So often when we get free 15-minute windows we didn’t anticipate during work hours, we spend too much time deciding what to do and/or fritter them away on stuff that doesn’t matter (cough*social media*cough). But these small windows of time add up, and using them effectively can help you leave work earlier and feel more accomplished. Let’s talk about how to do that.
A full transcript will appear here within two weeks of the episode being published.
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Full Transcript
Ep 86. Surprise 15-Minute Work Pockets
[Upbeat Intro Music]
Kelly Nolan: 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!
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Kelly Nolan: Hey, hey! All right, so today’s episode, my guess is, is gonna be a bit shorter, but I think it packs a punch. I think there’s some big ROI on the minutes of this if you implement. What I want to talk about is the surprise, little moments of free time you get during your day. Not the ones you see coming but, like, the meeting ends early and suddenly you have 15 or 20 minutes before your next meeting, and you didn’t plan to do any work then because you didn’t know you were gonna have that time, what do you do?
Another scenario that I hear often, particularly from physicians and physicians who are in the hospital, maybe on clinic, but they have these downtimes. They don’t know exactly when they’ll be needed, they’ll just have to be there, and suddenly they might get called in to see a patient, go into surgery, that kind of thing. But there could be a long period of downtime, there could be short periods of downtime, and you just don’t know going in what that will look like.
And so, for both of these scenarios, it’s somewhat hard to plan because either you didn’t see it coming or you don’t know how much time you’re working with, but it’s also valuable time, you know? It still is 15 minutes or even more as a physician that you have this time but you might easily fritter it away, either thinking, “I don’t have enough time to do anything,” so you don’t do anything with it, or kind of spending too much time trying to figure out what to do, and then if it was just 15 minutes, half of it’s gone or more than that is gone before you even decide what to do, and then you’re left with just even less minutes.
Come Up With a Game Plan – 1:56
And so, what I want you to think about today is just kind of coming up with a game plan for those moments. What do you do when you stumble upon these moments or have these maybe interrupted moments? And I just want to give some examples because you can play with this, but one example could be that you, one, go to the restroom, grab tea, or grab a snack. That’s just your number one priority is restroom, tea/coffee, whatever it might be, water, and grab a snack.
Now, eating is a big one for me because, as any of my friends or my husband will tell you, if I get hungry, it changes my whole personality. [Laughs] My husband actually once said, “I don’t consider Kelly and me in a real fight until Kelly is well-fed and still angry.” [Laughs] And that is really important. I just become an angry monster. So getting food in me, even in those little moments, scheduling food is important. But then also when I have downtime being like, “Do I need food? Am I getting hungry? Should I go get food?” That can be nice just to even grab a handful of cashews or something just to tide me over.
After you do those things, if you still have time or if you don’t need to do those things, the next thing could be looking ahead in your — for me it’s a calendar, but for you it could be whatever it is for little tasks, like the little bite-sized things (that one phone call, that quick email, processing an Amazon return). Like, really little, little things that are on tap for later today or even tomorrow that you could just bang out right now. You know you have 15 minutes. You look for the little things just on the next two days to take off your plate.
Now, this might sound confusing because I talked spinning out on what should I do and spending eight minutes trying to figure that out. When you use a system like The Bright Method or something else that you’ve assigned tasks to specific days and times, and what I love about The Bright Method is I’m looking for the little boxes of time in my calendar that are small tasks versus an hour and a half block that’s not gonna be a contender when I’m looking for something to fill 15 minutes. I’m looking for little tasks that I can quickly grab, drag up to now, bang out, and then get them off my plate. So that’s something that you could do.
And then another option or, like, you know, you can pick and choose from this, but this could be your third notch. Let’s say you’ve gone to the restroom, that’s number one. Tea and snack, that’s either you’ve done it, or you don’t need to do it. Next is look for small tasks. Let’s even say you’re like, “I don’t feel like doing that,” so you go to the next one, or you just don’t see any good contenders and you’re like, “I can’t do that right now. Go to the next one,” could be the endless things we have to deal with but is helpful to chip away at, like email. And then on the physician front, EMR-type systems where you have those — I could be using the wrong terminology here, but things like Epic or things like that where you’re getting messages from people that are sending you something that you need to respond to that’s almost more urgent and time sensitive than anything in your email inbox. You could go there and process.
