Margin

Give Your Day Some Breathing Room

As we continue with this month’s focus on margin, today we’re going to talk about getting and keeping margin in your schedule.

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I love how David Allen says that you can’t actually manage time. If you start with 5 minutes, there’s no way to manage it well enough that it will turn into 6 minutes.

What you can do is manage how you spend your time. Which is more like time stewardship — because you alone are responsible for taking care of the time you have in the day.

And this is why margin in our schedule is so important. It gives us the breathing room and the wherewithal to steward our time and manage ourselves in how we spend it.

In his book, Margin, Richard Swenson states that there are four main areas of life that we most need margin in. They are our emotional energy, our physical energy, our finances, and our schedule.

And I would add one more area to that list: We also need margin in our mental energy — our thoughts, and with it, creative energy.

You can’t pit any of these against one another when looking for one that is more or less important. They overlap and intertwine with one another so much that when we have margin in one area, it helps open the door to margin in the other areas. And, conversely, when we lack margin in one area, it puts a strain on the others.

Over the coming weeks, we’re going to dive in to each of these. Today, let’s start with how to get some breathing room in our schedules.

When We LACK Margin in Our Schedule

When there is margin in our life, it brings with it a sense of contentment, simplicity, balance, and rest.

Consider this with your current schedule… do you feel content, balanced, and rested?

  • Is your schedule simple enough that you control it? (Or does it control you?)

  • At the end of the day, when you look back at how you spent your time, do you feel content? Or do you feel frustrated at all the things you didn’t and all the fires you had to react to and put out?

  • At the end of your day, do you feel that your day was balanced? Were you Meaningfully Productive? Did you spend your time on things that matter most to you in more than just one area of your life? Is there an area of your life that dominates your schedule and causes other areas of your life to get out of balance?

  • At the start of your day, do you feel rested and prepared to do awesome things? Or do you feel behind before you even begin?

Your answers to these questions can help you determine if there is any margin in your schedule. But my hunch is that you don’t need much self-assessment to know if your schedule has breathing room or not.

When We HAVE Margin in Our Schedule

Imagine waking up in the morning and being able to spend time doing what you want to do.

Perhaps it’s going to the gym or going on a walk. Having time in quiet to read, think, and/or journal. Being able to make a healthy breakfast and still have time to prepare for work and begin your day doing the things that are most important.

Margin in your schedule means your day has breathing room.

And that breathing room means two things: (1) that you can set aside time for doing the things that are most important; and (2) that there is space to account for the unexpected. That’s what Margin is all about: it’s space left over.

Conversely, when our schedule lacks any breathing room, it’s like waking up just minutes before having to rush out the door. Grabbing a Pop-Tart without even having the time to put it in the toaster. Then, getting to work and spending 8 or more hours putting out fires and responding to multiple urgent issues.

The difference between a schedule with and without margin is far more than just one of getting up earlier. It’s an internal choice. The choice to take ownership of our time and attention.

The person with margin has taken ownership of their time and has slowly established a routine that allows for health and breathing room. The other person is, honestly, a bit out of control.

Out of Control

I love how Dan Mall replaced the phrase “I don’t have time” with “it’s not a priority” for his internal dialog:

Recently, I’ve tried to stop saying, “I don’t have time.” It insinuates that I’m a helpless victim to the all-powerful stream of hours that mightily passes me by. It’s easy to adopt an “Oh well” attitude to what you’re giving up. It authorizes my apathy.

Instead, I’ve replaced it with the phrase, “That’s not a priority.” Suddenly, I’ve taken control of my own decisions. I’ve taken responsibility for what I do and don’t do. I’ve added clarity, condemnation, and encouragement, all in 4 short words.

How many people do you know who “don’t have time,” who are “so busy?” Everyone, right? We’re all so busy. None of us have any time.

This has kind-of become the standard answer we all give when people ask us how we’re going. It’s a badge of honor, even.

I used to think that the busier I was, the more important I was. The more people who wanted me to do stuff for them, the more meetings I was invited to, the more projects I was in charge of — all of it was proof that I was important. Each additional commitment was another badge on my uniform to display to those around just how important and responsible I was.

