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Welcome to Life's a Game, a weekly newsletter to help ambitious people build a more meaningful and integrated life. Was this sent to you? Subscribe here so you don't miss the next one.​

What if you could create more time in your day?
(Spoiler alert: You can.)

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Quick Spin:

• Applying Parkinson's Law to match your effort to the time allowed
• Why to-do lists are actually hurting you
• How to limit context switching so you can "focus & finish"
• Creating a "power hour" to batch your mosquito tasks

♟️ MY TURN:

In college I had 4 jobs (personal trainer in the morning, marketing intern in the afternoon, Hooters waitress at night and nanny for a wealthy family on the weekend) while maintaining a 3.9 GPA and planning my wedding at the age of 19.

During COVID I was a startup CMO while building my VC-backed ecom business and homeschooling 3 kids as a single mom.

The question I always get....."How?"

It’s about time.

Today I’m going to share 4 strategies and frameworks I use to create more time in my day.

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TIP #1: Create a time block. Block your time.

Parkinson’s Law….you may have heard this one: “Work expands to the time that is allowed”. When I worked at Ernst & Young I’d watch people sit at their desks punching numbers into a spreadsheet and replying to emails until 8pm because that is when the Partner left. Their work could have been done by 4pm but it expanded until 8pm because it “had” to.

I work every day from 5-8am. That's it. I studied at this time in college because of my 4 jobs.
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As a mom of 3 with a full time job and a creator, investor and advisor - I have to get my work done in those 3 hours. It's all I really have before my day gets away from me.
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This is where effort comes in. You can choose to work relatively hard for 8 hours or crank for 3 hours.
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My 3 hours of focused time is the equivalent of most others’ full work day. It doesn’t matter how crazy my day gets after 8am. I’ve accomplished what I needed to in order to move my goals forward......and gives me time back to get to the gym or spend a few extra hours with my kiddos.

But it also matters what you do during that time…….(proceed to #2)

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TIP #2: Two To-Dos Today or as I like to call it…the “Two-Do list”
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​If you sit down and think "what should I do today"....you've lost the day. ​
​If you sit down at your desk to write a to-do list…..you’ve lost the day.
If you sit down at your desk and open your email…..you’ve lost the day.

So many productivity blogs are wrong. Long to-do lists are hurting you.

Why?
To-do lists are dopamine creators. When we scroll a long to-do list we look for the easiest thing to do so we can get that dopamine hit. So let's reframe it: keep your ongoing list of things to remember…but not to-do.

Frogs & Rocks

Mark Twain said "If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.”

Stephen Covey’s (author of my favorite book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) says to put the “big rocks first”. Imagine you had to fill a bucket with rocks, pebbles and sand. If you put the sand in first, you leave no room for rocks and pebbles. If you put the pebbles in first, you might have room for the sand, but the rocks won’t fit. The only way to fit everything in the bucket is to put the big rocks in first, then the pebbles. Then, you can pour the sand into the bucket and it will fill all the spaces in between.

Now let's apply these frogs & rocks to how we think about our day.

Every night I create a post-it with the 2 things I am going to accomplish the next morning. These are big meaty projects that need focused time.

Examples of big rocks or frogs:

• A deck to outline a strategy
• Writing a brief or newsletter
• Creating a content strategy
• Brainstorming a new idea
• Writing that big cross-functional email
• Sending an investor update
• Creating a board deck
• Setting up a new software system

Reminder: Focus on the 20% of the work that gets 80% of the results and you will win your day, week and push your career further and faster than you ever thought possible. ​
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TIP #3: Focus & Finish

Morning Consult reports 38% of Gen Zers spend over four hours a day on social media and we all can assume those aren’t four hours straight - it’s broken into small increments. Those same EY colleagues I mentioned before? I’d watch them check their phones, email and social channels every 20-30 mins.

If the strategies in this email give you time in your day - context switching takes it away.

On average, people take 9.5 minutes to get back into a productive workflow after switching between apps or tasks. Let’s look at a visual at how we lose time by context switching.

Why? Our brains have limited capacity to hold and access information at any given time.

5 ways to limit context switching:

1. Pre plan a task to work on (see strategy #2: two-do list)
2. Close all tabs not associated with that task
3. Turn on do not disturb mode on your phone
4. Set a timer to accomplish the task at hand
5. Resist to respond: Schedule time to check email, slack, social and texts

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TIP #4: Kill the mosquito tasks

When was my last dentist visit?
Did I pay that medical bill?
I need to call and cancel that subscription.
Do we need more paper towels?

Does this sound like your brain?
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I call these “mosquito tasks” that buzz around my brain and add to our distracted context switching throughout the day.

So I created a concept called “Power Hour”.

I keep a Power Hour list in my phone notes app. Every time a mosquito task flies in, I write it down and go right back to what I was doing. Every week I have a block of time on Friday afternoon when my brain is headed into weekend mode. I knock out as many tasks as possible (it feels almost like a game at this point).

Batching these tasks together reduces the cognitive load we feel when we just keep pushing them off “hoping” we remember to do them later.

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​To recap:
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​To create more time in your day:

1. Limit the time available to a task
2. Focus on two tasks a day
3. Limit distractions & Resist to respond
4. Batch your mosquito tasks
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♟️ YOUR TURN:

Time is the most finite resource and most people are wasting it.

Today: At the end of your work day today I want you to create your “Two-day” list for tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow: When you wake up tomorrow (before you check email, open slack, look at social) I want you to grab your coffee and set a timer for 90 minutes and work on your two big rocks 🪨🪨 (or frogs 🐸🐸).

Ongoing: Get curious what is vying for your attention and remember you will succeed at the thing you prioritize.

Extra credit: Show off your “two-do” list on Twitter or LinkedIn and tag me!!

Let me know if these strategies resonate and I will go deeper into the time blocking system I use to structure my days and give you the template to follow.
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♟️ SPIN AGAIN: Go deeper on the topic

• ​The Cost Of Context Switching and how to Avoid It by Karina Parikh for Loom

♟️ Let's Win Together.

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