Letter 009 - Theme your days to increase the chance of "flow state"
Written late at night, after just getting through a badass Monday. I asked myself How such strong productivity was achieved, and wrote the below. This is a shorter read.
The idea: assigning a theme to specific days of the week is a powerful way to increase your chance of flow state.
Just like you might get to Saturday or Sunday and have excitement about something to occur on that day, I try to do the same thing Monday through Friday. It helps to provide some consistency and can help you strategically schedule meetings.
Here’s how I’ve done it for the last few years (per usual, my corniness is going to be on full display). A note on mindset: I view my calendar as a battlefield. I am aggressive about protecting time to GSD (get shit done), and actively pull back from threads where I am not critical.
Massive (or “Machine”) Monday - Start the week with big energy, immediately executing the plan I laid out last Friday. I tend to work longer hours on Monday’s, because it’s where the rest of the week’s actions are being laid out. Critically, I reserve 2 hours early every Monday morning for zero meetings + a moderate workout to get my body and mind into the right state to execute.
Tactical Tuesday - This is usually when my very mentally intensive + strategically important meetings occur (at least the ones that couldn’t get scheduled for Monday). Additionally, I try to stack 1-1s on Tuesdays and Thursdays. These days I really try to schedule break times between meetings so I can make sure I’m acting on actions quickly + giving proper thought to whatever may have come up in 1-1s or other key meetings. Speaking of “key meetings”, if something is really a priority, it should get proper time and attention by EOD (end of day) Tuesday to make sure you have the runway of Weds, Thurs, and Fri to make things happen
Deep Work Wednesday - I strive to have a weekly “workshop” where I make sure to accomplish any tasks that require deep focus to complete. This is usually when I’m doing things like: creating new offerings, modeling out capacity or growth dynamics for my teams, creating content, or thinking of how to scale a product or service. My calendar on Wednesday’s has to have uninterrupted blocks of time where I can dive deep. I finish off the day reviewing critical actions that were assigned on Monday/Tuesday to make sure we’re on track. Separately, this tends to be date night for Simi and I, because it’s important to break up the week!
Variable Thursday - Worklife can be crazy. Every week is different, and I leave Thursdays more unstructured to be whatever I need for it to be
Forethought Friday - Increasingly Friday’s are No Meeting Fridays. I spend this time reviewing the week, closing out any loose ends, and closing my eyes + visualizing the next week, every single day of the next week… Key meetings coming up, meetings that need to be scheduled, conversations that need to be had, etc.
Some additional thoughts:
During particularly chaotic times, the days get shifted around. Maybe I have workshops or back-to-backs literally all day Wednesday. In that case, I’ll make sure Tuesday or Thursday have more Deep Work time built in
1-1s are the way organizations move forward (future post coming on this!). This is the way you stay tapped into the thoughts of your colleagues, create space for trust generation, and hear what is top of mind for the people around you. I’ve tried so many tactics for managing 1-1s, but what I’ve settled on is this: two days per week are focused on 1-1s, and I schedule them back-to-back, because my brain is in the motion of 1-1 conversation. When this can’t work, I’ll try to reserve 60-90 minutes per day for 1-1s and spread the throughout Monday - Thursday
It’s best to revisit the themes of your days on a regular basis, because life+work are always changing around you
The only way this works is if you get in the habit of looking ahead at your schedule 1-2 weeks in advance, day by day, and actively adjusting meeting times / recurring meetings before the other people’s calendars start getting locked up. Set aside time every week to do this (power tip from badass executive admins who oftentimes review the next 2 weeks of meetings with the executives they support).