Summer: the ideal time to practice time design
A lot of us step away from thinking about time in the summer because, well, summer.
And yet, summer is an ideal time to practice designing your time.
Time design is a skill, one leaders and executives must learn, practice, and iterate over time as your calendar, career and ambitions change and evolve.
By designing your time, I mean: the practice of being intentional about your weekly and monthly schedule.
Developing the skills to align the way you approach your time with your professional goals, and then to curate a weekly and monthly calendar that includes activities and routines that support your focus, priorities and you showing up as you desire to.
Time design is creating an individual map that guides your decision-making and evolves over time. It’s about being realistic about what you want to focus on, your priorities and trade-offs. It’s about being honest with yourself about impact and productivity. It's not about perfectionism, it's about self-awareness, realism, movement and progress.
The first step in time design is to start to make small changes to the way you plan and design your time.
This summer, I encourage you to infuse some fun, rest and rejuvenation into your summer. Do it by practicing the skill of intentionally designing your time.
Over the past eight years working with executives and leaders on their leadership, impact and time, I’ve seen time design play a critical role.
This often-under-sung hero of skills can be what sets those apart from feeling like they could be operating at a higher-level versus being in a state of flow and top performance. And as there are more and more pulls and complexity for leaders and executives to navigate, time design gains increasing weight and impact.
Time design can include many activities:
from the obvious: planning and scoping your work and your teams’ work, carving out time for strategic work, figuring out how to share your thought leadership.
to the less obvious: a Sunday morning basketball game that fills up your cup, identifying a routine that works for you to stay informed of industry trends and more.
My clients are often are surprised to find that starting to practice time design with the activities you are craving is the best place to start, as you can build momentum from there.
Summertime design might look like:
Planning time to open that interesting book that’s been calling to you from your bookshelf.
Going for an evening walk on Wednesdays to enjoy your neighbourhood.
Jumping in the lake every day when on vacation, so it really feels like vacation.
Planning tea with a mentor who helps you get perspective on your career.
Creating a weekly family board game time, since you find it a great way to connect.
Prioritizing workouts in the morning 3x a week, as you find they help you be more productive.
Consider what you are craving in your days and start practicing time design this summer.