Protecting Strategy / Big-Picture Time From the Urgent: A Potentially Novel Way to Do It

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In this episode, let’s discuss what to do when everyone wants your time, so you struggle to find time to dig into the strategic, big-picture work that you know is important.

We talk about:

Some of my more standard advice—like shutting your door for a focus block or going dark on Slack
What to try if those tactics aren’t working for you
Why it might make sense to “take a day off” (or 1/2 or 3/4 day off) … and then not actually take it off & use it for strategic work.

If you’re in a leadership role and feel like you’re constantly putting out fires but never getting to that higher-level strategic thinking, I really hope this helps. This episode is designed to help you protect time for that work—so your time use actually matches the leadership role you’re in.

Below is a transcript of the episode. Enjoy!

Full transcript:

Kelly Nolan: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bright Method Podcast, where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up the bright method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all personally and professionally. Let’s get you falling asleep, proud of what you got done today, and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in.

Hey, hey. All right, so today we’re gonna talk about some things that came up on Instagram. I did a new kind of ask, like a crowdsource for topics that people wanted to hear me talk about, and one of the topics that came up was the following. Before I do that, I just wanna throw out there, I ask people on Instagram a lot for topics just because it’s an easy place to crowdsource.

You know, it’s easy for people to like type a quick response, but if there’s anything you want me to address, just be, and you’re not on Instagram, always feel free to just shoot me an email. I’m happy to talk [00:01:00] about. I always wanna make sure these topics and these episodes are relevant to you, and so please feel free to just shoot an email my way and raise a topic you wanna hear more about.

All right, so this one was from someone who’s in a leadership role and she said, everyone wants my time. It’s hard to make time for the big picture, and I think that that is something that a lot of people can probably relate to. I think that a lot of us are in that spot. I think a lot of people are in that spot, and especially when you’re in leadership, especially when you oversee people, much of your role really might be in that reactive place, like in that spot where, as I’ve said before, you know you’re bringing your judgment to these ever evolving situations, and that’s where your company wants you to be.

That’s, you know, your job is to keep everything moving, not be the choke point, allow everything through, but with your expertise and judgment along the way. We’ve talked a lot about that in episode 23 on the maker [00:02:00] and manager distinction, and it’s kind of tricky to realize that’s where your role needs to be.

While we can talk about getting rid of some of the other work, like really absorbing and accepting, okay, my, my job is to be in this more reactive place that might involve having to offload more of the maker work that I have. You know, I’ve had a client who was in leadership who said she had to really force herself to abide by this kinda.

Internal rule that she did nothing original, like she only would review and she found that was the best way to like force herself to train up her team and then also just really unload that maker work so that she could live more in that manager workspace. So that is a solution. And yet there is still some of that heads down work that you can’t unload, you can’t delegate out.

It really is that, you know, as she said, that big picture work, that strategic work, figuring out what is the top priority right now, what projects serve that, which don’t, [00:03:00] which repetitive work is everybody doing on this team that we could unload, like get rid of so we have more time to do some of this other stuff.

Even on the project side, what do we eliminate? What do we punt? All that kind of stuff. And that stuff so often goes neglected, understandably, because of the amount of firefighting a lot of people are doing just in the day-to-day. And that urgent stuff really can dislodge that really important work. And that feels stressful because we know we should be doing that other work.

And it’s stressful not to. It also probably like the inability to get to that work really compounds the stress and the workload issues because part of that work might lead to eliminating some work, bringing the workload down, that kind of stuff. But without having the opportunity to sit down and review the information and think about it and really focus on it, it’s hard to eliminate work.

So we can’t, so we just keep on all working more and more and more. Even if some of that work, maybe we could have unloaded earlier. We need [00:04:00] to get you that time. You know, if this is you, we need to figure out a way to get you that time and get it to you consistently and frequently enough. Now, some of the options that you’ve probably already tried are things like picking a two hour block, even a one hour block every week, shutting the door.

Putting a sign up that says, do not talk to me. Do not interrupt me. Um, I’ll be available at this time. I do find saying that is very helpful. If you say, you know, this time to this time, do not interrupt me. I’ll be available after that time going dark on email, slack, all of that. But sometimes that doesn’t work.

It gets dislodged before we even get to it or we start and someone still plows through all your defenses of saying, please don’t talk to me, and that can be really frustrating. There are other things you might have tried, like trying to corral the questions that people have for you for one-on-ones, maybe even holding office hours in addition to one-on-ones, and yet [00:05:00] there’s still just so many questions that it’s not a sustainable thing to ask people to hold off all the time until those meetings.

