What lessons you can learn from small children! One day I was watching two youngsters, ages 3 and 5, playing with “bricks” constructed out of heavy cardboard. The brick blocks came in three sizes: a 10” x 16” rectangle, a 10” square, and the standard 3” x 10” brick size. Over time they spent hours creating structures. At the beginning there was no understanding of larger pieces providing a stronger foundation for the smaller pieces and so things would come tumbling down without using all of the bricks. With lots of trial and error the children discovered that if they started with the biggest size, they were more likely to be able to use all of the bricks. An effective daily schedule can also be constructed with three types of blocks. How much you can pile on (your productivity) each day depends on how well you organize your time.

Make your day’s foundation an uninterrupted block of time when you can focus on difficult, involved projects. The ideal length is an hour and a half, approximately twenty percent of an eight-hour day. If you cannot possibly find that length of time, try for an hour. Even with 45 minutes of uninterrupted time you can get a significant amount of work completed because you are not requiring twenty additional minutes after each interruption to get back into the “flow.” As you develop this routine, aim for the hour and a half each day. During this time, do not answer every phone call. Turn off your general email alerts. If you want to ensure that a certain person or message gets through immediately, set up your software rules to notify you of that specific message. When you can block twenty percent of your time, you will accomplish about eighty percent of your work for the day.