‍1. Ritualize your diary

‍Visualizerecurring activities and group them with a color code. Block slots in advance (starting one month in advance):

• Recurring meetings
• Temps de travail récurrent
  ◆ “To do killing” / “Inbox Zero” / “Trucs à faire”. Pour les tâches < 15 min.
  ◆ “Deep work - No meeting” => pour les tâches > 15 min qui nécessitent de la concentration.
• Uptime

Guidelines for a good diary‍

• Oriented: guide your week according to your objectives
• Transparent: tell your teams/collaborators the essentials
• Organized and structured: protect your key individual and group times and organize them in the right sequence.
• Realistic: feasible in terms of your energy and the emergencies you normally have to deal with.

Guidelines for a bad agenda :‍

• Opaque: it speaks only to you.
• Too empty: no provision for work and preparation time
• Too optimistic: no time to deal with emergencies and unforeseen events
• Fragmented: scattered 1:1 managers, few 2-hour blocks...

2. Complete diary on Monday morning

Take 30 minutes on Monday mornings to :

• Change / replace the name of your "concentrated" or "deepwork" time slots with the name of the actual activity. This will protect you, as people will be less
  likely to interrupt you if they understand that it's a real work slot.
• Identify the important tasks you want to achieve this week, based on your goals. It's the deepworks that make your week!
• Identify important synchronous moments (1:1, weekly, customer presentations...)
• Ask yourself if you have the time to prepare them and set aside that time.

3. Criticize your agenda

Anticipate your energy state

‍‍Ingeneral, we recommend: Concentrated work in the morning, meetings in the afternoon.

Ask yourself some simple questions!

• "If I do 4 hours of synchronous work (calls, meetings), is it realistic to put in a concentrated work period afterwards?"
• "What state will I be in around 3/16pm for this meeting where I'm going to have to do a lot of listening and deciding?"
• "When will I be freshest to do the thing that matters most in the week?"

And beware of planning bias: we usually think we're doing 30/40% more than we really can.

Choose your battles‍

1. You are responsible for your energy level
We waste a lot of invisible energy putting out fires.
Always ask yourself:

• Does it matter if we do it later?
• Can anyone else do it?
• Is it worth my time now?

💡 Tips

• Create a backlog in your to-do list for non-urgent items
• Write down the things that annoy you in a dedicated file and wait 24 hours before reacting.

2. Say "no"
There are plenty of good reasons to say "no":

• No' of circumstances: I'm not in a position to help you now, but come back at 3 p.m. and I'll be able to give you the attention you need.
• Qualifying 'No': I'm not the best person to do it. Go and see Romain, he'll be able to help you.
• Coaching 'No': I understand there's a problem. But I don't think you've really tried on your own. You don't need me.
• Priority 'No': This is not the priority at the moment.

Be productive‍

Don't fall into the traps:

• Some things take longer to write than to do: just do them.
• Invest time in automating the things that always take up most of your time: Zapier, Calendly, e-mail settings...