In one of the 2×2 newsletters from about a month ago, I quipped that I wished there was a way to send voice messages to folks hands free. Well, huge thanks to reader, Aidan, for pointing out that you can do this.
Just tell Siri: “Hey Siri, send a voice message to So-And-So.”
A few weeks ago, as our latest Focus Academy cohort was wrapping up, one of the members asked in the Slack group about how to spend time during the “down moments” of his work day when there was roughly 5 or 10 minutes with nothing to do.
Perhaps you’ve experienced just such an awkward window of time like this — such as in-between Zoom meetings or something. And so, allow me to suggest a few ways to spend those few minutes…
Boredom is Good (not bad)
Speaking of ways to spend that awkward downtime, one of the reasons to consider avoiding email and social media is that it can help you to reduce the amount of “novel stimuli” that you let in to your day-to-day life. (This was a main takeaway from my interview with Cal Newport)
When you have a strong baseline level of noise in all the little moments of your life, it makes it more difficult to focus on the task at hand when you’re doing deep work. Because, in short, you’re training your brain that boredom is bad.
Don’t train your brain to think boredom is bad! My 8-year-old is convinced that being bored is the Worst Thing Ever. But boredom is fine! If we “eject” every time we are bored then then it will, in turn, hinder us from being able to focus for extended periods of time.
Here’s the thing with focused people: They are not perfectly focused and organized all the time.
Nobody is like that.
But, what focused people do have are the systems, tools, the approaches to stay on track most of the time. And they know how to get back on track after a bad week or a cheat day.
After you take time to rest and recharge then you should actually be rested and recharged. Things that drain you of your energy are, therefore, not restful. True rest requires effort.
(Cheatsheet.)
There is an idea about habits and routines that you always want a non-zero day.
A non-zero day means a day where you do something — just so long as you don’t do nothing: Do at least one push-up, floss at least one tooth, write for at least 1 minute, etc.
The value of a non-zero day is that it keeps your momentum always moving forward. As anyone who knows about building habits, long-term consistency is everything.
A few days ago, the thought occurred to me about having more than just a non-zero day — but rather, a Non-Zero Life.
A Non-Zero Life means building simple-but-healthy habits you can do every day that impact every area of your life: Your career, your health, your relationships, your money, your inner-personal life…
Don’t let one of these areas slip away.
This is kinda what the idea behind Hal Elrod’s book, Miracle Morning, is about. A Miracle Morning is when you do a little bit of everything all before 8am.
I also love Sarah Peck’s idea of having a daily recipe that consists of the few things that, if done, make for a good day.
One reason I like the idea behind a Non-Zero Life is that it keeps you from coasting in any area.
Coasting means you are not taking action. And, thus, you are, by nature: (a) going downhill; (b) living off the momentum of your past effort; or (c) being pulled / pushed along by someone else.
In Ray Dalio’s book, Principles, he lists a 5-step process for how to make progress on your goals:
In short, you must constantly measure your current outcomes against your desired outcomes and then take action.
You need to know what it is that you want, you need to know what is true right now, and then you need to decide what you are going to do about it.
Side note. Ray’s process of ownership, diagnosis, and action is almost identical to something my wife and I have been working on with our three younger boys. We are trying to teach them to take ownership of their own problems, consider cause and effect for various outcomes and solutions, and then make a choice and act.
When I sit down to plan my week, I always write down the two or three most important projects I’m going to focus on.
Sometimes those projects are easy and obvious: fix this; build that; finish the thing.
But sometimes a project’s outcome is not obvious. Or, perhaps I don’t know if I will be able to finish it this week or not because I don’t yet know how much time is left to find the solution.
Instead of committing to a finish line that may not be possible yet, I simply commit to spending time working toward my desired outcome.
Not all goals need to have a specific outcome or milestone right now.
Sometimes my most important project for the week is to spend uninterrupted time working on a project so I can keep making progress.
If you feel that your productivity has been hitting a slump, I highly recommend planning out your week ahead of time.
Getting clear about what you’ll be doing during the upcoming week will help you stay focused on those things that are most important to you.
Here’s how to plan your week:
Now look over your “master list” and select the 3 most important things that you will actually focus on. This is how you will define success for your week.
Bonus: For each of those 3 most important things, write a a few words about WHY that task or project matters. What is your motivation and reasoning for wanting to get it done? (This will help you follow through later on in the week when you’re not feeling it.)
Lastly, look at your calendar for the week and schedule the various blocks of time that you will spend working on your 3 most important things. Or at least select the day(s) of the week that you will focus on each thing.
I do this process every week, usually on Sunday afternoon or Monday morning. It only takes me about 20 minutes, and it sets up my whole week for me.
I also plan each of my days in a similar fashion: listing out the day’s most important tasks and then scheduling it onto my calendar so that I have time blocks for my main tasks and activities.
Why take the time to do this? Two reasons:
It is liberating to your schedule and your emotions when you know WHAT you will be doing and WHEN you will be doing it.
