159: Boost productivity by removing this hidden time-waster

When am I going to get my head above water? When am I going to feel like I have that sense of accomplishment at the end of a week? What am I gonna feel like? I'm not drowning in tasks every single week, and this feeling is actually brought on by some of the reasons it is right. We're probably involved in too many things, but one of the biggest reasons we hit this is because as managers, we're constantly context switching.

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We've all been there. We have our week. We know this is going to be the week. Monday morning we make our list. We have it all mapped out how we're going to spend our time, who we're going to meet with. We got our to do list. It's all seems like yes, okay, this is going to be the week I finish everything.

And then Friday rolls around and we look at our list and we're like, gosh, I didn't I didn't finish 80% of this, maybe more. And you got pulled in so many different directions and pulled on and off. And it was just like a week, like every week where nothing is what you expect and you end the day Friday, not feeling a sense of accomplishment. You feel pretty let down, like, When am I going to get my head above water?

When am I going to feel like I have that sense of accomplishment at the end of a week? What am I gonna feel like? I'm not drowning in tasks every single week, and this feeling is actually brought on by some of the reasons it is right. We're probably involved in too many things, but one of the biggest reasons we hit this is because as managers, we're constantly context switching. So that's why I want to talk about today recognizing the context switching, seeing how often it happens.

And then what do we do about it. Well, we can't do a ton about it, but how do we manage that so that we don't feel like we're just in this endless hamster wheel of work? Because that's where we start to burnout. Okay, I think about 50% of managers report feeling burnt out, right? And we're probably all like, well, I depends on the day. I might feel like 100% of them. If it's the end of the year, or maybe Q1 or heading into a big, big milestone.

We feel that way even worse when we're jumping from one thing to the next. And our life and our job is a game of whac-a-mole. So let's talk about the cost of cost of context witching. Well, it's been it's been research that context swishing and jumping on and off a task. It takes us 23 minutes to refocus. So if you are going 30 minutes, 30 minutes, 30 minutes meeting after meeting after meeting, this is what a colleague of mine, Carrie Jacobs, she was on the podcast calls chain smoking meetings.

When you're going from meeting to meeting to meeting and they're all 30 minutes, you are literally context switching and you haven't even recovered from that until you're 23 minutes almost over with that next meeting. If you are or have your calendar and it's kind of a Swiss cheese thing where you have a meeting and then 30 minutes and then an hour, then 30 minutes each of those 30 minutes when you had allocated to like quickly get stuff done.

That whole block of time is just reset, centering yourself and figuring out, okay, where was I at getting your bearings. So one of the biggest problems of why we can feel so incomplete with finishing everything, and why we feel like it's just adding and adding

and adding is that we're actually not fully getting stuff on our plate. Often we're starting something and stopping and jumping on another thing. And we're we're helping someone solve a problem, and we're going in and giving a report on on progress. And we actually are just opening new loops. We're not closing as many because of this context switching.

Now, the other cost of it is that we're not fully present, and I think that can be one of the biggest things that our team members start to notice, right? That we're in a meeting with them and we seem distracted. Or maybe we're kind of eyes glancing back at our chat window, our emails, and this starts to send a signal to our team members that we're not really interested in what they're talking about. I know I've been on the receiving end of that.

I'm in a meeting my one on one with my manager I've looked forward to all week because I had a lot of stuff to talk about, and first they come in seven minutes late to a 30 minute meeting, so like a third of the way through. And then they keep going. Oh wait, I got to check this ping or oh wait, like, let me just look at this thing or they don't say it and I could see their eyes looking somewhere else. Right. This doesn't make me feel very good as a direct report at all in that manager.

Most likely they it wasn't their fault, they were just pulling so many directions they thought, I can't look away from this for a second. So this kind of thing, not only do we leave all these open loops, we can send messages to folks that we didn't even mean to, that we're not really prioritizing them. Do you want some hands on support for all of the topics I talk about on this show?

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DM me the word Sprint on Instagram or email me at hello@liagarvin.com and let's build your unstoppable team. So what do we do about it? Because we know this is a problem. And I think any of us that are thinking of like, yeah, how many times we start and stop and shift focus is that it's exhausting, even just like thinking about the number of times we're doing that. Well, what do we do about it?

There's a couple of things that I think right off the bat, like, you can pause this episode and do these or do that right at the end of the episode and figure this out, make it a little bit of relief for yourself. And I'm going to say one caveat. Obviously, if we are distributed across a lot of different projects or we're wearing many hats in our team, the context switching is going to have to happen. But there's a couple things that we can do.

First and foremost is to really kind of actively plan

each week, like look ahead at what is my weekend to look like. Okay, so I like to do this at the end of every Friday before I close up for the weekend. And let's be honest, I'm a business owner, so it's not like I'm not looking at my emails over the weekend. But when I try to wrap up my week, I look at the next week and I'm like, okay, where do I have a bunch of holes in my calendar? Where can I put some things back to back? Where can I create a block of space?

