4175: Fixed-Schedule Productivity by Cal Newport on Lifestyle Design

[00:00:01] [SPEAKER_01] Justin Malik is here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, built just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at Coach.com.

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[00:00:58] [SPEAKER_00] This is Optimal Living Daily. Fixed Schedule Productivity by Cal Newport of CalNewport.com. And I'm Justin Malik. And we'll jump right into today's post as we optimize your life. Fixed Schedule Productivity. How I accomplish a large amount of work in a small number of work hours. By Cal Newport of CalNewport.com.

[00:01:24] [SPEAKER_00] My schedule should be terrible. I should have an overwhelming, Maalox-guzzling, stress-saturated schedule. Here's why. I'm a graduate student in a demanding program. I'm working on several research papers while also attempting to nail down some key ideas for my dissertation. I'm TA-ing and taking courses. I maintain this blog. I'm a staff writer for Flack Magazine. And to keep things interesting, I'm working on background research for a potential new book project.

[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_00] You would be reasonable to assume that I must get, on average, 7-8 minutes of sleep a night. But you would also be wrong. Let me explain. For some reason, it's not. Here's my actual schedule. I work from 9 to 5 on weekdays, in the morning on Sunday. That's it. Unless I'm bored, I have no need to even turn on a computer after 5 during the week or anytime on Saturday.

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_00] I fill these times instead, doing, well, whatever I want. How do I balance an ambitious workload with an ambitiously sparse schedule? It's a simple idea I call Fixed Schedule Productivity. Fixed Schedule Productivity. The system works as follows. Number one, choose a schedule of work hours that you think provides the ideal balance of effort and relaxation. Number two, do whatever it takes to avoid violating the schedule.

[00:02:48] [SPEAKER_00] This sounds simple, but think about it for a moment. Satisfying rule two is not easy. If you took your current projects, obligations, and work habits, you'd probably fall well short of satisfying your ideal work schedule. Here's a simple truth. To stick to your ideal schedule will require some drastic actions. For example, you may have to dramatically cut back on the number of projects you were working on, ruthlessly cull inefficient habits from your daily schedule,

[00:03:16] [SPEAKER_00] risk mildly annoying or upsetting some people in exchange for large gains in time freedom, and stop procrastinating. In the abstract, these all seem like hard things to do. But when you have the focus of a specific goal, I do not want to work past five on weekdays, you'd be surprised by how much easier it becomes to deploy these strategies in your daily life. Let's look at an example. Case Study. My Schedule. My schedule provides a good case study.

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_00] To reach my relatively small work hour limit, I have to be careful with how I go about my day. I see enough bleary-eyed insomniacs around here to know how easy it is to slip into a noon to 3am routine, the infamous MIT cycle. Here are some of the techniques I regularly use to remain within the confines of my fixed schedule. Number one, I serialize my projects. I keep two project queues. One for my student projects and one for my writing projects.

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_00] At any one moment, I'm only working on the top project from each queue. When I finish, I move on to the next. This focus lets me churn out quality results without the wasted time of constantly dancing back and forth between multiple efforts. Number two, I'm ultra clear about when to expect results from me. And it's not always soon. If someone slips something onto my queue, I make an honest evaluation of when it will percolate to the top. I communicate this date.

[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_00] Then I make it happen when the time comes. You can get away with telling people to expect a result a long time in the future if, and this is a big if, you actually deliver when promised. Number three, I refuse. If my queue is too crowded for a potential project to get done in time, I turn it down. Number four, I drop projects and quit. If a project gets out of control and starts to sap too much time for my schedule, I drop it.

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_00] If something demonstrably more important comes along and it conflicts with something else in my queue, I drop the less important project. If an obligation is taking up too much time, I quit. Here's a secret. No one really cares what you do on the small scale. In the end, you're judged on your large-scale list of important completions. Number five, I'm not available. I often work in hidden nooks of the various libraries on campus. I check and respond to work email only a few times a day.

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_00] People have to wait for responses from me. It's often hard to find me. Sometimes they get upset at first, but they don't really need immediate access. And I will always respond within a reasonable time frame and get them what they need. So they adjust, and I get things done. Number six, I batch and habitatize. Any regularly occurring work gets turned into a habit, something I do at a fixed time on a fixed date. For example, I write blog posts on Sunday morning.

[00:06:11] [SPEAKER_00] I do reading for my seminar on Friday and Monday mornings, et cetera. Habit-based schedules for the regular work makes it easier to tackle the non-regular projects. It also prevents schedule-busting pileups. Number seven, I start early. Sometimes real early. On certain projects that I know are important, I don't tolerate procrastination. It doesn't interest me. If I need to start something two or three weeks in advance so that my queue proceeds as needed,

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_00] I do so. Why this works. You could fill any arbitrary number of hours with what feels to be productive work. Between email and crucial web surfing, and to-do lists that, in the age of David Allen, grow to lengths that rival the Bible, there's always something you could be doing. At some point, however, you have to put a stake in the ground and say, I know I have a never-ending stream of work, but this is when I'm going to face it. If you don't do this, you let the never-ending stream of work

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_00] push you around like a bully. It will force you into tiring, inefficient schedules, and you'll end up more stressed and no more accomplished. Fix the schedule you want. Then make everything else fit around your needs. Be flexible. Be efficient. If you can't make it fit, change your work. But in the end, don't compromise. No one really cares about your schedule, except for yourself. So make it right.

[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_00] You just listened to the post titled, Fixed Schedule Productivity, by Cal Newport of calnewport.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary.

[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_01] Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, built just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

[00:08:18] [SPEAKER_02] Ultra running shoes are all about space. The space to go further, to feel better, to do something you never thought possible. And this space starts with Ultra Fit. Unlike traditional running shoes, Ultra Fit gives toes more room to move naturally. So every step is strong, balanced, and comfortable. Whatever you're lacing up for, stay out there. With Ultra. Shop now at ultrarunning.com. That's A-L-T-R-A running dot com.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_00] Thank you to Cal. I might have a bit of a different story as I do this for a living now, so I do work from home, and often work nights and weekends. Pretty much every night and every weekend, in fact. But I can say that his rules, like he said, would be difficult to implement. Those rules being to choose a schedule of work hours that you think provides the ideal balance of effort and relaxation. And then the second rule being to do whatever it takes to avoid violating the schedule.

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_00] For me, I'm quite the opposite. I tend to work when I get up, shove random things that need to get done during the daytime, like appointments, groceries and errands, taking a walk, that sort of thing. And then continue working into the night. Setting a schedule and sticking to it would be a complete overhaul and massive change in my life. Maybe it's not the same for you, but I could definitely relate when he said that it would require drastic actions. And as usual,

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_00] this doesn't mean we need to follow these rules, but instead, hopefully, we can see how much he has accomplished, which, by the way, is even more since he wrote this article. He's now a popular author of multiple highly-reviewed best-selling books. And then we can learn from what he's done, maybe try to implement it or part of it, experiment with it, whatever we like. That's the fun of this podcast. We get lots of perspectives and can try whatever resonates with us. We're all different.

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_00] I'm sure tomorrow we'll have a completely different perspective. So with that, thank you for listening. Hope you're having a great Friday if you're listening in real time. And I'll see you tomorrow over the weekend where your optimal life awaits.