None feels different from one

How even a single event can change a schedule

When people are planning weekends or vacations, I often suggest scheduling one “anchor event” per day. This is something you can look forward to and that will provide, well, an anchor to this time. You have a reason to get up and something to structure the day around. You’ll know, at the end of the day, that you did something you enjoyed. You can often be more spontaneous around this anchor knowing that none of these little spontaneous things need to carry the day.

However, this concept also works in reverse. If one scheduled event changes the entire feeling of a day, then if you don’t want that sort of structure, you should recognize that none feels very different from one. It might be wise to clear any sort of commitments from a day that you want to have open.

I’m certainly aware of this when I’m deep into a writing or editing project, and I’m planning out my weeks. I absolutely love to see a day where I don’t have anything scheduled — I mean, outside of getting everyone out the door in the morning, and dealing with my family after work. I’m talking more about seeing the hours between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. looking clear. I like the idea of being able to work completely at my own pace and without needing to watch the clock until the end of the work day.

Being aware of the time

It’s not that having one 30-minute phone call at 11 a.m. is a big deal. It’s only 30 minutes! But I also know that I’ll be aware of that phone call on my calendar, and I’ll likely stop work by 10:45 a.m. to make sure I’m ready, and so I won’t start anything after 10:30 or so that I don’t want to have interrupted and…you can see how this goes. One event changes the entire feel of a day.

So, it’s best to be aware of this. Consequently, when I’m planning phone calls or podcast interviews or anything else for future weeks, I try to batch these things as much as possible. If I already have something scheduled for 2 p.m. on one day, I’ll try to put other things on that day rather than putting them on different days that are currently open. Also, if I’m planning my week, and looking at it and seeing that a given day has one not-terribly-urgent thing, I might reach out to the other parties and see if they are flexible. They might not be, in which case I’ll deal with it. But if they are, maybe I can create an open day.

A lunch-time reset

Again, I know not all kinds of work allow for this. In many corporate environments it’s almost impossible to keep a day completely free of meetings. If that’s the case, and you do like to have some focused, uninterrupted time, you might try thinking of lunch as a reset. You don’t schedule things before 12:30 p.m. on a few days if that’s possible, and then you try to preserve that space. I know that if I do have to put one thing on a day, my preference would be to either put it at the end of the day (like 3:30 p.m., right before my kids show up) when I know I’ll be wrapping up anyway, or possibly around lunch (like 12-1 p.m.) because I’ll likely break around then anyway. It’s less disruptive to the flow.

But in any case, once you’ve recognized this phenomenon that one feels much different from none, you can figure out how to use it in your life. Sometimes that nudges putting in a “one.” I’ve been home all day on a rainy Saturday with my kids and it can feel crazy-making. Better to go to the children’s museum from 10-noon and feel like the day had an anchor. But sometimes it’s less of a good thing. If you’re preserving space for creative work, it might be better to take three calls on one day than one on each of three days. Having two open days will allow you to get in the flow and not watch the clock. Much as I love time, sometimes being off the clock is a wonderful feeling indeed.