Now, you may not be able to do this with that short of notice, but you could maybe look two, three, four weeks ahead and start to block out chunks of time when you can have focused time. So maybe you found, you know, Wednesday afternoons are pretty quiet. Friday mornings, maybe you put a block on your calendar and it's focused time. And you know that this is some up time where I'm not going to have the rock and whac-a-mole.

I'm not going to do one thing that I'm actually going to focus on Project time. So I don't have to use any context switching during that. That's one thing. Actively planning your week. It may not be the week ahead. I like doing that anyway. Even if you can't change meetings, knowing in advance what's coming actually sort of helps you pre eliminate some of that context switching time. For example, if I know hey, on Monday I have a few client meetings. On Tuesday I'm running a big workshop.

On Thursday I am doing some manager coaching, let's say like I know that's coming. I can think, okay, so Monday I really have to be thinking kind of like problem solving mode. Tuesday I'm more like on on because I'm doing a workshop, right? I have to be like really kind of that on stage feeling Wednesdays a little bit more. For so it was Wednesday.

It's like more creative whenever it looks like that can actually pre like set your mind to be in the right headspace because you're not just open up the calendar. Like, what do you got for me today? Okay. The other thing I strongly suggest is grouping meetings that you are owners of into like common things into one day. So a lot of managers I've worked with do all their one on ones on Monday or Tuesday.

So let's say Monday is a good day for you because you're working from home and you kind of start the week. You get everybody going for the week. Maybe you do all your one on ones on Mondays. For other folks that are doing a hybrid schedule, they like to do their one of them ones in person, so they do them on Tuesdays when they're in the office, because that's when their team members will be there. And then they do those. Then they get that face time with their team members.

They know that on Tuesdays, that's when we get things rolling. And so then they're not context switching from like one on one mode to like project strategy mode. They're in that same headspace. So looking across and really, you know, getting a sense of the week and figuring out, well, again, for meetings, you're, you're the owner of or where you do have that control over the schedule, consolidating those. And then the last thing I'm going to say is I have found this to be one of the best gifts.

I color code my calendar. Like religiously. I have different types of meetings. Red I have are like emergency, can't move. So this is anything with clients, anything that's like, someone's hired me to do that. I'm providing for someone. Those are red. I have if it's kind of a, like a casual check in or something with someone to catch up, I have that in green. If it is something that like a training I'm attending or something like a personal development, I have that in blue.

I'm just sharing my colors, just kind of. And then if it's a block, I have like a lunch break. So don't forget to like take a walk or if I'm blocked out, I have that in gray, right? So that helps me when I'm just like, okay, what's coming my way? Take a glance. I see like, oh, Wednesdays are at like I got to be on and I see Thursday it's it's actually mostly, greens and blue. So it's mostly kind of that professional development or connecting with folks that's going to be a lighter day.

So now conceptually I'm not context switching the whole time because I know it's headed towards me. So those are a few of the strategies that I've found really useful for reducing the sense of I'm pulled in this direction. I have to be thinking in this way from that way. And I don't necessarily mean like you're getting rid of all your meetings, but that you're sort of reducing the context of how you're showing up as a leader. So I mentioned consolidating all your one on ones.

That doesn't just mean having one one on one. Your whole mindset that day is one on one team development that that's like one context. And then maybe you have project meetings and that's another. And then maybe you have like a long term strategy. That's the context I'm talking about because that's where it gets tough. If you had a one on one, now you have a project strategy meeting. Now you have another one on one. Now you're doing a planning meeting. Now you have, you know, a team lunch.

Like, like all of that requires different things of you see what I'm saying? So it doesn't mean we we blow up the whole schedule, but it's kind of like grouping things together to reduce that cognitive load. All right. I'm so curious to hear how this goes.

So if you try this out or when you try this out, please, please send me an email or a message on LinkedIn and tell me, yeah, this grouping on my calendar or color coding it, or kind of figuring out, well, how can I, consolidate what on what days? Or even looking ahead at the schedule, which of these tools works for you? I'm really curious to hear and please, if you have other tools that have helped you with this context switching, we all want to hear about it.

So send me a message on LinkedIn or an email at hello@liagarvin.com, and I will share that on the on a future episode of like what other folks found valuable because it's really fun to hear from you. All right. And what's also fun is to pick up a copy of my new book, The New Manager Playbook, coming out January 27th. If it's already past that, it is on Amazon. I am so excited to share this with you. It has got all the tips, tricks, tools you need to manage with confidence and ease.

Not going to miss this one. All right, see you next time. That's all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. With that said, let's spread the word. If you love this episode, please pass it along to someone who might benefit from it. See you next time.