I tried a new focus technique for the first time.

Online co-working

What is this concept? It’s just what it sounds like. I gathered with a few professionals on a Zoom call. For the first 10 minutes, we caught up on life and each shared an intention for our working time. Then, we left the camera on and got to work on our individual tasks for 20 minutes.

I was shocked by how much I got done in such a short amount of time. I tend to get pretty squirrely in the evenings as I pop between eating, cleaning, walking, talking, and working on my own projects. But in those 20 focused minutes, I was tethered by peer pressure to my screen and poof – Real progress!

That’s when I realized the value of 20 minutes. Yet why do we rarely take advantage of these short windows of availability?

Why do we assume we need a full 30 or 60 minutes to devote to a task? There’s nothing magical about these durations besides how they stack nicely in a calendar/planner. I know I often avoided diving into computer work since I didn’t expect I couldn’t finish. Instead, I would blow those 20 minutes on something less important (social media, news, chatting, etc.)

So the mantra I’m carrying into September is simple – 20 is plenty.

Let’s take it to work

The key to making the most of 20 minutes is breaking down big to-dos into something more bite-sized and putting them on your 20-minute list.

• Instead of waiting for an hour-long Make PowerPoint Deck time block, I can do these tasks in 20 minutes 
  • Whiteboard the talking points and visuals
  • Build rough draft of deck
  • Optimize deck flow
  • Incorprate feedback
  • Finalize graphics of deck
• Instead of Plan work trip to LA – I break it down 
  • Book flight
  • Book hotel
  • Arrange childcare for trip
  • Put trip with logistics plan on family calendar

Most of us do this breakdown in our heads anyway.

The key is being specific when writing down the task on your Kanban board, to-do list, or wherever you keep your 20-minute list. This way you don’t waste any time thinking of what to do next, you just do whatever is on your 20-minute list.

Summer has finally arrived on the west coast, and I don’t mean sunny weather…School is out! 

Early in my career, I would look at parents with just a bit of envy, wishing I had an excuse to take time off, travel, and embrace the long summer days after their kids’ academic obligations were over. Back then, I spent far too many summers with my nose to the grindstone, with scarcely more than a long weekend unplugged during this season. The thing is, I didn’t need an excuse! And you don’t either.

It took me having kids to realize that I had the power to create a summer worthy of memories without pausing career growth or letting my colleagues down. All it took was a plan – and it starts with the Summer Look-ahead.

I take this time of year to do a 3-month look ahead that goes beyond my weekly Prep-for-Next-Week session. This is a longer-range dive into your calendar, but can still be knocked out in 30 minutes.

How do you do a Summer Look-ahead?

Here are the 6 steps I take each year:

1. Identify Work obligations – Do I have any major work events or work trips I need to get on the personal calendar? If yes, I make time blocks to book all the travel and schedule prep-time for any event deliverables. If it’s a go-live or launch, I block some time leading up to it, and time after for the unknown unknowns.
2. Plan Vacation/PTO – Do I have at least one fun vacation and/or trip planned? I’m talking a minimum of 3 PTO days coupled with a weekend for a legitimate break from work.
3. Block re-entry – After this glorious time off, I make sure to block out the first morning I’m back at work so I can get up to speed with what I missed AND so no one schedules me into critical meetings I won’t have time to prep for.
4. Schedule my WFH days – I work in a flexible hybrid environment meaning my WFH days aren’t on a specific day of the week. But if I don’t book them on my calendar ahead of time, it’s highly unlikely they’ll happen as in-person events get sprinkled into the calendar. Do yourself, and your colleagues a favor, and indicate your intent to be remote or in-office!
5. Book a mid-year check-in – Have I scheduled a mid-year check-in with myself? My boss? And my mentor? Give yourself the gift of knowing where you stand with annual goals while you still have the second half of the year ahead of you!
6. Enjoy some summer Fridays – Unless you already work at a company that gives you a partial or full day off on Friday, now’s the time to book any PTO days you can spare for a few Fridays off this summer to bask in the joy of a long weekend.

Make a plan today to do your Summer Look-ahead this week and get ready for an amazing summer!

Whether you work at home or in an office, there’s one corporate trend I’d love to bring to a full stop – the maximization of time allocation – aka the meeting that fills every last minute of the blocked time. The problem is that this leaves ZERO time to transition to your next task, call, or meeting.

Transition time used to be a given back in the day when we were primarily physically gathered. Executives would excuse themselves to get to the next meeting, and peers would close laptops or notebooks in anticipation of the end of the gathering.

Then COVID…and our video call meetings expanded to fill the full allocated time as we no longer needed to run from meeting room to meeting room.

While the need to physically transition space went away, the need for transition did not.

Did you ever find yourself messaging someone asking to start the next meeting on your schedule a few minutes late? Of course! We need bio breaks, water refills, time to collect our thoughts and move our bodies.

I thought I could quietly shift the culture by creating 25-minute blocks on calendars instead of 30, or planning agendas that only contained 55 minutes worth of content. My silent effort to take back 5 minutes went largely unnoticed and made an ugly mess of my Outlook calendar that so desperately wanted everything to fit neatly within 30-minute increments.

I continued to drive meetings I led or have influence in to end before their scheduled time. It works about 90% of the time. It got me thinking, how could I get more meetings to end the discussion and allow five minutes of transition time?

Then I heard it the other day from a senior leader. “We need to wrap by 10:55” and lo and behold, the meeting began to wrap up at 10:50 and we were out of his office by 10:55. A very clear expectation was set, and executed upon allowing everyone a few minutes before their 11am commitment began.