So given all of that, and just to be clear, I do think some of those things work. It’s more like, I don’t wanna just talk about those things when you’re like, yeah, I’ve tried those. Those are obvious and they’re not working for me. So if you have not tried those things yet, I would encourage you to do that.

And just to be clear, I really like the idea of. Closing your office door if you have one. Putting up a sign that says, I’ll be available at this time before then, do not interrupt me at the same time going dark on email and Slack, and then really using that time to do that strategic work, if that works for you.

Similarly, if you’re getting interrupted all the time, as I mentioned, tell people, you know, really make sure you’re holding those one-on-ones. Maybe having office hours in addition, and really training your team to hold off their questions until that time. But let’s say you’ve tried those things. And they’re not working.

I wanted to raise something that you’ve [00:06:00] probably heard of a little bit, but my guess is some people haven’t, and these are things that come from clients, like clients have explained that they do this. To some extent. And so I wanted to pass it on to everybody as something to consider. And even if you reject it initially, just stick with it and listen to it and really think about maybe is there a way that you could make this work for you or is there a way you could put your own spin on it to some degree, maybe not exactly the way I’m talking about it, but some sort of degree.

And that is the idea in short to tell everybody that you are taking, let’s say, a day off. Even maybe two days. It depends on what you need, but let’s say a day off and then you actually don’t take the day off. You don’t come into the office, but you don’t take the day off. And if you need to talk to HR about that or your boss, whatever it is, you know, you could do that is basically tell everybody, the team clients.

People above you, in other departments below you, all [00:07:00] that kind of stuff that you’re taking the day off. Tell minimally the people who really need to know that you’re not taking the day off and then work from home if you can, or if you can’t work from home ’cause kids are there, or for whatever other reason.

Finding another space with really good internet that you could work. Even if that’s like thinking of a friend who their family works. Both of the adults work in the offices. If they have kids, they’re in school, their house is quiet, and they wouldn’t mind you just posting up at their kitchen table for a few hours, is really getting that heads down.

Work at a different time when everybody else thinks you’re not working and you are, and then that is the time that you also have to boundary yourself and not get in the weeds of email. Slack channels and all that kind of stuff, and really use that time as heads down, work time on the strategy side of things.

So a couple caveats to this are that obviously you need this focus time frequently. You know, one time thing is probably great for a month [00:08:00] or two or three, but then you will run into the same issue. And so I think, you know, you can just try this one time. I would calendar sometime after it. How often do I wanna do that?

Did it work? First of all? And if so, how often do I wanna do that? Is this a monthly thing where I take one day, quote unquote off and do my strategic thinking is, would every two months be sufficient every six weeks, once a quarter? It really depends on you and what your company, department, and entity requires.

But really thinking about if this is successful for you, how much do you wanna do it? How often do you wanna do it? Then building that in. You know, do you wanna go through and block the next six months and then calendar a different time to do that? It really depends on you, but I would say that proactively blocking these things in your calendar will make it easier and easier for them to happen.

Another caveat is you might also be someone who really. Can’t [00:09:00] do like focus that hard for a full day, which I don’t, I mean, I think it’s pretty normal. I think that it’s more normal than we think that real heads down work probably maxes out for a lot of people at four hours a day that like really deep heads down work.

And so if that’s you, do you wanna take more like part of a day, like a half day or even like three quarters of a day and then you come back on for the last two hours and deal with the reactive stuff. I would say that that might allow you to relax and really focus into that strategic work, knowing that you will log on for two hours later in the day if you want to.

If that doesn’t sound like, you know, you don’t, you have to do that. You could also maybe couple it with some more like personal stuff, like a haircut or a doctor’s appointment or anything like that. You could even do couple it with a fun gym class. You don’t get to go to very often, but. Just know yourself.

I think sometimes people take off full days from work and either expect themselves to work hard that whole day and then are [00:10:00] disappointed when they don’t, or think they’re going to get like 16 things done that day when 16 big things done that day. That just wasn’t gonna happen. And that brings me to that third caveat is.

Really just plan to do the strategic thinking. Don’t also think you’re gonna, you know, organize the garage or that storage room or all sorts of other things, and do your strategic thinking and write that white paper and put the slide deck together, all that kind of stuff. This is really protecting time just for that one main thing that never seems to happen.

