We can improve how we communicate. We can't control how someone else responds.
Michael Santarcangelo
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Delivering value in a world built to overlook it. Trusted advisor, close counsel. Founder of ValueSmith™. 30 years in the trenches.
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Not getting the response we expected can show us what we missed.
Becoming a better communicator makes us a better audience.
Learning to craft useful messages teaches us to read the situation.
What fits in your week?
Knowledge work needs time to work.
So how do we allocate the limited time and energy we have?
I use a model called 20/60/20 with my clients to help us decide where our time and energy go. Here's what it looks like in a forty-hour week.
Protect 20% for high-value project work, about 8 hours. High-value work is where we can produce an oversized benefit versus the cost, in the focused time we have. It's a blend of doing good work and finishing it.
I recommend scheduling this as three three-hour blocks, usually on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And yes, that's 9 hours on the calendar for the math nerds, but in practice, that generally means 6–8 hours of focus each week.
For me, that's after the first cup of coffee kicks in, but before the residue of the day builds. That window tends to work for others I work with, too. The point is to give the work that needs our best thinking the time when we can bring it.
60%, roughly 24 hours, goes to operating. Some call it RTB (run the business) or KTLO (keep the lights on). Call it whatever you like. It's where the bulk of our work gets done. Broken up, it's about 4–5 hours a day to handle meetings, status reports, upgrades, and the more routine work and support people count on us for.
The key here is energy. While these actions are important (and sometimes urgent), they don't generally demand our best energy. I tend to slot these in for later in the morning and afternoons.
The remaining 20% is slack time. No, not for Slack, Teams, or other chats. It's time we deliberately keep open to handle what comes up. This works out to about 1–2 hours each day. It includes time to get from one meeting to the next, give our brains time to reset, and handle the things we didn't anticipate.
While we can't always plan for the chaos itself, we can protect time to deal with it.
I like printing out a calendar and sketching the boxes by hand, each with a different color. Helps me see what the week looks like, and what fits where. More importantly, it helps me see what doesn't fit.
Which forces important questions about where we allocate our time and attention. Instead of trying to take on all the projects, we start to realize three focused sessions a week let us advance 1–2, no more than three. Or we see we have more operational demands than time, creating a new problem to solve.
Over time, we start to see our work differently. When faced with new demands, we start to ask where it fits, or what we need to say no to.
Knowledge work needs time to work.
So how do we allocate the limited time and energy we have?
I use a model called 20/60/20 with my clients to help us decide where our time and energy go. Here's what it looks like in a forty-hour week.
Protect 20% for high-value project work, about 8 hours. High-value work is where we can produce an oversized benefit versus the cost, in the focused time we have. It's a blend of doing good work and finishing it.
I recommend scheduling this as three three-hour blocks, usually on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And yes, that's 9 hours on the calendar for the math nerds, but in practice, that generally means 6–8 hours of focus each week.
For me, that's after the first cup of coffee kicks in, but before the residue of the day builds. That window tends to work for others I work with, too. The point is to give the work that needs our best thinking the time when we can bring it.
60%, roughly 24 hours, goes to operating. Some call it RTB (run the business) or KTLO (keep the lights on). Call it whatever you like. It's where the bulk of our work gets done. Broken up, it's about 4–5 hours a day to handle meetings, status reports, upgrades, and the more routine work and support people count on us for.
The key here is energy. While these actions are important (and sometimes urgent), they don't generally demand our best energy. I tend to slot these in for later in the morning and afternoons.
The remaining 20% is slack time. No, not for Slack, Teams, or other chats. It's time we deliberately keep open to handle what comes up. This works out to about 1–2 hours each day. It includes time to get from one meeting to the next, give our brains time to reset, and handle the things we didn't anticipate.
While we can't always plan for the chaos itself, we can protect time to deal with it.
I like printing out a calendar and sketching the boxes by hand, each with a different color. Helps me see what the week looks like, and what fits where. More importantly, it helps me see what doesn't fit.
Which forces important questions about where we allocate our time and attention. Instead of trying to take on all the projects, we start to realize three focused sessions a week let us advance 1–2, no more than three. Or we see we have more operational demands than time, creating a new problem to solve.
Over time, we start to see our work differently. When faced with new demands, we start to ask where it fits, or what we need to say no to.
