The nature of our job as product builders requires collaboration.
You’ll have a lot of meetings, workshops, and discussions that constantly interrupt you from doing the work.
It’s a dilemma. On one hand, you need to collaborate to solve hard problems. On the other hand, you need to ensure you get the work done. This is where most people would start to think about the solution like no meeting day. The idea is everyone shouldn’t hold any meetings on a particular day to focus on their individual work.
At first, I was interested in this concept. But later I found it’s simply impractical. There’s just a time your work requires you to do more alignment. Not to mention, when another person sees I blocked 8 hours in a day, they’ll ask me to spare 1 hour.
Another reason it’s impractical is that I can’t maintain the same level of energy for 8 hours in one day. I can’t continuously work on tasks that require a high cognitive load. What I really need is to have a steady time throughout the week to work on a few things that matter.
Then it got me thinking. If my goal is to have 8 hours per week for individual work, what if I spread it out throughout the entire week? For example, on Monday I’ll have 1 hour for GSD (Get Sh*t Done), then 2 hours on Tuesday. You get the idea.
With Google Calendar, I will mark that time as out of office, so it automatically declines any meeting invitation.
As for a reference, I’m working in a leadership position and I need 8 hours per week for my individual work. For you who work as an individual contributor should have more than that.
In summary:
Define how many hours you need for individual works
Spread it out throughout the week
Book a time in your calendar and name it Get Shit Done
Mark it as Out of Office to automatically declines any meetings
Plan your objective during the GSD time