The Trouble With Time Management | 029

Over the years, I've struggled to manage my time effectively.

It's time management, something that you've struggled with too.

If so then you're in the right place as that's exactly what

we'll be exploring in this episode of architecture business club.

The weekly podcast for solo and small firm architecture practice owners,

just like you who want to build a profitable future-proof architecture

business that fits around their life.

I'm the host, John Clayton.

And if you want a business in architecture that gives you more

freedom, flexibility, and fulfillment.

Then go to architecture, business club.com forward slash blueprint.

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And it's absolutely free as a gift from me.

Now let's discuss time management.

Hey everyone.

Thanks for joining me today.

Today.

I wanted to talk about time management.

And this is something that I personally have struggled with

quite a bit over the years.

As I'm sure.

Many of you have struggled with too.

So why do so many of us, particularly sole practitioners

struggle with time management?

Well, we tend to base our assumptions.

And estimations about what we can get done in a day and how long things are

going to take on our past experiences.

So if you've previously been an employee, perhaps at another architecture practice,

That may have set your expectations.

Of what you'll get done in a day in your own business.

If you're now.

Running your own architecture practice or working as a sole

practitioner in architecture.

A small business owners were usually trying to do far too much.

Wearing too many different hats.

There's a number of different roles and responsibilities that

we have as small practice owners.

And often we can hang on to.

Too much of those responsibilities for too long.

Struggling to, to delegate.

Or to hire, hire somebody to expand your team.

We tend to overestimate what we can do in a day.

I think this actually was.

Um, Bill gates quotes.

I believe that we tend to overestimate what we can do in a day and

underestimate what we can do in a year.

And I believe that's very true.

So what did my work week look like when I started out?

As a full-time sole practitioner in architecture.

To be honest, my weekly schedule was roughly the same as my previous employer.

So that was generally sort of core working hours of around 9:00 AM till 5:30 PM.

Pretty standard office hours.

And that's not to say that that was the.

The optimum working hours for me, but because it's what I'd always done.

That was to begin waive my.

Default shed jewel for my workweek.

But my workweek has changed over time.

And particularly in the last few years, since becoming a home-based worker.

My working hours now do tend to be a bit more flexible to fit around family life.

There is one thing in particular that.

Used to eat up a chunk of time, a chunk of my time every day, when I

previously worked in other practices.

And that was my daily commute.

And this was something at the time that I.

Didn't really enjoy.

I used to get quite frustrated with the fact that during my work

week there was this chunk of time.

Every day that I just used to look at it as a waste of time, sat in the

car or in a traffic jam, whatever.

And I used to get quite frustrated and typically the commute was anything

from 45 minutes to an hour each way.

So it was about an hour and a half to two hours a day.

Something that I've since reflected upon was that there were a number

of hidden benefits to that commute.

And actually what that commute did.

Was it gave me a transition between work and home life.

And it was kind of like this buffer time.

Where I was switching between those different roles within my life.

Going from like being at the office in work mode.

And that 45 minutes or so.

Sat in the car.

That gave me time to process everything that I'd been working on.

Everything I'd been thinking about.

So that when I got home, I was ready, ready to, come home and, and be

the family man that I needed to be and not have all of those thoughts,

still swimming around in my head.

And I think that's something that when we are.

Looking at our time.

Trying to plan our work week, that that's something that often

doesn't get planned in to actually have these transitions in our day.

At the beginning of our work day and at the end of our Workday to make that

transition from work mode to home mode.

And I didn't realize that that was something I had

as part of my week already.

By default, when I worked for another practice.

And that was just again, something interesting.

That's for me.

A change in the way that my w my workweek has been structured from when

I was working in other practices to then being a business owner, And how my

work week has changed moving forward.

Have I nailed time management.

No, absolutely not.

I, um, Constantly.

Iterating my, my schedule and looking at my schedule and

looking at waste to improve it.

So what are the, some of the things that we can do, some of the tactics

to help us with time management?

So I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail about these, or we'll

put a few links in the show notes.

To some resources that you might find useful.

So one of the things is having a default week or default diary.

So essentially what you would do here is you take a snapshot

or your weekly calendar.

And.

You calendar out your week.

We've set time blocks.

So you look at all of the, the things that occur on a regular basis that you

have to do either weekly or daily basis.

And you, you block out chunks of time.

And essentially kind of block out the whole week.

So that you have this default version of your week that you try and stick to.

As best as you can each week, inevitably.

It's not always going to work.

There's going to be days when it just doesn't work.

And you deviate from that default and what you probably need to

do each week with that technique is to, to adjust each week that.