But just for anyone listening to this is having some sort of, let’s say, three-point — that’s random and arbitrary. Do however many points you want but keep it realistic. “First, I do this. If I’ve done that or I don’t need to, then I do this. If I don’t want to or don’t need to, then I do this,” and it’ll allow you just to have clarity on, “Oh, man. I have an extra 20 minutes right now. What do I do with that time?”
Now, I’m presuming (and I should have said this at the get go) that these are during work hours. I hope you know by this point I’m not like, “Anytime you have 15 minutes, this is what you do,” and you’re always productive. But during work hours, that can be a really great approach to do because I’ve heard time and time again from clients that making the most of those little pockets of time and banging out some things, even if you can’t schedule them — if you can schedule things to do during that time, awesome. But even if you can’t, it can allow you to wrap up work earlier and be done earlier in a way that is beneficial and protects those evenings and weekends to the extent you want from work. And so, that’s why I’m bringing this up is that it can really help you stay in the work zone during work hours without feeling like you’re flailing or confused, feel productive during that time, and hopefully let you wrap up work earlier.
Make a Visible List For Yourself – 6:07
To make this practical, this is obviously something that you can’t really calendar most of the time. You don’t know when these surprise moments are gonna happen, and so, while I normally am not about writing things down on a Post-It note and sticking it to your computer or by your office desk, whatever it is, this is maybe a scenario that at least until you get in the routine of this stuff and maybe forever you just have a Post-It note on your desk that’s like: “Restroom, Tea/Snack. Small task today or tomorrow that I want to help out future me with. Email,” or whatever it might be, email or messages, whatever it is.
Physician-Specific Scenarios – 6:42
I do want to dig into the physician example a little bit more just because I find this one’s a little bit different. Sometimes you can have an hour or maybe 40 minutes, and I know this is not every specialty, but some of the clients I’ve worked with can get solid periods of time where they don’t know what to do with that period of time, or they are trying to do really kind of heavy-lift work, and I want to address those scenarios.
When you are on call or in clinic and you’re just not sure how much time you’re gonna take, I would urge you — unless it’s working for you — obviously, if it’s working, don’t break something that’s not broken or that is working for you. But if you have been struggling with this type of scenario, don’t pick the deeper-focused work to do. Don’t pick the things that require your heavier intellect if you know that you’re going to get interrupted at any moment.
I’ve probably talked about this before here, but there is a study. I should cite to it. I don’t know it right now. If I can I’ll put it in the show notes. They did this study where they had three groups of people, and all three groups were taking a quiz. And one of the groups straight up was taking a quiz. They had their phones taken away and they had to take the quiz. The next group was allowed to keep their phones, and they were actually told to pay attention to their phone because further instructions for the quiz might come. And the third group was told that as well. The second group, the middle group that I just talked about did not actually get further instructions, and the third group did. They did get text messages on their phone giving them further instructions. And the first group that was not going to get interrupted performed much better than the other two groups. And the next two groups, the ones that kept their phone and were told to pay attention to it performed equally as bad. Getting interrupted and the threat of getting interrupted make you perform worse and in the same way as if you were interrupted.
And so, I share that because when you are in a situation like being on call or being in a clinic (again, I might be using these terms wrong but hopefully you get the idea) you have that threat of being interrupted. It’s a very high threat. And so, it’s gonna be harder for you to get in the zone, and you’re gonna be really disoriented when you get pulled out and kind of frustrated by that. I would really encourage you to pick more easily-interruptible things and save that deeper-focus, heavier-lift type work for a time when you are not in that position.
And so, what that can look like is, again, restroom, which I know as physicians is something that is even more than anybody else working probably needs some help with, anyone in that position. So restroom, snack, water, tea, coffee, that’s your first priority. When you have some time, that’s what you do. The next would probably be more like those Epic messages. You know, you use your judgment. You know your practice better than I do. But that’s usually where those, again, high-priority, sensitive things are coming in. And so, just really keeping an eye on that, making it your first priority. Using that time to clear that kind of stuff out would probably feel pretty good and be a good true priority of an effective use of that time.
