Map out your focused time

Knowing what time is available can help you protect these hours

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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 map out your focused time. Even if
you are not going to get as much deep work

(00:23):
time as you would like, Knowing the contours of this
time can make it feel real and like something worth protecting.
So I was recently working on a project that I
knew would require long stretches of uninterrupted time. I wanted
to be able to really think and try things out

(00:43):
and come back to the project. I looked at the
week I was planning to do this and saw that
with some strategizing, I could push all my calls and
basic work to dos to Monday and Friday. That meant
Tuesday through Thursday would be mostly open if I didn't
offer those times to anyone. But it's not like I

(01:04):
got to go hide in the woods from Tuesday to Thursday.
It's summer. Some of my kids are around, and I
had some driving duties for the ones going to camp.
Even if I didn't have to do all the driving myself,
my days were going to get chopped up. I was
feeling a bit discouraged about this, but I decided to

(01:25):
map out exactly when my deep work time would be.
On Tuesday, I could likely get going at seven forty
five am and get all the way to three forty
five pm before I had to bring people places. On Wednesday,
I got nine fifteen to two forty five. On Thursday
I got eight fifteen to two forty five. Now that

(01:46):
wasn't the end of the workday. I could do things
after two forty five on these days, but I knew
this time would be more chopped up the time before
would be less. So of course I would have liked
to have had more time. But seven forty five to
three forty five is eight hours. It's not a short
amount of time. Seeing that in the five and a

(02:08):
half hours on Wednesday and six and a half hours
on Thursday made me feel better about the whole thing.
I felt less like there was no point in even trying.
If I had stop at two forty five to go
pick someone up at camp, I could feel like I
could work slowly and not feel rushed and still get
a lot done. I know not everyone writes for a living.

(02:32):
I know in many jobs there is no way you
could hold seven forty five a m to three forty
five p m. Open on any day, even with a
lot of strategy, but even if you only get a
few hours here and there, mapping out potential focus time
can help you decide what to do with it. You
will see that you can get say two hours on

(02:55):
Tuesday afternoon, so you decide to protect this time. You
ask what would be best suited to it. You don't
waste that time popping in and out of your inbox
that can happen in ten minute chunks in between meetings.
With so many things in life, knowledge is the first step.

(03:16):
I talked recently about how knowing the length of your
weekday evenings can help you see that this is real
time that can be used. Same with focused time at work.
We may never get as much as we want, but
that doesn't mean there is zero time. Being aware of
this time and having a map of where it will
happen in any given week means that it can be

(03:38):
used purposefully, and that increases the chances of getting good
things done in the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks for listening,
and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks

(04:03):
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 is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,

(04:25):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.