We talked in the last video about how
writers are architects of information. But to be an architect of information or,
at least, a good one, you also have to be an architect of time. We touched on this point in the first
course of the specialization particularly when we talked about
the Animal Farm Principle. "All hours are equal, but
some are more equal than others." What I asked you to do is identify those
hours that are more equal than others, those hours when you tend
to do your best work. I then asked you to think about
how you can design your schedule to protect those hours as frequently
as possible throughout your week. This is where the idea of being
an architect of time comes in. How can you structure your days so that you can make the best use
of your most valuable hours? I want you to think in terms
of studio time and deep work. If you need a refresher on
what those concepts are, click on these links to
videos from our first course. I also want you to think in terms of
shallow work particularly as you complete what I'm going to ask you to do next. Identify those hours in your day and week that are less equal than others,
at least to you. Shallow work, which we learned is
something less cognitively taxing, like filling out forms, or responding
to short straight forward emails, shouldn't be done during studio time. Try instead to keep it for
those less-equal parts of the day. Right before lunch, right after
or during a meeting. Essentially, any slot when you
tend not to have enough time or energy to tackle something substantial. One of my students, for example, shared
that Thursday afternoons are generally when her attention levels and
motivation are both at their lowest, given the way the rest of
her schedule is set up. So we arranged a way to shift some
shallow work into that period, rather than have her continue to
fail at getting deep work done then. She didn't give up on the deep work. She just did it during
a different part of the week. Not every teacher or boss will
give you this kind of flexibility. But perhaps that is even more of a reason
to be very deliberate about how you spend the hours you do control. As Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, two self-proclaimed time dorks who
used to work for Google Ventures, put it, in Make Time: How to Focus
on What Really Matters Every Day, "Most of our time is spent by default." We get stuck in ruts and routines that aren't always the most
productive, energizing, or even healthy. But with a little thought and strategy, it's possible to create
helpful pockets of improvement, even if only by better identifying those
more equal hours that are good for deep work, and those less equal hours
that are good for shallow work. You don't need a completely empty
calendar to become an architect of time. But you do need a good way to
categorize what you're trying to build.