Planning

Your calendar lies about your week

An empty afternoon in the calendar is not free time. It is the only place the actual work can go — and that is why the week looks possible on Monday.

2 min read

The two-minute rule, and where it breaks

Do it now if it takes two minutes. Good advice, and it quietly destroys the afternoons of anyone whose inbox is full of two-minute things.

2 min read

A plan for a week you cannot predict

Shift work, small children, a job that is mostly other people's emergencies. The standard advice assumes a week you control, and most weeks are not that.

2 min read

Time management, and why half of it never works

The research on time management says something quieter than the books do: it buys calm more reliably than output, and it only holds when it covers the whole of your life rather than the working part of it.

11 min read

A plan that survives Wednesday

Most weekly plans die by midweek. Usually not from laziness — from living in four places at once.

2 min read