GET YOUR THINKING TIME BACK

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Nathan Ray
5 years ago
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1 how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives GET YOUR THINKING TIME BACK Take Control: Make and Keep The Time You Need To Plan, Build and Grow JOE DUNN

2 Contents Being Overwhelmed: A Story 3 The Model 4 Using the Model 6 Using Your Thinking Time 8 Debugging: I Did All That - It s Still Not Working 9 Yes, It s a Marathon, Not a Sprint 11 About 12 /!2

3 Being Overwhelmed: A Story When I was VP Engineering at a public company I d joined years before as employee 41, I used to time my routes between meetings so I could fit in a bathroom stop. I actually planned the quickest route so there would be maybe a minute or two for a pit stop. It took me a while to realize this. It was probably on a weekend, spending another Sunday doing reviews, or Board Meeting preparation, or reading product proposals, when it dawned on me that I was not in charge of my time and attention. Which, of course, as an executive manger, is about all I had to bring to the job. The realization of the bathroom problem just brought the whole thing into a (rather unflattering, slightly bizarre) perspective. These days I coach VPs of Engineering, startup CEOs and others in the tech industry, and the most frequent issue that shows up is overwhelm. Usually I hear, yes, I know I need to think about that (strategy, org planning), but there just isn t the time. And then I get shown a calendar: day after day of colored blocks from 8am to 6pm or later. It s part of your job now think strategically, to grow your people, to develop culture So I learned some things while I was still an exec, and some more things as I worked with my clients. You have to find the thinking time. It s part of your job now think strategically, to grow your people, to develop culture, to read about other leaders, and to take care of yourself. And you can. The solutions are at two levels: being disciplined and practical in using a simple model to structure your time, and paying attention to the deeper environmental and personal reasons you stay in overwhelm. Discipline around your schedule and paying attention to how you engage in overwhelm both take work, and repeated practice as you transition to really owning your time and attention - by far your most important resources. Ready? /!3

4 The Model The model is simple, and well-known. Attributed originally to Dwight Eisenhower (yes, that guy), and popularized in Steven Covey s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, it proposes two axes - importance, and urgency. /!4

5 Conceptually easy. Divide your tasks into important/urgent, important/not urgent etc etc, and then do the ones that are important/urgent now, the ones that are important/not urgent later, and all is well. Something like this: But! Everything feels important/urgent in a growing tech company. So how do we use this model to really get a grip? /!5

6 Using The Model The traditional methods of using this model don t work in a fast-moving environment. Ideally, we would look at our todo list at the start of the week, put each item in the appropriate part of the model, and then check things off as the week progressed. I ve never had a job where that was possible, and if you re reading this, it s likely you haven t either. We have to use the model dynamically, as an ongoing approach to our time and attention So we have to use the model dynamically, as an ongoing approach to structuring everything that grabs our time and attention, not a one-off set of decisions. Think of the model as a lens. Look at your time/attention decisions through the lens of the model, using it to make conscious choices about where to spend your most precious resource. Use the lens to view everything: meetings, s, Slack, interruptions, group chats - everything that takes your time and attention. Own Your Calendar The biggest time sink I see with my clients is unnecessary meetings. That is, unnecessary to you. If your calendar is open, and anybody can grab a slot, then establish some rules: you will go if your attendance is genuinely necessary, otherwise you will delegate somebody from your team to attend, or politely refuse the invite. (And: why is your calendar open?). Practice limiting your attendance: perhaps you can make your contribution in ten minutes and then leave. It doesn t have to be rude, just efficient. Review your standing meetings. Do you really have to go to each of them every week? Can you go once a month? Can somebody from your team take the responsibility? You can make conscious choices here - your calendar is there for you, not you for it. /!6

7 Be Ruthless Be ruthless about what stays in important/urgent: move everything you can out to another quadrant. Your bias, and the bias of the company around you, will be to make everything important/urgent. Don t fall for it. Tasks in the red quadrant need a reason to be there. If there s not a great reason for them to be there, throw them out. Schedule the Important/Not Urgent Time (Thinking Time) If you don t schedule important/not urgent time ahead in your calendar, you won t get it. So schedule time for next week, and every week after that. You need at least two hours, every week (I know, seems crazy right now!). Some people need more, to let their minds wander, a few will need less. Defend Your Important/Not Urgent Time (Thinking Time) Your Important/Not Urgent Time is your thinking time - it s inviolate (unless there s a genuine emergency, and if there s a genuine emergency every week, somebody maybe you is doing something wrong). Don t allow meetings to be scheduled over it, don t allow it to be cancelled. Delegation is a Super-Power Delegation does two things: allows members of your team to grow, and saves you time. It s a super-power, and often a hard one to learn. Look for members of your team who are ready to grow. Invite them to attend a standing meeting you have been going to for months. Forward them s they can reply to instead of you. People grow when you stretch them. Try it. Spot Productivity Performance (Noodling) Noodling in the not important/not urgent zone can relax you, help take the stress off. But so can taking a walk, and taking a walk is good for you, noodling isn t. So watch for just doing some or catching up on twitter or reading a few blogs. If you are in full attention to those things, maybe they are productive. If you re browsing, you re performing work, not doing work. Might be better not to work at all and take the weight off for a bit. /!7