But there’s a difference between having a full schedule and being busy. My schedule is still very much full. But it’s full with all the things I am choosing to do. Such as three meals a day with my family. Time in the evening to read. Time in the morning to write. A whole day of the week where I build trains with my boys and don’t even look at email. A date with my wife every single week.

How to Restore Margin to our Schedule

There are so many ways you can restore (and maintain) breathing room in your schedule. Here are just a few suggestions:

  • Give yourself permission to have some breathing room: This is what the book Fringe Hours is all about. You need margin in your schedule; it’s okay to make that happen. Give yourself permission to create some breathing room and to spend your time doing the things that are most important to you.

  • Automate, delegate, and eliminate: Are you spending time doing things that aren’t important or could be done by someone else? Cut those tasks out or delegate them to someone else.

  • Cut out baseline noise: When you got up this morning, did you check your phone right away? Email, social network timeline, news feed? Did that help you start your day? Do you even remember what you read?

  • Minimum and Maximum time blocks: Give yourself a minimum amount of time to spend on important things and a maximum amount of time to spend on less-important things. For me, this looks like a minimum of two hours writing and a maximum of 30 minutes doing email. I have a minimum time I spend with my family each day and a maximum time to watch Netflix each week. A minimum amount of time spent reading and a maximum amount of time spent on Social Networks.

  • Schedule your most important tasks: If you know what is most important for you to do each day, then schedule it.

  • Single tasking: I’m terrible at this one, but trying to recover. If you look at my computer, there are about 9,000 open windows and browser tabs. In an ideal state, there would be just one open window — the one I’m using to write this text right now.

Single tasking goes beyond just focusing on one software app at a time, it also goes for other activities. For example: don’t check your email when playing ball with your kids. If you’re scheduling your most important tasks, then it’s safe to assume you’ve planned when you’re going to do all the things that are meaningful to you. So, trust your commitments to yourself and single-task the activity you’re doing right now. (This also helps create margin for your mental energy, which we’ll get to in a couple of days.)

Your Daily Plumb Lines

One of the quickest ways to take ownership of your schedule is to know what your most important work is. What are the areas of your life that you want to spend time on?

As I mentioned above, set a minimum and a maximum time allowance for different things.

We’re going to dive into this a bit more in March when we talk about showing up every day and hustling to do our best creative work.

But, in short, urgent tasks will always find us, which is why we have to be proactive about making time for the important tasks and then protecting that time.

Urgent issues always come up. If they don’t align with your vision and values, then you can feel comfortable saying no. Like Dan Mall says, “it’s not a priority.”

For me, I have a few areas of my life that I want to spend time developing every single day. These areas are my work, my personal self, and my family.

I have just a couple of things in each area that I want to do every single day. They are my Daily Plumb Lines. They include things such as: pushing the needle forward on at least one of my current projects; spend time away from my desk; Learn something; encourage and serve my wife; give my boys my full attention.

It can be easy to get distracted by something interesting, exciting, or urgent and to not even realize that I’m actually just wasting my time.

Sometimes when I sit down to work, I will feel overwhelmed at all the plates I know I have spinning. I’ll feel unsure about what my next action step should be. This is not an ideal state to be in, but it happens. It’s not the end of the world, and there are ways out.

For the days when I feel as if I have nothing figured out, at least I have clarity about what my Most Important Goals are because the goals don’t change from day to day. Therefore, I can still make meaningful progress on my projects and have a productive day, even if I’m not firing on all cylinders.

Because one thing I can do for certain is to make sure that my next action is something that falls in line with one of my aforementioned Daily Plumb Lines. This way, when I’m feeling overwhelmed or prone to distraction, I have options other than to just zone out and check Twitter.

Moreover, by having these Plumb Lines, it gives me permission to say “no” to much more than distractions. It also gives me permission to say no to opportunities that would encroach on the breathing room in my schedule.