Who knows, you can take this where it goes for you. If you find this to be invaluable, maybe you do once a month, you do this for strategic work and another, you know, every two weeks you’re doing this, and the other time you do it for more of the heads down work that you need. And it’s really up to you.

And you might think this is crazy. There’s no way all this kind of stuff, and you might be right, I’m not saying that, but I [00:11:00] have had clients who they themselves, I don’t even have to challenge them on it. They’re like, well, you know, my boss goes golfing once a week, or My boss does this once a week or so-and-so does this once a week, and I’m not sure why I think I can’t do this.

Which actually is very much about work if they’re doing that. And so just kind of challenging yourself a little bit might be really useful. And again, do it at your own cadence. Maybe you do strategic work one day a month and then the next month you do more of that. Like, I just need protected time to do some heads down work.

That’s not strategy work, and the next month is strategy and the next month is not. You can really make this whatever you want it to be, but I think it’s really worth trying. One of the reasons I bring this up a lot now is. I’ve heard about it from clients for a while, and for some reason it kind of clicked.

I mean, I’ve always liked it, but it really clicked of the power of this. When I was having that interview with Heather Hubbard, and if you haven’t listened to that, it’s, she basically runs these retreats, their four day [00:12:00] retreats that help women essentially get to hear themselves and decide what they want.

And it could be professionally, personally, it could go in a lot of different directions. My first reaction when I heard about these four day retreats candidly was Do busy people, the people who need this and want this, do they really have time for that? But that’s actually the point, like if you are so busy that you can’t hear yourself, trying to protect one to two hours a week, let’s say, to try and hear yourself and make those decisions is probably a lot harder than protecting just four days.

Of standalone time because when we have just one or two hours in our week that we’re trying to protect, I mean those hours so easily can get dislodged before we even get to them. We roll up on them and people are asking us questions, and it feels like I’ll just do this next week, the protected time next week, and I’ll deal with these questions right now.

It’s so easy to give away those [00:13:00] small pockets of time, and that’s why Heather’s approach to having these four day retreats instead of. Trying to help you through it, you know, over the course of, let’s say six months, one hour a week makes a lot of sense because if you are that busy person, it is easier to protect and just more motivating to protect something like a four day stretch to do that retreat.

And then there are a lot of other benefits too, of like actually unplugging for four days and all that kind of stuff. But bringing it back to this, I think there’s something similar here. If you are able to protect one to two hours a week to do strategic thinking consistently, awesome, and keep at it and keep going.

But if that hasn’t worked for you, it might be because it’s just really hard to protect one or two hours a week in your schedule. It almost feels a little bit too for yourself. Like it’s just there. It’s easy enough to give it away. You’re like, what was I really gonna accomplish in an hour? This thing is on fire.

Let me deal with it. I’ll just deal with that [00:14:00] strategic work next week. And that happens every single week. Where if you protected that day or that half day every month or every six weeks or every two months or whatever you want it to be, then it is more rare and it’s bigger and you really make plans for it and you protect it.

And that just feels there’s something to that. There’s an appeal there that I think it’s worth raising and devoting a podcast episode too, to help nudge you to at least try it. ’cause I think it’s certainly worth a try. All right. I’m curious what you think. If you’re completely resistant to it, I do encourage you to challenge, just say like, for the next 20 minutes, let’s pretend you’re gonna do this, and what would that look like?

What would that look like realistically for you? How would you make that work? Just pretend for 20 minutes you’re gonna do this and troubleshoot it. Brainstorm on how could you make it work for you? And if at the end of 20 minutes you still are like, yeah, there’s no way, then maybe you’re right, but maybe it’s worth trying and [00:15:00] so lemme know.

Lemme know how it goes. Alright, switching gears, just quick. Two little admin points at the end. First, is that how I structure my day series that I have on Instagram? If you haven’t checked it out, I really encourage you to check it out. It has taken on a life of its own. What it is is other working professional women sharing about how they manage kind of an average workday.

There are women across industries. There are women with and without kids, with little kids, with older kids, lot of different situations. Single women, married women, divorced women. Lots of different situations and it’s really become this incredible place to not only learn about other women’s days, but then also support them.

It’s so fun and it’s all anonymous, like the person writing is anonymous, so the people commenting don’t know who it is. But the anonymous people do read it, and it’s such a fun way to support women in their lives and cheer them on and learn from them and ask questions of [00:16:00] them. And it’s really fun. So I encourage you to check it out.

