Personal leadership · Proving to Scaling
Protecting your time
You put your most important work in fixed blocks in your calendar, and you check email and chat at times you choose.
Worth reading first: Starting the day well
Does this sound familiar?
- You'd planned a morning for the report. By twelve you've answered forty messages and haven't written a paragraph.
- Every time the chat lights up you take a quick look, and then it takes ten minutes to remember where you were.
- All week you do whatever shouts loudest, and the thing that really matters slides to next week.
- You say yes to every meeting, and you do your own work in the evening.
- A colleague asks if you could 'just have a quick look', and an hour later you're still deep in their problem.
Who it's for, and when
For anyone who's busy all day and still hasn't got to the real work by the end of it. It comes into play as soon as you have work that takes thinking and colleagues who can reach you all day. Early on, when there are a few of you round one table, answering quickly often matters more than working undisturbed. In that case, agree a few quiet hours together rather than each on your own.
The model
“I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
Newport distinguishes two kinds of work. Deep work needs your full attention and makes you better at what you do: building a quote, an analysis, code, a plan. Shallow work can be done half distracted: email, chat, scheduling something, passing something on. Deep work pays off the most, and it's the first thing to go when you can be reached all day.
When you switch tasks, part of your attention stays behind. After a glance at the chat, your head is still on that message for a while, even once you're back in your report. That's why checking now and then doesn't work. You put deep work in blocks of an hour or two where you don't look, and you batch the shallow work at fixed times.
Covey puts your work in four boxes: urgent or not, important or not. Urgent is whatever wants your attention right now. Important is whatever contributes to your role and your priorities. Most things go wrong in the box urgent but not important: messages, calls and questions that feel like they can't wait, and that belong to someone else. What's important and not urgent, such as a plan or the work on your priority, only happens if you set time aside for it in advance.
This lesson is about the hours in your day. Which three things you'll finish today is in the lesson Starting the day well, and what's on your board this week is in the lesson Planning in weeks. Here you put those things in your calendar and decide what to leave. Your manager says what needs doing. When you work on it is up to you, and if you don't fill your calendar, other people will.
Cal Newport, Deep Work (2016): focused work in blocks, with shallow work such as email batched together. Stephen Covey introduced the matrix of urgent and important in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) and First Things First (1994, with A. Roger and Rebecca Merrill). It's also called the Eisenhower matrix, after the quote below.
Urgent and important
A crisis, a client ringing right now with an outage, a deadline today. You do this straight away. If it happens every week, it belongs in the box below: prevent it.
Important, not urgent
Your priority, a plan, improving something, a conversation you've been putting off for weeks. Nobody asks for it, so you put it in a block in your calendar before the week starts.
Urgent, not important
Most messages, a lot of meetings, the request to 'just have a look'. Batch it at fixed times, hand it back to whoever it belongs to, or say it'll have to wait.
Not urgent, not important
Newsletters, a channel you don't need to do anything with, a report nobody reads. Leave it, or switch it off.
Pitfalls
A block anyone can move
You put a block in your calendar, and the first person to book a meeting lands right on top of it. Treat the block like an appointment with a client: you only move it for something that's really urgent and important, and then you put it somewhere else straight away.
Going quiet without saying so
If you switch off the chat without telling anyone, colleagues think you're ignoring them. Say when you'll check, and how they can reach you if something really can't wait. Then they can count on it.
Watch and read
The man behind the idea on where it came from, and why focused work is both rare and valuable.
Watch on YouTubeCovey with a bucket and some rocks: put the small stuff in first and the important things won't fit. This is where the rock gets its name (the lesson A rock you actually hit).
Watch on YouTubeThe four boxes of urgent and important, with what you do in each one.
Watch on YouTubeTo go further
Ten years after the book, Newport goes back over his rules: what still holds now that chat and AI fill the day. For anyone who wants more.
Watch on YouTubeRead
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Cal Newport · 2016 · ISBN 9781455586691
The first part explains why focused work matters, the second gives four rules for doing it. Around 300 pages. Published in Dutch as Diep werk (2019, ISBN 9789047012436).
