Power Session #4: Time Management
What we continue to get wrong about organizing the minutes of our day.
This is your weekly power session—a quick and tactical coaching session inspired by real client conversations that you can access whenever, wherever you need it.
The Situation
It’s Wednesday. You wake up at 5am to get a head start and catch up on the things you didn’t get to over the past two days. It already feels like a strong start. You scan your email to make sure nothing’s on fire and check your calendar to mentally prepared for how you’ll tackle the day; you’ll have a few zoom meetings in the morning, a 1.5 hour break before a longer meeting at in the afternoon. By 2:00pm you’ll be done with meetings and can use the block to do some heads down work.
You spend the next couple hours of your morning doing your usual routine to feel ready to jump into work. When you sit down at your desk, you get organized. You start writing down your to-do list and carry a few things over from yesterday’s list. You notice that you’re now double booked around lunch so you move a couple things around that eat into your break to make it all work. Then jump into your first meeting of the day.
The meet runs 2 min over. No big deal. You take another 2 mins for a bio break and a quick glass of water, then sit down for the next one. The meeting doesn’t really get rolling until you’re 10 mins in, so it runs into your next one starting a domino effect. At this point, that 1.5 hour break you had is turning out to only be 45mins so you check your email, answer the urgent ones, grab a granola bar to hold you over and tell yourself you’ll eat a proper lunch after and get to the rest of the emails after your last meeting.
At 2pm, you end your last meeting of the day— on time too. You grab a quick sandwich and bring it back to eat it at your desk while you catch up on emails, slacks, and text messages.
Now it’s 4:00pm. You’re lost for what to work on next so you grab another coffee, check your list and tackle the quick ones. The hours fly by, it’s 6:30pm and you need to head out. You’ll catch up on the rest after dinner.
By 9pm, you’re exhausted and your brain is tapped. Where did the day go? You don’t have any energy left and you’re frustrated that you did a lot but lost another day without getting to that deep-thinking work you needed. You shut down your laptop and tell yourself that you’ll get up a little earlier tomorrow and try again.
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