If you go to my Instagram, it’s at Kelly Nolan underscore. I keep them all looking the same, so they’re easy to find. And basically it’s like a little coffee cup image on the posts that are for it. And you can also see like the different people’s industries and have a snapshot. On that first slide of like what their life situation is, if you’d like.

I will encourage you though, don’t just read the ones that are like you. I think that there’s such beauty in hearing about people’s days, that their days might look nothing like yours, but it might spark something that they like. Do something that you’re like, oh man, I used to do that and I would like to start doing that again.

Or, man, what a cool thing that, you know, maybe that wouldn’t work for me at this time, but could work for me at another time. I have found, I mean, it’s so much of what I loved. When I was a patent litigator is learning about these industries that I knew nothing about. Like one of my cases was about painter’s tape.

No idea. I mean, obviously I knew painter’s tape existed, but no idea. It was like such a [00:17:00] massive, just part of the economy, big amount of money, big competition within it. I learned so much about not just the industry, but planograms and stores and all this kind of stuff that was really enjoyable and fun and something that adds value to my life Still.

Like every time I go to a store, I’m looking at like the placement of products and what that means, and think about how hard that like a territory was fought over and all sorts of stuff. And so, I don’t know. That was a bit of a side, but I just, I would urge you to read the stories of the lives of women that are of course like you, but also those that aren’t, because it is really, really fun.

So check those out if you haven’t yet. I’ve just loved to see where it’s gone. I’ve absolutely loved it and I just, if you haven’t checked it out yet, I encourage you to. The second and the last point is just a reminder that my Bright Method program opens on September 10th at 10:00 AM I am gonna cap it initially, but just so you know, if you do miss it or if a better time would work [00:18:00] for you.

I am restructuring how it’s gonna work now and essentially it wasn’t planning on going onto a spiel about it right now, but we will basically how it’s gonna look different than it did in the past. Is that you can jump in really whenever it works for you, between September 10th and March, I think 18th, that might move around a little bit.

And once you’re in, you, you’re in for 10 weeks. It’s the same lessons, the same format you get. You basically like move through chapter one, and then chapter two unlocks. You move through chapter two, and then chapter three unlocks. You get email support with me throughout, and then in addition, once you’re in chapter three for the remainder of your 10 week window.

From whenever you get to chapter three onward, you also get to join weekly Zoom calls, so it looks very similar. The cool part about it is now you can decide when it works for you, and that was always tricky is in the past. I’ve run it where I started in late September, or I started in late January, and some people were like, yeah, but it’s easier for me to start in October or November and.[00:19:00]

February and I kind of had to run it when it worked for me with my life with little kids. But now with this rolling model, you can jump in. When it works for you, you’re in it for 10 weeks. The only change to that is if like one of those 10 weeks is like Christmas week, or let’s say a kid of mine gets sick and I have to cancel a call, then I obviously extend by a week or whatever the time is.

It’s just a great way for people to jump in and do this when the time works best for them because it is a time commitment and I want you to be able to decide when the right time is for you. And then the other part of it that had alluded me for a while, candidly when I was thinking about running it into more of an evergreen way, is I want the group calls to be great.

And I’ve always been annoyed when I’m part of a program where. People can show up. Like you could be five weeks into a program and someone new can show up and they’re asking like how to log in on one of the calls. It’s just you just feel like every week you’re kind of starting again when new people show up.

And so by limiting people to the [00:20:00] calls only once they’re in chapter three, we’ll really keep that conversation high level. So even though it adds a bit of complexity and confusion to it, I think it’s really worth it to keep those conversations high level. All right. There’s more details. If you wanna check it out, it’s at kelly nolan.com/bright.

What I was gonna share more to the point was if you are interested in trying out the right method before that time to decide if it’s the right fit for you. Because time management is personal, it’s not the right fit for everyone. If you wanna check it out, try my free five day program. It’s called The Reset and Refresh, and that’s at kelly nolan.com/refresh.

All right. That covers it. Thanks for being here and I’ll catch you in the next episode.

Links you might enjoy:

🌿 Free 5-Day Time Management Program Get five short, practical video lessons packed with realistic strategies to help you manage your personal and professional life with more clarity and calm.

Protecting Strategy / Big-Picture Time From the Urgent: A Potentially Novel Way to Do It

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