View the bookFirst Things First
Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill en Rebecca R. Merrill · 1994 · ISBN 9780684802039
The book where Covey works out the matrix of urgent and important, with how to plan a week around what matters. For anyone who wants to learn to fill the box important but not urgent.
View the bookApply it
- 1
Look back over a week in your calendar
Mark each block with a letter: D for deep work, S for shallow work or a meeting. Count how many hours of deep work were left. For most people it's less than they think.
- 2
Set your blocks before the week starts
Two or three blocks of deep work a week to begin with, each an hour and a half to two hours, ideally at the time of day when you're sharpest. Write down what you'll work on: not 'focus time' but 'pricing for the quote'. You pick what goes in those blocks from your weekly board.
Planning in weeks - 3
Choose your fixed times for email and chat
For example at nine, half past twelve and four. In between, notifications are off. Tell your team when you'll check, and that they should ring you if something really can't wait.
- 4
With every request, ask: whose is this, and how urgent is it really?
If it's someone else's, hand it back with a suggestion. If it can wait until tomorrow, say so. If it's yours and it's urgent, pick it up and put the block you lose somewhere else.
Who's got the monkey?
Examples
Ready to use: a weekly schedule with blocks
Monday 08:30 to 09:00 plan the week, today's top 3 09:00 to 09:15 email and chat 09:15 to 11:15 deep work: [on what] 11:15 to 12:30 meetings, calls 12:30 to 12:45 email and chat 13:30 to 16:00 meetings, shallow work 16:00 to 16:30 email and chat, get tomorrow ready Tuesday and Thursday 09:15 to 11:15 deep work: [on what] The rest as on Monday. Wednesday No block: room for meetings, clients and whatever came up. Friday 09:15 to 11:00 deep work: [on what] 15:30 to 16:00 wrap up the week Rules: in a block, notifications are off. You only move a block for something urgent and important, and then you put it somewhere else straight away.
What you tell your team
'I check email and chat at nine, half past twelve and four. In between I'm working on my priority. If something's on fire, ring me.' Put it in your status or under your name in the chat, so nobody has to remember it.
A colleague asks if you could just have a quick look
Wrong: you say 'sure' in the middle of your block, and an hour later you're deep in their problem. Right: 'I'm in my block until eleven. Can it wait until then? If not, what exactly do you need from me?' Often it can wait. If it can't, you know why you're giving up your block.
A planner at a wholesaler
Drivers and salespeople ring him all day, and he does next week's planning at home in the evening. He agrees with his manager that a colleague takes the phone between nine and eleven, and that he rings everyone back at eleven. Now the schedule is ready by twelve on Thursday.
Do this in your own business
Everything up to here is free. What you fill in for your own business, you keep in Boldcaster.
- You look back on a situation from your own work. Only you can read what you write.
- You set a date with yourself, and on that day the app asks how it went.
- You assign the lesson to your team and see who has done it.
- The quiz counts towards your progress, and you see which lesson comes next.
Four weeks free. You'll land straight in this lesson.
Quiz
6 situations. You need 5 of 6 right. You can try again at any time.
1.You're working on a quote and keep the chat open so you can answer quickly. You glance at it every ten minutes. What does the model say?
2.For two months you've meant to write the instructions for new colleagues. Nobody's asking for them, and every week half a day goes on explaining. Which box does it belong in, and what do you do?
3.A colleague books a meeting in the middle of your deep work block. You're not really needed, you'd only be listening in. What do you do?
4.During your block a client rings: their system is down, and you're the only one who can fix it. What fits this lesson?
5.Every day a salesperson asks you to pull a price from the system. He has access himself, but finds it easier if you do it. What do you do?
6.From now on you switch off the chat between nine and eleven. After a week your manager asks why you didn't reply. What should you have done differently?
Nothing is saved here. In the app, the quiz counts towards your progress.
Read next
- Planning in weeks · You start every week with a week focus and a board holding only what can get done, and on Friday you close it with a decision on every card that's still open.
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