8 Using Your Thinking Time So you got your two hours, and you frittered them away doing . Bummer. In settling down to do concentrated work, our brain is not on our side This is not unusual. The issue here is that our brains love novelty, and every unopened , every Slack conversation, every chat with a remote coworker promises a little hit of novelty. So in settling down to do concentrated work, our brain is not on our side. It s restless, wanting another tiny hit of something new. That s why the little red dot next to messaging and apps is so alluring. And why there s always another level in any game you care to get into. We have to deliberately take steps to signal to our brain that we are working in a different mode, of longer, concentrated work, and that we won t be giving it a hit of newness for a while. Here s are some approaches: Find a Different Environment Get away from your desk to a different conference room, part of the building, somewhere you don t normally go. Ideally go outside find a coffee shop or a park. This signals to your brain that things are going to be different. Don t Take Your Phone We re all weak, and that thing is like crack. It, and the apps that sit on it, are designed to be like crack. Leave it behind. (If you re constantly in a situation where you can t be away from your phone for at least an hour or two a week, then something needs to change). /!8

9 Limit, Or Don t Use, Your Laptop You can think just as well with pen and paper, and they don t interrupt us every minute or two. Leave your laptop behind. If you need to use it, download Self Control, which lets you switch off a bunch of sites, whilst leaving the rest of the net open for research (there are many other apps I like, and use, Self Control). Embrace the Discomfort, and Start Your brain is going to spend the first few minutes desperately wanting some stimulation a twitter message, a new , anything. Don t feed it. Be uncomfortable and start working. Once you re into your work, keep going for at least twenty minutes after that, things will start to flow. And if not, do it again next week. I Did All That It s Still Not Working OK, I hear you. I said at the beginning, transitioning to owning your time and attention takes a while. Our cultures don t appreciate it, and don t encourage it, and they do encourage and celebrate people who can handle being continuously swamped. Is It a Temporary Push? Maybe it s just that way, temporarily: there will be times when you are genuinely overwhelmed. Massive growth, a huge product push, a terrible system failure these things happen. But they should be identifiable, and temporary. If you know what s causing the overwhelm, and you can see an end to it, OK, well, maybe you just have to deal. If you can t see it, and the end is many months or years away, take some action. Consider Company Culture Maybe it s your company culture: does your company culture celebrate overwhelm, overnighters, eighty hour weeks? If so, how do you feel about that? Maybe you fit! Maybe /!9

10 that s OK. Maybe not, and you d like to start building a little bubble of sanity around yourself. You have a conscious choice here. Take it. Check How Much You Are Delegating Maybe you re not delegating: this comes up frequently I have to do all this because my team is not ready/too junior. Probably you re wrong, and holding on to things out of fear of failure, the difficulty of clearly describing the tasks something. Delegation is great: you get more time, your team gets more responsibility and growth. Find something you are afraid to delegate and do it, today. People are resilient, and grow when you least expect it. Try it. What About You? Maybe it s you: our business (loosely, the tech world), attracts people who get a kick out of highly detailed, massively complex challenge. I certainly do, and so did the people I hired. We tend to love the adrenaline of navigating a river of problems, endlessly dodging boulders and shooting rapids. And that can make us successful, and rewarded, and the stakes can be high (money, status, career). So being able to live and work effectively in overwhelm is a super-power, but like many super-powers, it has a downside, and the downside is that it doesn t work forever. Physically and emotionally, most of us are not set up to go that hard year in and year out. So take a look at yourself. What do you enjoy about the overwhelm? How does it serve you (ego? a rush? status?). What can you let go of, just a little bit? Two hours a week of thinking time? Sunday afternoons? It may take a while to dig into this, but start give it a shot. /!1 0

11 Yes, It s a Marathon, Not a Sprint If it all works out (acquisition! IPO!), perhaps you can retire at thirty, or thirty-five,or forty. Then this won t be an issue (although almost without exception the folks I know who did make it remain intense, focussed and, yes, overwhelmed). But probably one way or another you ll be working for a while. Beware of the illusion that the overwhelm is temporary. It will only be temporary if you take care of it. Managing your time and attention will remain a critical skill, allowing you to get to the deeper work of futures, direction and growing your people. And, most crucially, taking care of yourself and the people closest to you. So you can build a long, satisfying and productive career, and remain healthy and sane throughout. I hope this is useful to you. Let me know how it goes. Overwhelm will only be temporary if you take care of it /!1 1

12 About Tech People Leadership is an ongoing project to bring the best Tech Leadership experience and insight from Silicon Valley to you. Our courses, webinars and conversations will show you what works, and what doesn t, in building high-growth, high-stakes organizations. Sign up for our newsletter and updates here. I m Joe Dunn. I m a leader, mentor and coach with over twenty years of experience in fastmoving software startups. Three became successful public companies, and fourth sold for $250M+ I coach leaders(ceos, CTOs, Engineers, Sales, Marketing) in rapidly-growing tech companies in San Francisco, from seed-size to unicorns. /!1 2

I have a question for you.

I have a question for you. We are all living in an increasingly busy world. Unfortunately, time is a finite resource. There are only 24 hours in each day and there are only so many things that you can get done in those 24 hours.