We all have the same number of hours each day. But we each have individual freedom in how we steward it. Today, I’m sharing some of my scheduling hacks to manage my days effectively. Intentionality with your schedule is essential to growing as a leader.

I’ve adapted the Pomodoro technique, developed by Francesco Cirillo, to prioritize my focused work. I began by focusing my work in three 25 minute chunks, with 5 minute breaks in-between. During the 5 minutes, I might refill coffee or check Slack (not email!) and then get right back into it. After three rounds, I’ll either move on to something else, like a meeting, or I’ll take a 15-minute break and then repeat the cycle, diving back into doing focused work. The schedule has adapted over time, so here's a look at the past two years.

Be intentional about how you schedule your time. Otherwise, you allow everyone else to dictate your schedule.

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Scheduling in 2020

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My Daily Schedule

I’ve been leading distributed teams for over five years, but 2020 reset schedules in a new kind of way. This allowed me to test some approaches to scheduling my time. Here is how I tried to structure my day during the summer of 2020.

9:00 Quick email triage (15 min) – I time-box this to 15 minutes to get the important stuff out of email and into a workspace like Asana or google docs.
9:15 Daily Standup #1 (15 min) – I ha three teams I did this with each day
9:30 Focus work (25 min)
9:55 Break (5 min)
10:00 Focus work (25 min)
10:25 Break (5 min)
10:30 Focus work (25 min)
10:55 Break (5 min)
11:00 Daily Standup #2 (15 min)
11:15 Focus work (25 min)
11:40 Break (5 min)
11:45 Focus work (25 min)
12:10 Break (5 min)
12:15 Daily Standup #3 (15 min)
12:30 Troubleshooting with Team #3 (this is an optional meeting that is needed more often than not)
12:45 Lunch
1:30 Quick email triage (30 min)
2:00 Meeting (50 min) I like to schedule meetings with a 5-10 minute buffer
2:50 Break (10 min)
3:00 Meeting (25 min) – not all meetings need to be an hour
3:25 Break (5 min)
3:30 Meeting (25 min) – not all meetings need to be an hour
3:55 Break (5 min)
4:00 Inbox Zero (60 min) – If I get done early, then I’m done early 😀

Key takeaways from this schedule:

• Focus work during my best hours in the morning.
• I arranged my focus work into 1.5-hour and 1-hour chunks to keep the flow going.
• Meetings (other than standups) stay in the afternoons
• Email stays closed except for batch triage.
• My work in 2020 was pretty structured (partially because I designed the system I was working within). This may not be the reality for you, and my 2021 schedule might have more resonance.
• I use the app Be Focused Pro to track my time chunks.

My Weekly Schedule

Two days a week, I swap the afternoon meetings slot for professional development. So here is what the starting point for my weekly schedule looks like in bigger chunks.

I have my teams set up to work on 3-week sprints, so I adapt the weekly template to accommodate various scrum events. These end up falling on different days depending on the week. So I swapped it out for whatever was in that time slot.

Scheduling Adjustments

At the end of the summer in 2020, I evaluated what was working and what wasn’t. One nice thing about keeping an updated calendar is how easy it is to look back and see what changed.

I made three adjustments heading into the fall.

1. 30-minute meetings. Parkinson’s Law says work will expand to the time available, which certainly applies to meetings. I changed the default meeting length to 30 minutes and only made it longer if there was a compelling reason.
2. I’ll trade you a standup for an inbox zero. I trained a new Scrum Master and no longer needed to be in my 11 am standup. I replaced the 15 minutes with quick email triage and gave myself 30 minutes back into the afternoon.
3. Increase flexibility. As the year went on, I was asked to lead more design sprints to help the organization pivot in 2020. These can be disruptive to a fixed schedule, so I built in more flexibility by focusing on the daily chunks rather than the minute by schedule.

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Scheduling in 2021

My Daily Schedule

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In 2021 I changed roles and was no longer leading multiple Scrum teams. Instead, I was helping a division develop its digital strategies. Most of my time fell into one of three categories; creation, coordination and learning.

Because of this, I moved to more of a blocked weekly schedule that I'll share below. But the general daily structure looks like this:

• 9-12 Focus Work / Learning
• 4 40 minute loops with 5-10 breaks
• Email triage in the middle and end of the day

I like the block schedule a lot more. It provides more time for focused work, which my current role requires. The reality is we all have different roles with different requirements. I'm not sharing my schedule to say your's needs to look just like it but to share my process in hopes that it helps you design the best schedule for your context.

I stopped thinking about managing my time and began to prioritize my energy and focus.

My Weekly Schedule

Like I said above, most of my time fell into one of three categories; creation, coordination and learning

(weekly graphic) - longer email triage on Wed / Friday

I stopped thinking about managing my time and began to prioritize my energy and focus. For me personally, my best hours for energy and focus are in the morning. My creative work and learning new skills require the most, so they get priority in my day. The meetings I facilitate to coordinate with stakeholders, leaders, contributors all get placed after lunch, where my energy is a little lower but still sufficient.

Next steps for scheduling

We covered a lot of details, which hopefully helped illustrate what it can look like to structure your schedule intentionally. Below you’ll be able to download a worksheet to theme your daily and weekly schedule.

Here are some cliff notes you can apply to your schedule.

1. Focus on the chucks of your day. A tight minute-by-minute schedule feels good but isn’t resilient enough for the realities of today’s schedule.
2. Keep meetings short. Moving meetings to 30 minutes has freed up so many hours to my schedule. You could probably cut your current meeting lengths in half.
3. Stay out of your inbox. Email can eat up your whole day if you let it. I have three times that I triage my inbox. This allows me to respond promptly while still letting me focus on priority work.

You’ll notice I have a basic framework that I inspect and adapt as I go. I’m trying to develop a harmony of flexibility and structure to get my best work done. Be intentional about how you schedule your time. Otherwise, you allow everyone else to dictate your schedule.

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