Time and Energy Management

"For those who have trouble falling and staying asleep, magnesium has been shown to radically improve sleep quality. I think the Momentous magnesium L-threonate supplement is the best out there."

"As it turns out, what you put in your body affects how you feel! If you’re not healthy, you’re not able to perform at your best, period. This is why so many in Silicon Valley are so obsessed with sleep tracking, diet, and other tools to help improve performance at work."

"The frame of viewing my calendar as a tool for energy management was a game changer. I had to systematically think through how to manage energy troughs and maintain the right levels of energy across the week."

"One of the biggest hacks I’ve discovered is to take structured breaks throughout the workday. I put two 30-minute “DNS–Break” blocks on my calendar each day."

"One of the most helpful changes I made was to set a limit of how much I would work in a day. I restricted myself to working around two hours less per day than my pre-injury baseline."

"44.67% of all respondents are currently experiencing *significant* burnout (meaning they said they’re “moderately,” “very,” or “completely” burned-out). Burnout doesn’t just affect tech workers’ experience in their current job—it’s also correlated with people’s optimism or pessimism about the future of their career."

"Burnout conquerors keep a keen eye on how they spend their time and energy at work to make sure they’re working smarter, not harder. An open block in their calendar to do deep work isn’t just going to drop in from the sky."

"Burnout conquerors treat their health and wellness as critical professional infrastructure. Wellness is treated as a non-negotiable business need, not optional self-care."

"Ultimately, when deciding on your timeline, I encourage you to optimize for what is best for your family and then be super-clear about the dates you’ll be gone."

"Plan for very limited or no availability, especially for the first few weeks. When you are exhausted with a screaming baby in your hands, you’ll be glad you have one less thing to worry about."

"Press the function key on your laptop, talk, and it instantly (and accurately) transcribes everything you’ve said. It understands the context of the conversation, filters out filler words, and learns your unique acronyms, terms, and phrases."

"Staying within a range of acceptable tolerance in your life should be the goal, so that you flourish in all dimensions, not just the professional. Taking on too much pushes us into zones of intolerance, where very little life can be sustained."

"‘Tomorrow is today.’ And what I mean by that is that so often I will in my head be like, ‘I’ll do that tomorrow. I’ll eat better tomorrow. I’ll think about that vision tomorrow. I’ll communicate better expectations tomorrow.’ And it’s like those joke signs that ‘Free beer tomorrow.’ Because very easily, tomorrow just always moves on."

"I have a post-it on my monitor that says, ‘Only work on what matters most.’ It sometimes falls off and I have to write it again. I go into work, someone emails me, and I’m like, ‘Oh god.’ But then I’m like, ‘Only work on what matters most.’"

"The exhaustion of subconsciously assuming I have to do everything on my own robbed me of agency, joy, and so much energy in my work. Shifting this has been radical for me in terms of my relationship to myself and to my work."

"I created policies for myself like “I don’t do talks/podcasts/events/etc.” and “No CEOs, founders, or VCs on the podcast.” When I tell people that’s my policy, they totally understand and move on. Your policy could be things like “I’m not taking on any new projects until [Date]” or “I’m not adding anything to my todo list right now” or “I don’t say yes to anything on the spot”:"

"Imagine if there were no emotion involved: I ask myself, “If I didn’t care whether the other person felt disappointed or sad when I said no, what would I do?” Then I do that. Once the decision is clear, it simply becomes a matter of how to break the news to them most kindly."

"I have a policy of no meetings before 3 p.m. I reserve this time for “deep work” time, to work on the newsletter and prepare for podcast episodes. Quite a luxury, I know, but even during my day-job days I blocked out two hours on Wednesday and Friday mornings for the same reason. In addition to this delicous focus time, a secondary benefit is that with the remaining (limited) number of hours in the day, you’re forced to say no more often."

"Just don’t reply: This may sound unkind, but I’ve learned that no reply feels better than a half-hearted reply. People know you’re busy, and will assume that you didn’t see it (totally understandable) or it’s not a fit (oh well). In the past, when you’ve emailed a busy person and not heard back, did you feel mad at the person? I suspect not."

"Superhuman’s research shows that the average user gets through their inbox twice as fast (vs. using Gmail or Outlook) and saves four hours a week."

"One of my favorite techniques for getting someone to finish something that’s important but not urgent is to come up with an arbitrary deadline together. We both know it’s made up, but there’s a weird gravitational pull once you’ve put a date out there."

