# Master Your Workday Now ![rw-book-cover](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51QrBmTDowL._SL200_.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[Michael Linenberger]] - Full Title: Master Your Workday Now - Category: #books ## Highlights - To define that model, consider this. If someone (not your boss or an important client) tried to insert a half-day project into your currently very busy schedule, giving you no permission to drop other items, and then asked you to complete it tomorrow, I am pretty sure you would say, “No, I am too busy right now.” However, even with the same workload, if that request were due, say, two months from now (and you had some interest in it), you would probably say “fine.” Somewhere in the range between tomorrow and two months is the date after which you stop feeling too busy, as you mentally gaze from now on into the future. ([Location 504](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=504)) - So somewhere between one and two weeks is this threshold of work concern. I call it the Workday Now Horizon, or Now Horizon for short. ([Location 512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=512)) - The Now Horizon helps define the mental model of your current workload. It delineates which commitments you consider when you think about what is on your plate now. Most very busy people, when they think about work inside that horizon, feel anxious or stressed about their workload. When they consider work beyond that horizon, however, they usually mentally relax, even if there is no change in their job or commitments. However, unless your work is seasonal, you don’t in reality become less busy; you just imagine that you will. This is a classic mental model where our mental image does not match reality. ([Location 513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=513)) - That time period between the immediate now and the Now Horizon is what I call your Workday Now (see Figure 4.4). It is the time period you are thinking about now at work. It is a very important period of time because it is the period we put nearly all our energy and attention on. If someone asks, “What’s on your plate now?” you look inside that period when you answer. The volume of things you perceive to be due in that period is what determines if you feel you are too busy or not. The impact of this period is so important that it is at the core of the title of this book, Master Your Workday Now! Your ability to manage that period well affects whether you are happy with your work. ([Location 549](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=549)) - Again, this is just a mental model. In reality, your workload does not decrease after 1.5 weeks. Like a wave on the ocean, it is a rolling time period—your holy grail of a more relaxed work pace is always just a week or so away, and remains that way. You are likely constantly thinking, “If only I can get past this week, I can take a breath.” And that thought repeats itself, week after week. ([Location 574](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=574)) - if we consider everything inside the Workday Now (left of the Now Horizon) separately from everything beyond the Now Horizon, we can start to get a handle on work. Specifically, if the task list we study daily represents only tasks within the Workday Now period, and if we can control the number of tasks we place on that list, we may be able to control our stress and anxiety about work. ([Location 581](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=581)) - The Workday Now period is the period we worry about most. And since there are only so many things we can do in the next week or so anyway, why not admit that and adjust this list accordingly? Just selectively move more items off that list and onto the Over-the-Horizon list (page 2 of the Workday Mastery To-Do List from Chapter 2), the list you study only weekly. Doing that small step alone can control a huge amount of chaos, and I will show you how in the next chapter. ([Location 584](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=584)) - To review, we all tend to focus nearly exclusively on activities that are either due today or coming up within the next 1.5 weeks. ([Location 593](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=593)) - An article in the January 2005 Harvard Business Review by Dr. Edward M. Hallowell asserts that people under those conditions can enter a state with near Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)–like symptoms. You may have seen this in yourself and others—being so busy you feel “scattered.” Well, it’s not just a feeling—you are scattered. Your brain functionality is dropping. Dr. Hallowell asserts in this article, and in a book he later wrote called Crazy Busy, that as we make a habit of this, the degraded brain functionality can grow worse, month after month. ([Location 616](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=616)) - zone occupies the upper part of page 1. First thing in the morning, you should brainstorm and populate that list with items due that day so you can track them and complete them in time. ([Location 647](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=647)) - More importantly, you should be very selective about what you put on that list. If you guard it carefully and use it only for true deadline tasks, then you can reduce to a minimum the number of truly urgent actions you take, thus reducing unneeded stress. ([Location 651](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=651)) - The next urgency zone I call the Opportunity Now zone. Tasks there represent everything