Figure out how much time is actually available

Only a few hours of each workday will be available for anything beyond the routine

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to figure out how much time you actually
have available for work beyond your routine tasks. This will

(00:25):
help you get a more realistic sense of what can
fit into your days and weeks. Today's tip, like another
this week, comes from my interview with productivity expert Charlie Gilkey.
When I interviewed Charlie for this podcast a few months ago,
he recommended that people put just a few items on

(00:47):
their to do lists each day. Now you have heard
me say that too, but I liked his explanation, which
I think will be helpful for people trying to figure
out why this is whyse Gilkey noted that many people
spend around sixty five percent of their work days on
routine tasks. That means only thirty five percent of the

(01:12):
day is available for the sorts of tasks that aren't routine,
which are the kinds of tasks that tend to make
it onto to do lists. This math is pretty straightforward.
If you work an eight hour day with a thirty
minute lunch, then theoretically you have seven and a half
hours to allocate to things. But if about five hours

(01:36):
of your seven and a half hours will be spent
on routine matters, this means that on any given day
you have only two and a half hours for extra tasks.
So if you create a to do list that assumes
seven and a half hours of availability, well it will
take you three days to get through one day's list.

(02:00):
No wonder people feel behind. Not only do people tend
to discount the amount of time they spend on routine tasks,
I would add that people tend to overestimate the total
number of hours they spend at work. You may think
you have a fifty hour work week to play around with,
but if you are in fact working more like thirty

(02:23):
eight hours routinely, and that is a pretty accurate haircut
for my research into people's schedules, then there is another
reason that there is just less space available for extra
stuff than you think. So with this in mind, I
think it's important to do a few things first. Figure

(02:43):
out how much time it takes you to accomplish the
routine tasks of your workday. These could be things like email,
interacting with colleagues, responding to standard customer requests, planning, your
next day keeping records are doing billing updating people at
standard frequencies. You could put repeating meetings in here too.

(03:07):
If you have five to six hours of these tasks
each day, then you really do not have a lot
of time for anything new you might put on your list.
When you know this, you can then choose to be strategic.
Agreeing to take on a new project that will take
six hours is fine if you think you can do

(03:29):
it in a day. When you understand that this is
probably going to consume all your discretionary time for at
least three days and maybe more, well, you probably want
to think about how worthwhile it is, or you need
to rework the timelines of other projects to account for it.

(03:50):
When you know how much time is required for routine
tasks and how much time is available for other things,
you will be better able to plan your days and weeks.
You will make more reasonable to do lists, and you
will be more likely to actually make it through them.
That can be a source of incredible satisfaction in the meantime.

(04:15):
This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to before breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback. You can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast

(04:44):
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.