"Something I’ve learned about myself is that if my to-dos are sitting inside an app on my laptop, the one place I don’t want to look is that app on my laptop. However, when my to-dos are sitting right in front of my face, in a nice notebook I can’t swipe away (and always have with me), I’m much more likely to see the work I need to do."

"Backing out of something can feel terrible, but once you’ve experienced the relief from not having to do something your former self agreed to, you’ll find there’s a lot of power here. Better still, you’ll get better at saying no in the first place."

"Anytime I find myself writing out an address, phrase, or paragraph over and over again, I turn it into an auto-expanding snippet. I’ve created snippets for common email replies, URLs, email addresses, and sentences I find myself using often."

"Step one in addressing this mismatch is to see how you’re currently allocating your time, to identify your revealed preferences versus your stated preferences. In addition to doing a time audit, I’ve also found an energy audit to be transformative."

"When have you felt the most productive? Where were you sitting, what were you wearing, what did you eat/drink, and what time of day was it? Learn what your mind and body need to get into the flow."

"Implement Slack rituals and norms to create boundaries and make sure you don’t spend your entire day playing digital Whac-A-Mole. Don’t go into Slack for the first half of your day (or pick the best window for *your* time zone, cadence, and teammates)."

"The solution for navigating the Neutral Zone is cultivating good habits. Why? When your destination is unclear, bold steps forward are often counterproductive and erroneous. Good habits on the other hand will give you the sense of clarity, control, and progress you require."

"Mindfulness is your capacity to dispassionately notice what is happening, as opposed to seeing life through your filters, fears or desires, e.g. noticing the subtle anxiety that drives your decisions and behavior. Mindfulness has now become table stakes."

"Cutting back on a few posts per year will allow me to create deeper, higher-value content while maintaining a pace I can sustain long-term."

"The core idea is that any work of real value comes from people doing “deep work”—focused, uninterrupted, and cognitively demanding work that stretches their brain. Unfortunately, most of our time is spent on “shallow work”—not cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. What worked really well for me while I was working full-time was creating two to three recurring blocks each week that were dedicated to deep work time."

"One of the biggest unlocks in my productivity has been learning how to pivot a meeting request into an email conversation. The majority of the time this becomes a five-minute task versus a 30- to 60-minute meeting. It’s also kinda fun to hang out and avoid your work for a bit, and sitting in a meeting feels like you’re working."

"An unlock for me has been finding an executive assistant to take on as many of these N and O tasks as possible. Everyone starts off thinking there’s very little an EA can do for them, and then months later they’re doing 20 to 30 hours of work a week for you. There’s up-front effort in getting the virtual assistant set up, but it quickly becomes very high ROI."

"Most of our burnout and overwhelm comes not from a lack of productivity tools and tricks, but from taking on too much work. The more you can do up front to make your workload less full, the better everything gets downstream."

"Before you open up your to-do list—and definitely before you dive into your work—pick one to three things that, if you got done today (and if you did nothing else), would make it a great day. Write these items down. Don’t write more than three."

"Whenever you ask someone to do something for you, add them to your “waiting for” list. This tactic allows you to keep track of every open thread, versus relying on your memory, and makes it easy to remember to check in when someone else is dropping the ball. Once your brain knows that the information is written down somewhere, it can relax and create space for much more valuable thinking."

"For me, the solution is to have a simple and trusted TODO system that includes two lists: 1. Your current set of priorities, as concrete actions (not vague project names) 2. A list of the people you are waiting for, who are blockers to moving forward on a project"

"My trick for creating space for deep work is simple: 1. Block off time: I schedule two-hour blocks of DEEP WORK TIME on Monday, Wednesday and, Friday. 2. Protect that time: Make it crystal clear to everyone that they should not book over these slots."

"Make it easy to know what your priorities are by having a TODO system that you can trust. Anything I don't get done that day, I re-write for the next day, which has the benefit of (1) reminding me of what I still need to get done, and (2) forcing me to re-evaluate whether I even need to do it."

"Take this new ask and prioritize it amongst the work you already have. Tell your manager where you prioritized this ask. For example, 'Great idea Ms. Manager! I've added this to my priority list, right after X, Y, Z. Let me know if you disagree with that prioritization.'"

"At the start of each week, take a few minutes to skim your calendar for the week ahead. Any meetings you should cancel? Any discussions you still need to prepare for? Any emails/docs/actions you need to add to your TODO list?"