+1 #80: Time Blocks

Continuing our theme of making TODAY (and every day!) a Masterpiece Day, let's take a quick look at Time Blocks. Gary Keller wrote The ONE Thing. He also created the largest real estate agency in the world. In his great little book, he tells us how important it is to ruthlessly focus on what's most important—the key activities that drive the real results. He takes the 80/20 principle to the extreme and has you continue drilling down on the most important things until you get to the ONE Thing that drives the whole show. And then he has you ruthlessly focus on what you need to do TODAY to make that ONE Thing a reality—knocking over the next domino in a chain of dominoes that inevitably leads to the outcome you're looking for. Just figuring out what your ONE Thing is (over the long run and today) obviously takes a lot of Deep Work. Gary tells us we need to create "Time Blocks" during our day. He calls them the #1 "power tool" of time management. The rules? You turn off ALL distractions for a set amount of time and you focus on whatever you decided is the most important thing. Then we make a habit of doing that. Every. Single. Day. For me, my #1 creative thing is a ruthless consistency on what I call my AM1 Deep Work time block. It's the time after I get up before the family gets up that I use to do that day's most important work. In fact, I'm working on this +1 at 5:51 AM while the family sleeps. We're on a mini vacation. I can hear the ocean waves as I type away on my iPhone. I'm excited for the family to get up and have another great day—feeling complete that I've already crushed it today. (Yes, that's just another way I'm weird. I'm in good company though. In On Writing, Stephen King tells us he never misses a day of writing. Something magical about it…) I LOVE my Deep Work time blocks. You? When's your best time to go Deep? Schedule it. Shut the doors. Turn off all distractions. Make it a sacred ritual. Then aggregate and compound those tiny little gains over an extended period of time +1 style!