While we have all informed meeting leaders of our need to leave early for various reasons, it doesn’t always end the meeting. If fact, the meeting will often continue, but without your voice in the room.

The key to unlocking transition time is for the meeting leader to declare the meeting end time at the beginning of the meeting and not some vague, “I think we’ll get through this quickly and give you some time back” 🤮

Let’s do it, together! I’m going to declare the end time in situations where I can control it. Getting 5 minutes won’t change my life, but it will give everyone gathered the transition time we all need so we can better engage in whatever comes next.

This weekend I had to chance to hang out with my 9-year-old daughter.  She’s into fast cars, football, and music – so we ventured out to a museum that’s a bit like a petting zoo for musical instruments. 

After trying out countless cool instruments, what really lit her up was sitting at a drum set for the first time. She could have played all day.  What I loved about watching her explore the kit was her ability to find the rhythm.  Even when she wandered off the beat, she’d pause and then jump back in again. 

It stood in stark contrast to when she learned to ride a bike a few years ago.  That was work;   constant adjustment, plenty of falls, and even a run-in with a bush or two.  It was a very different (and painful) process of learning. 

Balance vs. Rhythm at work 

I’m not a fan of the term work-life balance as it implies equilibrium is needed between whatever we do to earn a paycheck and everything else that makes up life.  It’s one of the only places in life we separate out one of the many things we do each day and compare it to everything else we do while living.  Imagine if we tried to achieve sleep-life balance, drive-life balance, or spouse-life balance.  It sounds weird because work is part of life.

I suppose when someone is so focused on work that they can’t find time for anything else, the idea of pursuing balance sounds good. We picture a place of calm serenity – like a practiced yoga pose in the midst of a busy day.  But balance isn’t static. If you’ve ever attempted tree pose, you know it requires small, constant adjustments to stay in this state of equilibrium along with a complete focus on the action.

And who actually wants to work that hard at achieving equilibrium with work WHILE trying to get work done?   No, thank you. 

Work-life balance may mean well as a term for companies that want you to know that they recognize that you have a life outside of their office.  High performers don’t want balance, we want flexibility in our days, our hours, our locations, our workloads that honor shifting seasons of life, and our desire to invest time in people and projects – not merely spend it.

That’s why I like the concept of rhythm.  It ebbs, it flows, it can speed up, or slow down and it still sounds good.  And when you mess up, it doesn’t send you careening into the neighbor’s rose bushes. You can take a breath and pick it up again. 

I’ll save practicing balance for paddling boarding. At work, I’m going for a healthy rhythm, that good groove that energizes me and lets me focus on outcomes since my work tools like meetings, schedules, and e-mails are dialed in.

Here are three tips for starting a new rhythm for work:

1. Identify something you want to do after work each day this week. It could be simple, like prep dinner, attend a workout class, or take your dog for a walk, and put it on your calendar. Now schedule your go-home time on your calendar so you don’t miss your after-work commitment.
2. End the passive e-mail check. Put four 15-30 min blocks on your calendar each day to process e-mail. During each check – do, delete, delegate, or defer. Then CLOSE your inbox until the next processing session. And if you still STILL have e-mail pop-ups on, kill them now!
3. Schedule yourself time to work on an upcoming presentation, report, worksheet, or document this week during your work hours. If your schedule is too full with meetings to find time to schedule this work, check out the Exit Overwhelm guide below and it will walk you through how to end the meeting marathon.

For well over 1,000 days, I have trekked from my kitchen down to my desk, set my cup of coffee on the coaster, and sat down to wake up my computer without incident.  Today, the coffee spilled.   

It spilled all over my workout calendar, all over the keyboard, all over the desk, and dribbled onto the floor.  Thankfully, it was just a healthy slosh instead of the full mug, but it had me wondering why. 

Why would a small task that I’ve executed flawlessly for years now become one I botched? 

After grabbing a towel, I tried to figure it out. I remember thinking about all I needed to do once I plopped down in my chair and that I needed to retrieve my planner from the closet after hiding it away during Christmas when my office transforms into a guest room. 

My brain was clearly ahead of my hand, and as I set down the cup, my focus shifted toward the closet resulting in not landing the coffee cup on the coaster but teetering it on the edge with a splash.  

In gymnastics, they talk about sticking the landing after the last move of a routine.  It’s about controlling all that momentum for a final display of athleticism as the gymnast brings their legs and feet to a full and complete stop prior to throwing up their hands in accomplishment.  Today, I didn’t stick the landing.  I unceremoniously set down my cup and kept right on moving toward my planner.  I didn’t pause. I was already on to the next task before the previous one was complete.

And the result was a literal mess.   

How often do we move on to the next thing in life before sticking the landing? 

Today’s spill was a small, albeit messy, reminder of how important it is to be in the moment.  To be purposeful in tasks, even in the things we’ve done 1000 times before.  Small actions like tucking in the kids, saying I love you to your special person, and yes, even setting down our filled-to-the-brim cup of caffeine.

In this new year, I hope you can stick more landings than in 2022.

The pace of life doesn’t need to be a mad dash to the end of the day.

• You can sprint through writing an e-mail, but take a moment to read it before sending.
• You can facilitate an efficient meeting, and pause the debate to hear from the participant who was interrupted to finish their thought.
• We can slow down enough to be purposeful in our daily tasks, to be in the moment, and to avoid the spills of life that come where we jump to the next thing too quickly. 

To stick the landing on the moments that matter, we need to practice in the moments when no one is watching.