Scarcity

Help Me Figure Out How to Spend 12 More Hours a Week

wood.tang — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:16:13 -0500

Minor milestone in my household coming soon: my son is starting preschool, meaning I’ll suddenly have more time on my hands. It’s only three mornings a week though; as much as I’d like to hire someone to read to me, it’s not enough time to start anything major. But it is enough that I can’t waste the opportunity. Four hours of quiet, non-Sprout time in the morning is perfect for getting the high-priority stuff out of the way. I need to come up with a game plan so I don’t end up watching SportsCenter and ﬁddling with iTunes the whole time.

I have my own strategy, of course, but I wanted to ask the wise elders here how I should spend an extra 12 hours a week, and see if we can spot any holes in my plan.

Here is the “real” work I try to accomplish in a given week:

A weekly sports column, which is a compilation of national coverage of the local teams, so it involves a lot of Google News searching and some stitching together Monday mornings before I ﬁle it.
Intermittent freelance writing, which usually means phone calls, interviews, transcription, and research too.
Accounting, bookkeeping, and various paperwork for my wife’s real estate business. This can suck up a lot of time if I neglect it, so I need to peck away at it day by day.
A handful of brilliant, insightful, and unforgettable posts here, naturally.
And if I have any time left, more “creative” writing like essays and a book proposal that’s been sorely neglected for the past six months.

In my current situation, I try to do most of this stuff early in the morning before my son gets up, during the afternoon naps, or on the one or two days a week we get a babysitter. He’s going to keep going to Grandma’s once a week, so I’ll still have one full day to work with in addition to the three mornings. My wife works a lot, with many evenings and weekends, so when she is around I try not to dump the kid on her and run downstairs to the man cave. This means working at night is out of the question unless I’m on deadline; besides, I have a lot of stuff to do, but I’m not that important.

The column and freelancing gigs are non-negotiable, so they’re obvious candidates to occupy my newfound free time. The bookkeeping is also high-priority, but I don’t necessarily need dead-quiet solitude to do it. This is a good candidate for non-school days or early evenings when my son is absorbed in his toys. I should probably lump the blogging and creative writing together, because they both operate on the same brain functions. For whatever reason, I feel like I do these best in the afternoon, either because of how my process works–i.e. I feel like I have to get the required, “chore” items out of the way ﬁrst–or because of the nap-time habit.

I’m not looking to overhaul the whole regime, just work in those extra mornings. As a benchmark, I’m satisﬁed with what I get done, except for the more creative stuff. I’m sure this is because I relegate it to garbage time, and by then I usually need a break.

So, given that workload and those time constraints, how should I rearrange my week to take advantage of an extra 12 hours?

”Help Me Figure Out How to Spend 12 More Hours a Week” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 21, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Meeting Tokens, for creating time scarcity

Merlin — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:16:51 -0400

My pal, Mike Monteiro, is making good on his idea to try giving his team Meeting Tokens.

Previously mentioned in this post about re-creating scarcity and, in more detail, in my IDEO talk.

Can’t wait to hear how it goes. I love me some scarcity.

Update, 2007-10-19 10:18 PT: Mike says he’s going to produce these as handsome wooden tokens that will soon be available for sale in sets on the Mule Feed Store.

Update 2007-10-20 14:52 PT: Mike adds “The Red Merlin” to the mix.

Each bag of meeting tokens will include ONE Red Merlin. It’s up to you to decide how it gets in someone’s hands.

Playing the Red Merlin ends ANY meeting on the spot. No questions. (Beware of retaliation though; play it to make allies, not to make enemies.)

I’m honored.

”Meeting Tokens, for creating time scarcity” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 19, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Vox Pop: Re-creating scarcity

Merlin — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:43:07 -0400

I have a friend who told me he was thinking about giving his project managers a weekly pile of chips that could be redeemed for person-hours in meetings. So, to schedule ﬁrewalled, group face-time, the PM would need to cough up the equivalent number of tokens from her pile. Thus, one, long, all-hands meeting might require the whole week’s stack. While, fewer, shorter meetings with smaller groups made the pile go further.

It was just an idea, and I’m pretty sure he never implemented it, but I think it’s a fascinating concept. Why? Because I love the idea of re-introducing scarcity into systems that lack boundaries.

Think how the internet in particular (for better and worse) is working to erase any sense of scarcity in our lives – at least in terms of access to people and ideas. You can email anybody any time; you can divebomb onto someone’s radar screen with an IM or SMS; you can have Amazon deliver almost anything to your door tomorrow morning; you can ﬁnd and download from millions of ﬁles instantly; and, given the right tool, you can locate almost any fact in seconds.

But what about the very real (and truly limited) resources that involve human time and attention? Do we want to make ourselves as available as Google and Wikipedia are? Do we want our entire staff to be “always on” for anyone who wants them? What if, for example, emails to a distribution list cost something?

The Question to You

Have you thought about ways to re-introduce scarcity into your life and work? Are you or your team using any homemade systems to govern resources that might otherwise become overtaxed or abused? How would you solve the “too many long meetings” problem?

”Vox Pop: Re-creating scarcity” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 27, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"