You've got this default layout, but then there might be certain

appointment times that have come up, things that you have to do that I've

maybe been outside of your control.

Maybe it doesn't fit that perfect pattern.

So it does need some adaption, but that is one thing that you can try and do.

So rather than just kind of like.

Starting your week.

We've kind of no direction.

You can try and map out that week in advance.

And use that as your default week.

Another thing that you can do at a daily level is theming your work days.

So rather than having each day.

As a mixture of a variety of all the different tasks and responsibilities

that you have of any business.

It could be that, for example, you have two free days of the week.

That's dedicated to your clients.

Maybe you have project work days where you focus on that.

You might have an admin day where you focus on.

Or the tasks that you need to do to run your business.

You might have a business development day.

So.

You basically, what you need to do in that instance is you look at what are the

important things that need to get done in your work and in your personal life.

And you can theme your days throughout the week to suit.

Whether that's, um, Monday to Friday for your workdays or whether you also take it.

A step further and also theme your weekend days as well.

Theme seven days of the week.

So another technique that you can try.

I guess it's something else to just touch upon.

I just want to go back to this idea of time blocking.

I mentioned that when we talked about the default week or default diary,

Time blocking is this strategy where.

You shed your light every part of your day in these little blocks of time.

Usually for specific tasks, it might be that you've got a.

Time during the day, there's a block for checking email, or maybe

there is a point during the day.

When you.

You plan your next day.

Maybe you have a time block allocated for social media.

Replying to comments.

Posting on social media, that sort of thing.

If you're going to use time blocking, don't forget to allow time blocks

for rest breaks and a lunch break.

That sort of thing.

If you block out your whole day.

Without making allowance for those, then you're really going to

struggle to, to stick to your plan.

Under the tactic that you can use is based on the makers managers, Szechuan,

which is an essay by Paul Graham.

And it's this idea that there's, there's different types of working schedules that,

that work, depending on your role within your business, that there's this manager

schedule, which is more for bosses where.

Is this traditional schedule where your day is.

Perhaps normally caught into like hour long blocks and it works

really well for meetings or checking your inbox or short tasks, but.

It's a bit of a nightmare.

If you're trying to do any kind of creative work or deep work.

Which is where the we have the maker schedule.

So this works really well if you're doing any creative tasks.

So if you're doing design work or one of your architecture projects, or

you're trying to do some writing for your website, This works far better

than the manager's schedule because it's working with units of time that

are typically at least half a day or more for creative tasks and projects.

And.

You can, you can split your day on that basis so that you can perhaps

have the maker schedule in the morning where you have half a day to work

on creative tasks and deep work.

And you have a transition period in the middle of the day where

you have a nice lunch break or you go and get some exercise, and

then you maybe look at running the manager's schedule in the afternoon.

So that could be where you schedule your meetings.

You check your inbox, you deal with admin tasks and any shorter bits and

pieces that don't fit with the maker's schedule in the earlier part of the day.

Remember.

Don't forget to download the architecture business, blueprint the

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and architecture designers.

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rating wherever you listen to podcasts.

Now, back to the show.

Another concept that's worth mentioning.

When you thinking about time management is Parkinson's law.

You may have heard of this, it's this idea that.

Work will expands to fill the time that's allocated for its completion.

She might have noticed this.

If you had been working on a project, that's got a fixed.

Deadline that has that deadline, looms and approach is that you tend to kind

of speed up your productivity, goes up a bit where there's this hard deadline.

And you can get more work done in a shorter period of time.

For instance, if you're using time blocking, if you allowed, I don't

know, two hours to do your daily admin.

If you experiment with reducing the amount of time.

Compress it so that, you know, take that down to 90 minutes, take it down to

an hour, take it down to half an hour.

Even that.

You may still be able to get dawned.

You get drawn a lot more stuff in a shorter period of time by,

by having this kind of tight time box to fit those tasks in.

While we're talking about having short periods of time for working.

Another technique that's worth mentioning is the Pomodoro technique.

This is another method for staying focused and mentally fresh.

And the idea is that you work in focused time intervals.

Usually 25 minutes and then you take a break, usually five minutes.

And then you repeat.

So the idea is that you're working in these like short little sprints.

And.

You don't get to the point where your productivity starts to wane because you're

building in these little micro breaks.

And the idea is that you do four of these Pomodoro cycles.

And then take a longer break of sort of 15 to 30 minutes.

And again, it's another technique or tactic that you can try.

So will all of these tactics work for you?

No.

Absolutely not.

It's highly unlikely that all of these things are going to work.

Because ultimately we're all different.

I I've tried a number of these tactics and techniques.