The next is, if applicable, you could wrap up notes, whether it’s from what you’re currently working on or a previous shift, if that’s something that is relevant. Then and only then, I would turn to maybe email. From what I have experienced being married to medicine and working with physicians is email’s usually a much lower priority than those Epic messages or whatever platform you use. But again, use your judgment here. If you differ here, that’s totally fine. Email is a really great, interruptible thing, and you could clear your email inboxes that’s there, maybe even your personal email as well. I just throw that out there that email is email, and so, it’s a good, easy interruptible thing. And so, that could be something that could be a good use of your time. And after that, maybe look for those small, one-off things later today or tomorrow that you could do to make your life easier.
One caveat here that I would say is I would schedule, if you want to — if you’re like, “I’ve got to do those little things. I have to do them at some point,” I would schedule one, two, maybe three of those little things for each shift that you have, and I would make them not have to happen imminently that day because let’s pretend that the day goes differently than you anticipated, and you’re never working, and you’re never by a computer the whole time, then don’t plan something for something that has to happen during that shift if it’s not going to. But if you are like, “Yeah, usually on average I have an hour of free time that might be scattered throughout the shift, but it’s around in there, and I can bang out one to three of those little, specific, one-off tasks that I need to do,” schedule one to three of them. Just make sure you’re not gonna be screwed if they don’t happen during that shift. And I would just float them maybe towards the beginning of the shift or towards the end, however your brain works, and then just kind of know that they’re fluid, but really only aim for one to three a shift is what I would guess.
Again, I would just have a clear list of this. I would write it out. You know, for you, because of the shift work that you’re in, and you’re moving and mobile and in different places, maybe you just have a phone notes app with your list. Maybe you have a Post-It note if that makes sense for you. But having that clarity of, “When I have downtime, when I’m on shift, when I’m in clinic, when I’m on call,” whatever it is, “Then this is what I do. Boop. Boop. Boop,” and you really come up with your flow. You can always play with it too, but that’s where I would start.
I truly believe that having this clarity will allow you to bang out things that are a good match for the situation you’re in, feel like you’re using that time really, really well, and not leave being like, “What did I even do with that time?” because you’ll have the clarity of what you did. And again, I totally get that for many people you do have heavier-lift things that also have to happen more like maybe research-related work, contributing to a grant. Any of that kind of stuff, I would save that for a different time.
And a benefit here that I think sounds obvious when I say it but is something that kind of eluded me for a while is that having the clarity of, “I don’t do that work when I’m on shift,” will keep your energy when it comes to that task more fresh when you are in a position to actually do the work well. And what I mean by that, in case it’s not clear, is let’s say I have three days of shifts and clinic work, and the whole time I’m trying to write this grant proposal thing, and I never get very far because I keep getting interrupted, and it’s not good work, and I’m just tired by it. So by the time I get to the day when I actually could maybe do that work, then I’m already tired of it. I’m sick of it already. Or if I just had spent those three days clearing off email, getting set with notes, doing the little things I need to do, whether it’s my personal life or professional life, then my energy is fresh to turn to that higher-lift thing, and I’ve gotten a lot of those smaller, little, more reactionary things off my plate so that I’m in good shape on that front, and I feel more comfortable turning to that higher-lift work because I don’t have those little things nagging at me. So in addition to me feeling more comfortable, my energy’s there, my motivation’s there, my energy’s fresher, and that’s a real benefit of taking this approach when it comes to that type of shift clinic work.
All right, even though I’m sure I butchered some of the terminology, I hope the point comes through and that it’s really valuable for you. I just really believe in how clarity of how we want to spend our time, what we want to do with our time, even when it’s getting clarity around what I don’t do with my time and then what I do do with my time over here, and this is why and understanding it and playing with it and experimenting with it over time is really kind of fun and it’s really effective. It can be really powerful and help you feel more in control of your time, and so, I hope you get that.
I would love to hear how it goes. Also, whether you’re a physician or not, share this with a physician friend. It is a weird field to be in, and I think there’s a lot of productivity advice out there that’s inapplicable to it, and so, hopefully this is a small, practical way that people can feel like they’re using their time in a way that feels good to them, that feels realistic to them, and that helps them feel some empowerment and ownership over their time.
All right, well, thank you for being here, and I will catch you in the next episode!
[Upbeat Outro Music]
