What do you do when you’ve taken the step to carve time out of your day for deep, proactive work but find that you aren’t productive during those set hours? This is a problem that I encounter a lot from people heading back into the office and a more regular work routine. Their minds wander during times when they aren’t putting out metaphorical fires and they come out the other side of their designated “productivity time” having done nothing productive.
But, there is a way to make the most of your time and get the truly productive work done that you need to.
One simple trick
There is one simple but effective trick for making the most of the time you’ve set aside for what I call Legato work during the workday: set a measurable goal to complete during that time. The key to using this time well is to decide specifically what you're going to produce at the end of that block before you show up for it. It's what I call knowing before you go.
Ask yourself what do I wanna produce at the end of that hour or two? It could be a rough first draft of a blog, reviewing last year's strategic plan highlighting everything that we have achieved already to present to the board, preparing for the next staff meeting, or any singular, measurable task that is on your plate at the moment.
Why it works
The gravitational pull of email and the gravitational pull of interruptions is so strong that it’s almost impossible to fight against, especially as we try to deprogram ourselves from a reactive state of mind. We are achievements and accomplishment-oriented professionals, and in the absence of a concrete alternative, we're gonna take interruption. Giving yourself a concrete alternative that you are working toward is the only way to fight that pull. If you go into your proactive time without a plan, you’ll find yourself pulled back into reactive uses of that time because there’s nothing else to hold your attention.
Having a concrete alternative gives you a choice. Am I going to answer that email that can wait or am I going to analyze this strategic plan? Am I going to answer a non-essential question from a staff member that someone else can answer or am I going to write that blog that’s due? When we have the choice, we’re going to choose the deep-thinking, proactive deliverable.
Taking the next step
My suggestion is that you set aside your next block of deep-thinking time to come up with a list of deliverables that you have wanted to work on but never had the time. This is your aspirational to-do list made up of all the things you want to accomplish if you “only had the time.” Having this list easily accessible will make it much easier to allocate your time to a specific task.