{"id":315,"date":"2010-07-06T06:00:17","date_gmt":"2010-07-06T13:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottcochrane.com\/?p=315"},"modified":"2012-07-19T15:45:11","modified_gmt":"2012-07-19T22:45:11","slug":"why-my-best-day-is-the-day-i-plan-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/2010\/07\/06\/why-my-best-day-is-the-day-i-plan-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"Why My Best Day is the Day I Plan Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you were to look at my Outlook Calendar, two things would stand out.<\/p>\n<p>First of all, from Monday to Thursday you\u2019d find that I schedule everything. Everything! I work ruthlessly to align my daily calendar with my highest priorities, and I\u2019ve learned that for me, if I don\u2019t pro-actively drop my \u2018big rocks\u2019 into my calendar well in advance, then a whole bunch of lesser priorities will simply work their way into my day.<\/p>\n<p>But then you\u2019d notice that Fridays are very different. This has been an experiment I\u2019ve been working on for about a year, and so far I really like the results.<\/p>\n<p>My Fridays are basically wide open. I book nothing and accept no appointments, meetings, phone calls, etc.<\/p>\n<p>My goal is to spend no less than 20% of my work week on long-term vision and strategy. And I\u2019ve found that if I don\u2019t carve out this time on Friday my attention will naturally gravitate towards operational issues. Without my Friday strategy I might start the week hoping that I\u2019ll find time to focus on the long term, but inevitably the weekend will roll around and I\u2019ll look back and find that the tyranny of the urgent had overtaken me yet again.<\/p>\n<p>So now I come into the office on Friday fired up about a full day devoted to a time window of about 18 to 36 months out. This can include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Relationship building<\/li>\n<li>Research<\/li>\n<li>Strategy work<\/li>\n<li>Personal development<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What it excludes is any activity whose results would be found within the current year. Such work is operational, and I\u2019ve given myself four days a week to play in that sandbox.<\/p>\n<p>In your leadership world, and with your particular wiring, you may find a different way to accomplish this. But the discipline of long term thinking is very important, however you make it work.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How do you maintain a balance between operational priorities and long-term thinking?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you were to look at my Outlook Calendar, two things would stand out. First of all, from Monday to Thursday you\u2019d find that I schedule everything. Everything! I work ruthlessly to align my daily calendar with my highest priorities, and I\u2019ve learned that for me, if I don\u2019t pro-actively drop my \u2018big rocks\u2019 into&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,86,5,478,7],"tags":[232,229,239,240,234,216,238,233,81,231,235,236,230,237],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action","category-development","category-discipline2","category-featured","category-leadership","tag-appointments","tag-calendar","tag-discipline","tag-long-term-thinking","tag-long-term-vision-and-strategy","tag-meetings","tag-personal-development","tag-phone-calls","tag-planning","tag-priorities","tag-relationship-building","tag-research","tag-schedule","tag-strategy-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2404,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/2404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}