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7 It’s All in Your Head: Prevent Drowning through Structure and Flow

I’d like to share with you a journey involving a client of mine. Nancy, whom we met in chapter 4, always has a smile and wants to know what’s new with you. She’s just delightful. She’s a super-hard worker, but she felt like she wasn’t getting anything done — despite her long hours at work and multitasking. In addition to her self-care challenges that I shared with you in that chapter, she had ADD, she procrastinated, she felt constantly interrupted, and she never finished what she started because of the interruptions.

One day, we made arrangements for me to shadow her in her office for a two-hour session. I was a fly on the wall that day. Well, not a fly, more like a mannequin on a chair shoved into the corner. Nancy often attempted to multitask: She read email while talking on the phone; filed while printing checks; listened to voicemail while composing emails. She had a huge project deadline coming up and still had more than half of the project to complete, yet she read an email about a conference that she might attend in two months, and the article had hyperlinks about people involved with the event, so she went down that rabbit hole for a good 20 minutes. A few times she just sat staring at her desk with her hands cupped around her coffee mug. She told me later that in those staring minutes, she was in a state of panic because she knew that she had millions of things to do and plenty of piles on her desk to attack, but she had no idea of what she needed to do next.

Strategically, when you take over how you run your day, you also take over time. You harness it. Once you’re able to tell your time what to do (as we’ll explore throughout part 2), you’ll have the mental bandwidth to apply the necessary tactics to cut inefficiency from your day.

Nancy learned that rushing and diving into action without a plan were not helpful tactics. She needed to map out her plan of attack. She had to take her time in order to save time.

She learned that she must understand both scheduling and modification…routines and flexibility, structure and flow.

She learned the I in CIA: Implement Structure and Flow.

Say what? Aren’t those opposites?

Yes, it sounds crazy, but we need to Implement Structure and Flow. We need to have processes for how we handle documents and communication. We need to set up our go-bags, mobile offices, and work spaces based on what we need to accomplish. We need to have structured routines and time blocks for completing work; yet we need to be able to adjust those routines and time blocks, and morph — move them around as needed — and still get everything done that we need to.

On the one hand, if we have only structure in our day, any little variance or hiccup might throw us into a tornado of overwhelm. Take for example a detective named Monk, played by Tony Shalhoub in the television series Monk. Monk had such a precise routine for every part of his work and life that if there was any deviation from it, that sent him into a panic attack. I’m a big proponent of having routines and a foundational structure, but we also need to be able to go with the flow when “stuff happens.”

Martial arts legend Bruce Lee espoused a philosophy that we need to “be water.” We need to adapt, depending on the situation. He said, “Be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water in a cup, and it becomes the cup. You put water in a bottle, and it becomes the bottle. In a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or drip or creep or crash. Be water.”

In order to be an agent of change in your Time Management Revolution, you must have a form, a structure, yet be willing to modify, adapt, and flow whenever necessary.

Implement Structure and Flow.

In a January 20, 2013, article by Michael Ordoña in the San Francisco Chronicle, actor Jeremy Renner, who has starred in such films as The Bourne Legacy and Avengers, revealed that he works on a multitude of projects throughout the year:

Acting in films

Producing movies

Writing music

Renovating houses

Those aren’t little 10-minute tasks. They are big-time, long-term projects that require many steps and components to complete.

When Ordoña asked how all this was possible, Renner replied, “Fluidity.”

At first I was worried that he would say something like, “I just wake up and go with the flow. There’s no plan. I just do whatever.”

I was pleasantly surprised by the answer he gave when he described what “fluid” meant to him: “Being prepared as you can be, but willing to let it all go because it’s not working. To be fluid and to allow change, move around the obstacles.”

Today, Nancy still procrastinates, but only a few minutes a day instead of hours each day. She does her blah tasks first thing in the morning to help avoid most of the procrastination. To help with her ADD, she sets a timer for 15 minutes of concentration. She plans her action list at the end of each day for the following day, and this list keeps her focused on what she needs to do. She’s become her own agent of change. She recognizes when one of the AGENT components — the five areas of the workday to control, explained below and throughout part 2 — is getting out of whack and stops to make adjustments.

To reiterate (hint: I’m brainwashing you at this moment), we need to have structured systems, routines, and time blocks for completing work; yet we need to be able to adjust those systems, routines, and time blocks, and morph — move them around as needed — and still get everything done that we need to.

In order to be an agent of change in our Time Management Revolution, we must Implement Structure and Flow. We must be able to control, yet also modify, these five key components of our workday:

Assignment and Task Completion

Go-Bag and Work-Space Layout

Electronic Communication

Notes, Document, and File Management

Time Protection

By understanding that everything you must do during a workday corresponds to one of these five components, your brain is able to zero in on the areas that are not currently under your control. By implementing the strategies and tactics in part 2, you’ll be able to build the infrastructure you need each day to manage these five different components. By being in control of these areas and understanding how they need to operate, you’ll also be able to apply flexibility when technology or your fellow humans throw a wrench into your plans.

We’re not robots, but we do need enough structure and systems so that there is time for spontaneity, putting out fires, and…fun!

When you achieve the first part of the mission, Create Clarity (part 1), it makes completing this portion of your Time Management Revolution that much easier.

Ready? It’s time to head out on Operation: Implement Structure and Flow!