(That’s why I built weekly and daily planning templates right into the design of our iPad Digital Planner. It makes the above process faster and foolproof.)
As has become my new norm over these past few weeks, I am sitting at my kitchen countertop spending the first hour of my day writing.
The coffee this morning is from Yes Plz.
My soundtrack is an early morning rain coming down outside. It’s heavy enough that it’s just a solid wall of sound on the roof, not a pitter patter. It’s creating a white noise of sorts to play in the background as I write.
Living life at home for 7+ weeks now my whole family’s routine has been disrupted.
We have zero obligations outside of work and school at home. Which means that we actually have more time than we normally used to in our previous life.
More time to be around and with my kids during the day.
More time to spend making and eating meals together.
More opportunity to focus on side projects and hobbies in the evenings.
We are not running to and fro with errands, pickups, dropoffs, hangouts, date nights, or anything like that. None of us are traveling anywhere. We are always at home.
And… as a result, I just have more small moments of down time during my day.
Basically, even though life is significantly different with its own set of new challenges — this new normal of life also contains more breathing room in some ways
I’ve noticed some good and bad tendencies arising for myself during these occasional moments of downtime that I have during my days and on the weekends.
Perhaps you also are noticing that, even though life is so different, you also have more breathing room at times.
Today I wanted to share how I am trying to be smarter and more intentional with that time. And what things I am doing which actually help my day to feel more calm and peaceful rather than frantic and gone before I know it.
Let’s dive in…
. . . . .
I believe there are two ways to spend the occasional moments of down time during the day.
Here are a few examples of each type.
Let’s start with the latter — these, to me, are the things which should be avoided when possible or at least kept to a maximum.
I can easily spend 20-percent or more of my waking hours just perusing and triaging my inboxes and news feeds. And when I do that, my time gets sucked up like a black hole and I’m not sure what good was actually accomplished and it went by so fast I didn’t even realize it.
Additionally, I always find that I have less energy (creative and emotional energy) after I’ve spent time scrolling social media or checking my email. I don’t feel better or recharged at all. I don’t feel creative. I feel more bored. Ugh.
On the other hand, there are many things which help time to slow down. Things that create a true “pause” or a restful moment in my day. Things that will leave me feeling rested and recharged.
Some examples:
Having our whole family living inside these same 4 walls all day ever day, there are definitely moments where we all feel the need to escape — we each need moments to ourselves during the day.
Sometimes I have 5 or 10 minutes before the boys come inside for dinner. Sometimes it’s an hour before everyone wakes up. Or it’s half an hour before I go to bed.
In those moments, I’m trying to just be careful that I’m not always defaulting to spending that time on Twitter or email or news.
But of course, there is balance.
I haven’t abandoned all the mindless and fun things altogether. I don’t force myself to always do something that is “productive” or restful.
I am definitely okay with Netflix, Nintendo, YouTube, and RSS. I love these things! But I don’t want them to be the ever-present defaults for all my moments of down time.
I think it was Greg McKeown who I first heard suggest the following:
And a maximum amount of time set aside for those things which are shallow and not essential.
Yeah. I like that approach.
Side note for further reading: this piece I wrote about how I use time blocks and planning to identify work focus and rest focus each day.
For anyone and everyone who is working from home, schooling their kids from home, and just generally feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment…
We are offering our flagship Time Management Course for half price.
This course has several lessons that are specifically relevant to work-from-home creative folks as well as full-time, stay-at-home parents.
Right now the entire course is available for anyone to sign up at no charge. It will remain 50% off at least through the middle of April.
Here is a blog post with more details as well as direct, public links to some of the video lessons.
Or, you can sign up here and use the coupon code WFH to get your 50% discount.
Good music is instrumental (ha!) for me to do focused work. Especially when I am working at home with kids in the house.
I almost always have a single, go-to album that I put on when it is time to work. This helps quite a bit as part of my routine for getting into the zone.
It can be difficult to transition from feeling at home to feeling at work. But, by having the same playlist or album that I put on when it is time to work, then that music becomes pavlovian — it tells my brain “now it’s time to work”.
And, over time, as I become used to the music, it turns into background noise that is so familiar it is not distracting at all.
Another reason I like having one specific album that is my go-to for background music is that it removes the decision of what do I want to listen to right now?
The less choices I can make before starting my work day the better. I prefer to save as much of that mental energy as I can for actually doing the work.
Anyway! Enough chit-chat…
Here are a few fantastic albums and playlists for helping drown out the background noise so you can do some work. Enjoy!
The Pure Focus playlist in Apple Music is excellent. It is updated regularly, and I often find new artists there.
The Monument Valley Soundtrack has long been my go-to. I have listened to this album well over 1,000 times. Possibly a few thousand times.
For additional good jams for deep, focused work. Check out this roundup over on The Focus Course blog.
And, of course, for when you are done with work and it’s time to wind down for the day, may I recommend the BEATsrumental playlist? I love to turn this one up while making dinner.
It was shortly after my first son was born that I began to get seriously interested in photography.
I had all these photos of him, but they had been taken on my iPhone 4. And honestly, they were not good photos.
