Be in charge of how you spend your time.

[00:00:00] You are listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? I've been thinking about the idea of urgent versus important lately. The other day I was explaining to my spouse the concept of time blocking, which is very popularized by Cal Newport, who is probably one of my favorite writers in the productivity space.

[00:00:39] And essentially the idea is that you sit down the night before or in the morning, you write like the hours of the day on one side and create blocks of time and give them themes based on what you need to tackle that day. So let's say I know that I have a bunch [00:01:00] of tasks for Project A, I have to write a blog post, [00:01:04] I have to record this podcast episode. I would create a box of time that I think is appropriate to tackle all of the tasks related to Project A, and then a box for when I'm gonna tackle this podcast. And a box for maybe that blog post, and of course, fit in all the other required things that have to happen that day too.

[00:01:28] Maybe I have a meeting scheduled and that is happening between 10 and 11, you know, I wanna go for lunch, et cetera. And my spouse, he said, you know, I can make that plan but I mean, when I'm in the office, things come up you know, my boss will come and be like, Hey, this is the thing. We need to get this done, and it's really important.

[00:01:52] And then whatever plan I have made, it kind of goes out the window because now I have to do this thing. And he's like, I [00:02:00] think it just makes more sense for me to just have a list of tasks that I want to tackle in my day. And what I told him was basically just this concept of urgent versus important.

[00:02:12] What he was telling me is that he wants to make a list of things that are important to him, that he wants to get done in the day, but he's gonna get hijacked by the people in the office by their urgent needs. And I told him that is, and I was discovering this as I was explaining to him, because I've never quite thought of it that way.

[00:02:33] I don't if that ever happens to you, but sometimes when I'm explaining it, sort of like rubber ducking in computer science, or software development, when you explain something to someone, you often find your answer or you come up with an insight that you never had come up with or thought of before.

[00:02:51] So I'm sitting there and I'm explaining to him and having this revelation at the same time. The reason time blocking is so good is because if you have [00:03:00] created a schedule for yourself and there's these blocks of times that you've dedicated to the things that you think are important, then you can look at that schedule and see the empty spaces, and now your boss says, Hey, this thing, it's important for, you know, project Y, and we need to get this done.

[00:03:17] Now, if you weren't time blocking, you don't have a schedule, so you put aside everything else that you have, and you work on this task for your boss, for Project Y, but if you've time blocked now you can say, Hey, I have some time between 2:00 PM and 4:00 PM today. Would it make sense if I could get it done then and just ship it out at that time?

[00:03:39] Then a lot of the times those things that are urgent for other people, they're not so urgent that they have to get done right this minute. And I would say that's true for a lot of your own urgent things too. So if you can tell someone here, here's a time when I can get this done for you today, then we are meeting their need to [00:04:00] get this done sooner than later.

[00:04:01] But you've also communicated that, Hey, I have all the other things and here's a reliable time. I'm promising you that I will get this done for you. It's probably gonna be okay. and I was saying this and it was like a light bulb moment for me, and I could tell it was a light bulb moment for him too. And he's like, you're right, that's true.

[00:04:23] If I had, if I say something like that, he's gonna be okay with it. Most of the time he's fine. And I'm like, exactly. So. I think it's worth, first of all, exploring time blocking if you've never done it before. And two, remembering the difference between what is important and what is urgent in your own life.

[00:04:45] Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.