Embracing Time-Blocks to Maximize Productivity

Rakesh (dummy name) wakes up with the ringing of alarm in his mobile in morning. As he is about to start breakfast the mobile is still in his hands, so he thinks its better to clear few pending mails from yesterday quickly. (gives an intrinsic feeling of being super hard-working too).

Then he starts his routine with regular line-up of meetings, calls and other stuff. He ensures that he clears all his mails as and when they come with remarkable response time and jumps from meeting to meeting as scheduled, trying to squeeze out time between meetings to remind a team-mate to submit pending report, gather data for an important presentation and quickly finish a last-minute assignment by his boss.

At the end of the day, he is feeling quite tired and surprisingly despite a very busy day, there is a feeling of something missing from inside.

Many (maybe most) of us spend our working day in this ‘auto-pilot’ mode and while we do have our To-Dos list for the day, too many things keep on coming and overwhelming us.

Cal Newport (in Deep Work) has emphasized on the importance of having Time-Blocks for Deep and Shallow Work in order to maximize productivity.

Deep Work, in simple terms, are complex tasks which require deep application of skills and distraction free environment. It is generally a good idea to start a day with Deep Work Block of 60-90 mins, as productivity is highest during this time. And starting with mails is generally the worst start to a day, as one is overwhelming his mind with too many Shallows (non-cognitive and logistical style activities).

Research has also proven that getting into a state of flow while performing deep work has an extremely high correlation with job satisfaction and mental well-being.

An individual can typically perform deep work in stretches of 60-90 mins in one go, with 2-3 such stretches in a day; its generally a good idea switch off email and instant message notifications during this time. The latter can be taken up in Shallow work stretch, immediately following deep work.

And while it may sound appealing to answer mails along with a task demanding our cognitive attention, research has shown that when we multitask, 40% of our attention (Attention Residue) is left on the previous task, thereby severely undermining the ability to perform to the best of the ability on either task.

And in the long run, this mode of working severely (and sometimes permanently) impacts one’s ability to focus intensely. In the words of a leading researcher, “A person who checks his mails frequently, in the long run tends to develop IQ level equivalent to a person smoking Marijuana”.

Chris Bailey in HyperFocus, speaks about the Rule of 3 which implies that at the beginning of Day deciding which 3 activities one is going to do. This rule can be intensely helpful in deciding the most critical tasks to focus for the day and to reevaluate the priorities in case something urgent comes up during the day, as it so often does.

Hence, to maximize productivity for a knowledge worker, its absolutely critical to embrace time-blocks of Deep and Shallow Work and in case something burning does come up, to evaluate the priorities and do adjust the schedule accordingly.

In Cal’s words “Average email response time may suffer a bit, but it shall be more than compensated by the ability to produce truly high-quality work”.