Finding flow even in very packed days!
I’ve been really good this week at practicing time blocking. Less easy was “clearing the decks” so I could find time for some deep work blocks every day. I was however able to batch my meetings and was able to reschedule most of them into only 2 (very busy) days - Tuesday and Thursday.
By Tuesday however I noticed that I was getting anxious - feeling and fighting this lack of time and space for deep work. By lunchtime, my schedule was even more fixed and packed: I’d be going from meeting to meeting… to meeting.
As I grabbed my laptop for the next zoom meeting, I noticed that something had shifted. I no longer felt defeated or anxious about not getting enough done. Instead, my goal now was to flow with all these meetings, rather than flowing into the deep work that we work so hard to create space for.
This was transformational. I flowed from meeting to meeting. Even when constrained for time, or with challenging discussions, the feeling of flow was there and accessible. And I ended the day with so much more energy than if I had spent it fighting the day.
So do whatever you can to craft blocks of time for you to flow into deep work, but when you cannot, batch them into specific days wherever possible, and then on those days, flow with the day.