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Breathe

It’s not easy to restore and maintain breathing room in our schedule. Especially at the beginning, when some of us may need time to transition out of a few current commitments and establish a new routine.

I mentioned some suggestions above, so if any of those sound awesome to you, then go for it.

If you’re not sure where to start, perhaps start by saying no to the next incoming opportunity that doesn’t excite you and line up with what’s most important to you.

Secondly, take a few minutes and do an audit on how you’re spending your free time. When you get home from work, what does your average evening look like? For most Americans, they’re watching more than 5 hours of television every day. Perhaps all you need in order to buy back a bit of margin in your schedule is to sell some of that Netflix time.

When you have margin in your schedule, it’s liberating.

You have the time to get enough sleep, go on a date, have breakfast with your kids, invest in your own mental, spiritual, and physical health, and do your most important work each day.

And best of all, when there is margin in your schedule, you can be available to help and serve. You can respond to the needs of others without it disrupting your whole life.

Give Your Day Some Breathing Room

Margin Enables Intentional Living

As announced on Monday, for the next couple weeks we are diving deep on a specific topic: Margin.

What is margin?

Margin is breathing room.

It’s the opposite of overwhelm, overload, and overtime.

Margin means having some cash in the bank at the end of the month. It means having time during your day to spend on the things that are most important.

When we have this breathing room, it opens up a world of possibilities. Because when you have margin, you have the space to choose to be proactive instead of reactive.

We all need margin in our lives. From the stay-at-home parent, to the retiree, the 9-5 store clerk, the business executive, the pizza delivery guy, and the independent entrepreneur.

The reason we all need margin is because margin equals health.

Breathing room is good for our finances, our physical energy, our mental energy, and more. (Which, by the way, I dive into this topic much more in the free video presentation I put together. You can get it here.)

Today what I want to talk about is how Margin enables Intentional Living. You’re probably already putting the pieces together, so let’s continue…

What is Intentional Living?

Intentional living means being proactive in all areas of your life.

Jim Rohn said that “your level of success will rarely exceed your level of personal development, because success is something you attract by the person you become.”

I would also add that success comes about through diligence, hard work, and skill development.

Over the coming days and weeks we’ll continue to talk more about diligence, hard work, and skill development. But, in short, it takes intentional practice in order to be “successful” in each area of your life.

We know this is true for the athlete or the musician. Each day, the best athletes in the world train their hardest. Each day, the best musicians in the world practice and grow their skills.

The same principle of intentional practice holds true for every area of our life and any skill we wish to develop.

To reach the levels of success that are important to us (in our health, marriage, finances, vocation, side-projects, etc.) it takes intentional practice and development.

For a thriving marriage, you need to do something each day to strengthen your relationship with your spouse. The best writers in the world write every single day. One of the most sound financial investment strategies is to invest early and often.

Thus, intentional living is simply dedicating time each day to strengthen the most important areas of your life.

If you are doing that, then you’ll see success in those areas. If you’re not, then you won’t see success. It’s as simple as that.

So many of us “know” this truth. But so few of us do anything about it. Because it’s not microwaveable. It’s not easy to get started. It’s not easy to keep it up.

To be intentional — to live a focused life — takes a few things:

  1. Knowing which areas of your life are most important to you (at least in this season).
  2. Knowing what your goals are in those areas of life.
  3. Knowing what needs to be done to accomplish those goals.
  4. And then having the space to do the work. You need time, energy, and motivation to walk out your action plan. And that, my friend, is where margin comes in. Margin gives you that much-needed space.

These things boil down to simply having honesty, clarity, and a bias toward action. And it all gets just a little bit easier when you have breathing room in your life. Which is why margin enables intentional living. Margin enables you to live a focused life.

Margin Enables a Focused Life

In The Focus Course, the whole first module is focused on restoring margin to your life. We take 7 days and touch on topics such as personal integrity, relationships, creative imagination, finances, simplicity, and more.

The reason is because when you have a little bit of breathing room, it makes everything else that much easier.

  • Margin in your schedule keeps you free enough to have the time to do what’s important.

