office hours? And sometimes if that's the only variable that's different, it feels weird to write it down.

So I'm with you. Time blocking is useful when it's unclear what you want to do with your time, or your plan is way too complicated to keep track of. But if it's one thing, or it's a schedule you've done week after week after week with very minimal changes, it's fine by me.

I'm not going to be mad at you if you don't time block that. (upbeat music)