And found that a lot of them just didn't work for me.

I really struggled with it.

I remember going to a training session.

It was all about time blocking and creating your default week.

And, you know, I spent some time afterwards mapping mark my calendar

and plotting out my, my perfect week with all these neat little time blocks.

And.

It just didn't work for me at all.

I don't know if it's the way that my, my brain is wired, that I found it really,

really difficult to complete those tasks that I'd sat out in those, those blocks

of time that I laid out on my calendar.

Also, I think if you, if you have unrealistic expectations,

Of yourself.

I mean, essentially if you've got two bigger tasks list, It

doesn't matter what time management tactics that you try and use.

You're just never going to fit everything into your day.

So what's working for me right now.

Well, And forcing myself to be more realistic about what I

can really get done in a day.

Which means a shorter daily task list.

And I need to prioritize tasks better.

So.

That the important work gets done.

I'm currently experimenting with themed days.

Again, this is something that I did try previously.

I didn't gel with it the first time round, but I am.

Giving it another shot.

With themed workdays and seeing if it works better for me this time.

The other thing that I'm looking at doing is categorizing tasks based on

the energy that's required from me.

You know, is this a task that feels hard or is it one of those easy to do?

Any time of day TASS.

For example, like for me, a high energy task might be a creative piece of writing.

It might be recording a podcast or doing a live stream.

It could be some creative work.

If you an architect or an architectural designer.

That could be that the design work that you're doing now, you know,

that that could be the thing where you'd need to be at your best

during the day to do that work.

It requires.

It requires much of you.

First this, those kind of easy.

Anytime of day tasks, like the low energy tasks, like.

Checking your email, you know, doing the admin.

That sort of thing.

Filling in your time sheet, the end of the day, if that's what you do.

And that idea of categorizing things based on energy is just one of the ideas

from a time crafting by Mike Vardy.

So he's a productivity specialist.

And he gives you a number of tactics and techniques for.

Managing your time better and, and crafting your time.

And there's some great concepts in there.

It's well worth checking it out.

In fact time.

If I can get Mike on the podcast, it would be absolute gold.

I'm sure.

So that's somebody I'm going to reach out to in the not too distant future.

So what would be my top three recommendations to help you

with your time management?

I think number one would be to set some realistic expectations

in the first place of what you can get done in any given day or week.

You are not a machine.

Your productivity will not be at 100% for eight hours plus a day.

50 to 60% of your time on theory.

Inning project work.

Is far more realistic for a sole practitioner and perhaps even

less, if you're managing a team of staff, And you must remember

that your creativity is finite.

There's only so much of that deep creative work.

That any of us can do in a given day.

Most of us may only be able to manage up to around free hours or so

of deep creative work in any given day before we're feeding spans.

I think two would be two.

Plan your day, the day before.

So set what tasks that you are going to work on?

And I would actually recommend.

Planning a maximum of free tasks for the following day.

On the basis that.

Just going back to that idea that we were often overestimating

what we get done in a day.

If you only preset free tasks for the following day.

And you get them done.

You're going to have that.

Feeling of accomplishment.

By clearing that to do list you purposefully making the to-do list.

Shorter.

So that you can have a sense of accomplishment by getting through your

list rather than having a really long to do list that you never get free.

Then any other tasks that you get done that day?

Or a bonus and it also leaves you some wiggle room for the unexpected stuff.

That can crop up.

In the average day.

The third thing would be to listen to your body.

Like.

I'm not a morning person.

But you might not be either like you don't need to join the 5:00 AM club.

And get up at the crack of Dawn.

And get your work done before I am like, if that's not gonna, that's

not gonna work for everybody.

It certainly doesn't work for me.

I have tried to get up early and, or fortunately it just doesn't work.

So follow your own circadian rhythm.

Allow for breaks and plan the high energy tasks.

For when you are feeling most energized.

That might be at 6:00 AM.

You know if you're a morning person, but it might not.

It might be that you need to plan those tasks for later in the day for

in the afternoons or, or possibly even in the evenings or late at

night, depending on how you're wired.

Now, I know I haven't provided you with a magic bullet.

To fix all of your time management woes.

But I hope that.

This has been useful in some way, and perhaps give you some reassurance that

you're not alone in struggling with time management, that this is something

that many of us find challenging.

And as I say, like, I'm, I'm still here trying to improve.

My own use of time within the hours that I've have, you know, we all have the same

number of hours each week to work with.

It's just a case of trying to figure out.

The best way to.

Use your time most effectively.

Based on how your brain works and how you're wired.

Next time I'll be chatting with architectural designer in Knowles about

starting your own architecture practice.

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