  • Margin with your thoughts keeps your mental energy strong enough to have the momentum you need to do the work when the time comes.

  • Margin in your emotions helps you with the motivation you need to do what’s important.

Start Here

We’ll continue to dive deep on each of the aforementioned areas of margin in the coming weeks.

But for a start, do this: Unsubscribe from something or unfollow someone.

It could be a news feed, an email newsletter, or a person or brand on Twitter or Facebook.

Doing this will give you just a little bit more space. It’s one less thing to deal with in your day, thus giving you some time. And it’s one less area of “consumption”, thus giving you more mental and emotional energy to focus on doing your best creative work.

Also, this is a way to remind yourself that you are in charge of your information diet. You will never do your best creative work if you’re living in the middle of The Echo Chamber.

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Coming Next

Tomorrow, shawnblanc.net members will be getting a podcast conversation between me and my friend Mike Schmitz where we discuss how margin helps you to show up every day and do your most important work.

And on Monday, I’ve got an article for you about time stewardship and how you can get some breathing room in your crazy schedule.

If you want to keep up with all the articles, podcasts, and more that I’m publishing on the topic of margin, I’ve set up this page just for you. You can also get a free video presentation I made that shares an overview of what Margin is, why it’s so valuable, some quick wins for how to regain Margin in your life, and what I do to help maintain Margin in my own life.

Margin Enables Intentional Living

Margin Month

Today I’m kicking off something a bit different than I’ve done before on shawnblanc.net.

We’re going to take the rest of January and go deep on one specific topic. I’ve also got February, March, and April planned out as well. Each one with its own topic.

The big picture is that I want to hit on ideas that are especially relevant to the creative entrepreneur. From work-life balance, to tools, to audience building and revenue generation, to building a successful creative business.

This summer we’re on track to have something put together for those who are building a business and/or working to gain traction in their side project. But more on that later.

January’s Theme: Margin

A few months ago I wrote a 2-part introduction to Margin (part I, part II). In those articles I shared about what Margin in your life looks like and why it’s so important.

In short, Margin equates to breathing room.

Having breathing room in our schedule, finances, emotional energy, and mental energy is paramount. When you’re at capacity, there is no room for anything else. But when there is space left over — when there is margin — that space enables us to breath.

The feedback I received from those articles was extremely positive.

This is a topic that is so relevant to so many areas of our life. Over the past few months, I’ve received hundreds of emails from readers who’s biggest challenges are related to time, clarity, and their business or side-project.

Regarding time and clarity, I heard from many people who feel that they don’t have enough time in the day to do everything they want (or need) to do. I also heard from folks who aren’t sure how best to manage and schedule their time. As well as from people who aren’t sure where they should be focusing their energy.

When we have margin in our schedule, margin in our emotional energy, and margin in our creative energy, it can help tremendously. Moreover, when we lack margin in these areas, it leaves us feeling stressed out, anxious, and overloaded. No fun.

Which is why we’re going to take the next few weeks and dive deep on these topics:

  • How Margin Enables Intentional Living
  • Time Stewardship
  • Regaining mental energy
  • Margin in your finances
  • Emotional energy and motivation
  • Why margin helps you hustle and focus (do more in less time)
  • Understanding overwhelm and how to move to the other side of complexity
  • Overcoming distractions to do deep work and intentional practice

I’ve also got a few podcasts and interviews in the pipe with some good friends and surprise heroes of mine that have so much wisdom to share on this topic.

Keep tabs on everything-margin at this page we’ve set up:

shawnblanc.net/margin

That’s going to be the central repository, so to speak, with links to all the articles, podcasts, and other resources we put out over the coming weeks.

Free Video Presentation

To start things off today, I made a video presentation.

I thought it’d be fun to try something new. And so we put together this short video presentation.


video-screenshot

In the video I introduce the idea of Margin, I give you some quick wins for how to restore Margin to your life, and I share some specific things I do in order to keep margin in my life as well as how I stay sane when life gets extra busy.

To get the video, just punch in your email below and you’ll get a link to the page where you can stream or download the presentation.




Margin Month