Time-Blocking
This is not going to be anything revolutionary, but I have observed this about myself and what works for me. If I have 30 minutes or so between meetings, very little programming work is going to get done in that amount of time. By programming work, I mean the kind of deep work that you get done when you’re in flow state and you aren’t staring at the blank cursor. It ususally seems like it takes 10-15 minutes to get into that state. But I am definitely not going to get into that state if I know that I will only have 15 minutes in that state before my next meeting. So obviously, the best thing to do is to bunch all your meetings together. That’s ideal, but not always possible. Most of my meetings are with people who are in way more meetings than me, and they are always changing the schedule, or running late, or double booked. So what to do when you are essentially subject to someone else’s meeting schedule? ...