So in the fall of 2012 I bought an Olympus M43 camera, and began learning more about photography.
In the 7.5 years since then, my excitement and love for photography has only grown. In fact, these days I often find myself thinking more about photo-related creativity rather than writing-related creativity.
Our home is full of original photos that I have taken. They are printed and framed in pretty much every room. But I am eager to learn more, to practice, and to make more photos.
I know that as I pursue this craft and this hobby over the coming years, I have so much more to learn and so many more opportunities to do my best work. I have no doubt that my best photographs have not yet been taken.
. . .
Whatever your craft — the good news is that the best is yet to come.
Whatever it is that you are pursuing, the best days of it are still to come.
But it’s not guaranteed.
You need habits and routines that will move you forward.
I like to call these “lifestyle practices”.
With good lifestyle practices then, as my friend James Clear says, time becomes your ally.
With Finances: For example, with a good financial practice of living within your means while saving and investing, then over time your financial position will improve. Time becomes your ally in wealth building.
With health: If you have a healthy diet and consistent workout routine, then over time your physical health will continue to improve. You will grow stronger, and stay healthy. Time becomes your ally in living a healthy life.
The same is true in your career, your relationships, your side-hobbies, and your inner-personal life.
Take again my example of photography. By having a regular routine of taking photos, editing them, sharing them, printing them… it means that over time I will grow as a photographer. Time becomes my ally in doing creative work.
And that is why your best work — be it design, songwriting, books, videos, business, et al. — it is still ahead of you. Because with good lifestyle practices, time is your ally.
About a week ago I moved all the icons off my iPhone’s first Home screen.
I just finished the book Make Time, by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. And one of their suggestions for reclaiming time in your day and improving your focus is to remove all the apps from your first Home screen.
In the same way that a small little meteor rock can strike the earth and create a huge crater — so too can small little interactions with our phones end up creating huge craters of time in our day.
In terms of absolute efficiency, a blank Home screen is not exactly the most efficient Home screen. By moving everything away from the first Home screen, it means my most-used apps — aside from those 3 in the Dock — are now one additional swipe away.
But I’m okay with that added bit of friction. It ensures that I’m being a bit more mindful and intentional when using my phone. I don’t know how many times I have unlocked my iPhone to do something, but then forgot what that thing was the moment I was at the Home screen. Over the past week, when I’m presented with that blank Home screen it helps me stay on track with what I’m on my phone for.
Secondly, I think the blank Home screen looks pretty great.
Lastly, I’ve found that the blank Home screen makes it easier to stop using my iPhone when I’m done with a task.
I always swipe up and up in order to exit out of the app I’m using and then exit back to my first Home screen. And so now when I do that, I end up back at the empty Home screen. And for some reason, that brings a sense of closure.
Side note: moving all my apps was a giant pain in the app. I had to move each folder one by one, from screen to screen. You can tap-and-hold to get into wiggly-app mode, and then once you’ve selected one app you can tap on other apps to select a whole bunch and move them all at once. It took me about 15 minutes — but it was actually a bit cathartic, and I deleted / rearranged some apps in the process.
A few days ago Mike Schmitz wrote our pick on The Sweet Setup for the best meditation app.
I have long been a proponent and practitioner of regular, quiet, alone time — it is something that has (mostly) been part of my normal day for more than 20 years. (Even as someone who is 100% on the extrovert scale.)
If you read my article from yesterday, I shared about how to have an Apple Watch recovery day by using the Mind & Body workout type on the Apple Watch.
And, as I hinted at in that article, there is additional reason I like the Mind & Body workout type beyond using it as a recovery day workout.
I also like the Mind & Body workout type as a way to help me purposefully set aside 15 – 30 minutes of my day for some device-free, undistracted, quite alone time.
Now, of course, you don’t need an Apple Watch or a meditation app in order to set aside and have some quite, undistracted alone time. But if either of those are tools that can help you, then by all means you should take advantage of them.
. . . . .
Back in 2014 I recorded a podcast and wrote an article about something I call “The Just Checks”.
The Just Checks is about the habit of checking our inboxes: Twitter, Instagram, Email, Facebook, et al.
And the problem behind the The Just Checks is that they rob us of our ability to focus and do deep work (by training our brains to resort to inboxes when we are bored, or challenged). And this habit robs us of any quiet alone time. Why?
Because checking Twitter does not qualify as quiet alone time.
Though we may be physically alone, we are distracted and are not alone with our own thoughts — we’re scrolling other people’s thoughts, stories, inputs, ideas, opinions, etc.
And so, if our moments of down time are filled with inboxes and social media, then we’re never actually being alone. And over time this lack of solitude — “Solitude Deprivation” — can be a serious issue that can lead to stress, anxiety, and depression.
My challenge to you this week: Set aside 15 minutes sometime this week to have some quiet, undistracted, alone time.
P.S. On my shelf are two recent books on the matter: Digital Minimalist by Cal Newport and Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday. To be honest, I haven’t yet read these books. But they are in my queue.