else inside your Workday Now—in other words, everything other than tasks absolutely due today. ([Location 658](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=658)) - But note this: due to the right-to-left fl ow of the conveyor belt, these items may become critical if you put them off too long, so you want to keep your eye on them. Therefore, you should scan this list at least once or twice per day to see if any tasks there become eligible to fit into the day, or to see if any of them have jumped in urgency. I will cover this ([Location 668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=668)) - Any tasks to the right of the Now Horizon, beyond your current consideration, are called Over-the-Horizon tasks (see right side of Figure 5.1). By definition, you are not very concerned about them. ([Location 673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=673)) - The fact that you need to check this list only once a week clears a great amount of management effort and concern from your workday. It helps keep your daily focus clear and unfettered. ([Location 682](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=682)) - The Two Most Important System Rules • First, only place items in the Critical Now list if they pass the going-home test: Would you work late into the night to complete these if they were not done? If no, do not put the item on the list. ([Location 697](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=697)) - The second management technique is to keep the Opportunity Now Tasks list to fewer than 20 items by moving the lowest-priority items to the Over-the-Horizon list. This represents a Control-layer activity and is probably the hardest part of the process, but it must be done to keep the list usable. ([Location 702](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=702)) - Notice that at the top of page 1 of the Workday Mastery To-Do List I’ve labeled the two major zones—the Critical Now zone and the Opportunity Now zone—as Now Tasks. I call the tasks in this combined list your Now Tasks list because that’s the list of everything you need to have on (or near) your mind right now; these are the tasks eligible to do right now. ([Location 706](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=706)) - Here’s another reason the Workday Mastery To-Do List is so useful: equally important to knowing what is on your list (the Now Tasks list) is the knowledge that there is nothing urgent that is not on this list. ([Location 712](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=712)) - Again, I want to mention and emphasize that this is an urgency-based management system, not an importance-based one. It’s not that importance is not important; it’s just that attempting to use importance as your primary decision tool in an urgency-based office environment usually leads to failure. Our frank admittance of the harsh reality that urgency rules the workday in most office environments these days allows us to provide this workable management solution. ([Location 720](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=720)) - once you separate out urgency, or the time element, from the measure of a task’s importance, what is left behind is what I call intrinsic importance. It is a measure of the timeless value of the item to you. ([Location 734](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=734)) - In the Outlook version of the system, I offered an optional column where you could score the intrinsic importance of a task from one to nine (nine being highest); this allowed you to see easily which tasks on your list might have more core value to you. ([Location 737](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=737)) - The point of the numbers on that list is to direct your eye first to the more important items so you can consider them first. Note I said “consider them first,” not “do them first.” These numbers are not a commitment to the order in which you will do tasks—they only provide additional information. That is because this is an overlay to the urgency structure, not a replacement for it. ([Location 742](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=742)) - As I stated before, importance-only task systems just do not work well in an urgency-driven environment. ([Location 746](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=746)) - In fact, each time my colleagues and I use the intrinsic importance overlay described above, we usually end up ignoring the intrinsic importance scores, and give up on them over time. The urgency-based system is just so much more effective. ([Location 747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=747)) - And you know you can ignore the larger Over-the-Horizon tasks list for up to a week at a time, which removes considerable unneeded distraction from your day-to-day work. ([Location 761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=761)) - On your weekly review of that list you are looking for jumps in urgency—if you find any, you will move those tasks to page 1 of your two-page paper task system and work them accordingly from there. ([Location 762](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=762)) - throughout the day, glance at that list often, perhaps three or four times, even hourly, and ensure that you get all Critical Now tasks done as early as possible. To work those tasks, use either dedicated task time or gaps in your day. If necessary, use part of your lunchtime or time freed up by skipping a low-value meeting. Just try to get them done early. ([Location 813](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004FN1LSS&location=813))