30-06-2025
Find More Time In The Day
Getting more time in the day doesn't require magic - just some intentionality.
If a genie suddenly popped out of one of your reusable water bottles (not too many oil lamps laying around these days), what would you wish for? Assuming your first two wishes cover health and wealth, I'm guessing your third wish might be for more time to enjoy both.
Time is the resource we can't manufacture more of. It's finite. That means we have to get creative in how we use it. If you don't happen to have a genie, let me suggest some time magic you can do all on your own.
What if your calendar was a productivity tool rather than a problem statement? Seventy-eight percent of knowledge workers say that they're expected to attend so many meetings that it's hard to get their work done. We adapt by trying to squeeze work in around the edges rather than take control of our time. If meetings are overloading your calendar, here's where to look to reclaim some lost time.
Start with recurring meetings. Recurring meetings tend to start strong and then lose utility over time. Take a close look at your recurring meetings to see if they can be delegated to another team member, if their cadence / length can be adjusted, or if they're no longer necessary. For the recurring meetings that remain, ask for a purpose-based agenda for each instance, and decline if you're not needed that week.
Next, take a look at your 1:1s. One-on-one time is important – staying in close touch is critical for keeping projects on track and maintaining connection / psychological safety. But you may be able to optimize. Could the frequency be reduced? Could 45-minute meetings be replaced by more frequent 15-minute check-ins?
Finally, work with your team to cluster your remaining meetings. Organizing your meetings into blocks creates larger chunks of free time – much better for digging into focused work than the 15-minute scraps we've settled for.
A typical day in the office tends to be a lot like working in a pinball machine: you shoot out of your morning routine and into your desk, full of momentum and promise. And then you hit your first obstacle – an unclear email request. As you're sorting that, BANG, you hit another obstacle – you can't find the report you need to respond to the email. On your way to track down the team member who knows where it is, WHAP – you get intercepted by another team member with a more urgent issue. And so it goes until the end of the day, when you roll back down the chute and into your car, feeling banged up and bewildered.
Not all collaborative fire drills can be avoided, but setting some working norms, for yourself and your team, can help head them off. Here's a few we recommend:
Make your own magic by becoming an intentional, active manager of your own time. You'll fit more work into your actual workday and leave more left over for other things that count.
