Blocks Archives - Page 2 of 2 - understand-culture

Hard Stop

I have a hard stop at three. — I must leave at three, and I will.

Got a sec? Do you have a minute? — May I interrupt you? The question comes before the interruption.

Let me find time. Grab 15 minutes on my calendar. — Let us book a slot. Or: book the slot yourself.

Send me an invite. — Make it a calendar entry, so that it exists.

I’m back-to-back all day. — My day has no open slot.

I blocked off the afternoon. — I reserved the time in my calendar, so that no one else can book it.

I’ll let you go. — I know your time is limited, so I am ending the conversation.

In October 2021 Google added a new kind of event to Google Calendar, called Focus time. Google’s announcement said it lets users of some paid Google Workspace plans “block out and protect your time for heads-down individual work.” A Focus time block can “automatically decline conflicting events.”

The standing meeting

American organisations schedule the follow-up before it is needed — the weekly one-to-one, the Monday stand-up, the biweekly check-in, the quarterly business review.

The meeting exists in the calendar whether or not there is anything to discuss. Its function is not the agenda. It is the guarantee that the status will be revisited at a known interval.

Rhode Island

Comments:

“As a telephony engineer, I feel for Nathan. Too many times in the office, I’m locked in and focusing on work and then someone comes with a drive-by question that totally breaks my concentration and flow. Some times it can take 10-15 minutes to get back in the groove of what you’re doing. Huge time waster.”

“”Do you have a second?” “Wait 5 minutes; in the middle of something.” Solves a lot of problems.”

“Perusing has two definitions in the dictionary that are contradictory in nature. Perusing also is defined as to skim in Meriam dictionary. Both meanings have been in use over 400 yrs.”

“That little interruption costs 30 minutes of context switching, but feels like 2 hours of stress. So in an 8 hour day, he will have to work 8.5 hours to finish the same work, but it will feel like 10 hours. It’s like slamming on the breaks in a car.”

“She is falling for him bc he doesn’t care.”

Time-Boxing

Elon Musk’s daily schedule is incredibly demanding, but he ensures that everything gets done by scheduling everything in 5-minute time blocks. This technique is called time boxing. The first three minutes of this video are instructive. Don’t bother with the rest.