Make Your Work Schedule Work For You

Jun 4

Most of us spend a LOT of our waking hours at work. Especially with many companies needing to do more with less these days, it is easy to feel like you do not have control over your calendar and like there isn’t enough time in the day to be successful at work and find time to live a healthy, fulfilling life. In this episode, we talk about how to find ways to be more productive at work while also finding time to do the things that fill your cup. Check out the actionable takeaways below, including:

Tips for talking to your manager about your work schedule
Tools to audit your time
How to learn more about your operating style and apply it at work

Listen to the full episode to hear how we have applied these principles in our own lives to find professional and personal fulfillment.

Actionable Tips & Takeaways

Lay the groundwork for gaining more flexibility at work

Build a strong relationship with your manager that is built on trust and open lines of communication. Does an 8:30am workout class help you be more productive throughout the day? Does coaching your daughter’s soccer team on Wednesday afternoon give you more energy throughout the week? You’ll likely need to talk to your manager about these commitments and having a strong, personal relationship with your manager will make these conversations a breeze!
Spend time learning the spoken and unspoken cultural and communication norms of your workplace. Is everyone expected to be in the office at a specific time? Are there core hours for meetings? The more you understand about what the company values, the more you can lean into key areas to build trust and find flexibility within the context of your workplace.
Build capital by demonstrating strong performance: Consistently align with your manager on the expectations of your role and how you’re meeting expectations. The more you demonstrate strong performance and share what motivates you, the more open your manager will be to working with you on your work schedule.

Go deep and learn how, when and where you do your best work

Develop a deep understanding of the best setting for you to accomplish different types of tasks: Are you most creative in the mornings? Do you focus best in 1:1 conversations while walking vs. on Zoom? Is it easier to mundane tasks in the evening while a podcast or tv show is on in the background? Understanding how you’re most productive will enable you to accomplish more in less time and allow you to share “the why” with your manager when making any specific requests re: your work schedule.
Audit your time: Spend 1-2 weeks tracking how much time you’re spending on different tasks. Use The Glass Advisory’s time tracking template to track how much time you spend on each activity you participate in. Before you start, write down some assumptions you have about how you’re spending your time. IE “it typically takes me 30 minutes to cook dinner each night and I spend another 30 minutes eating”, or “I typically scroll on TikTok 90 minutes each day.” At the end of the time audit period, go back to your previous assumptions to better understand where you had an accurate understanding of how you spend your time, and where your assumptions were off. Use your time tracker to better organize your schedule going forward. Time block on your calendar for important tasks that you want to prioritize.
Manage your notifications: Are constant slack or email notifications making you feel like you’re playing whack-a-mole all day and like it’s impossible to prioritize? Turn off notifications during your focus blocks or turn them off all together and check in at specific times throughout the day to clear your messages.

Talk to your manager

First and foremost, if you want to take a workout class during core working hours or block your calendar for a couple of hours each day during your core productivity hours to focus on heads-down work, don’t avoid the conversation with your manager and just try to make it work! This can have the opposite effect of what you want with managers often responding to this by losing trust and becoming hyper surveilant. Instead, open up a conversation with your manager:

Align on your performance: are you meeting and / or exceeding expectations? → “It’s been awhile since we’ve checked in and I want to make sure that I am meeting expectations in your view. Is there anything I could be doing differently or better to have more impact in your opinion?”
Share the work you’ve done to understand your operating style and how you do your best work: Share with your manager that you care about doing good work and how that’s motivated you to learn more about yourself to increase your productivity and be a strong performer. Share your personal user manual (linked below).
Share your specific request, how you envision incorporating it into your work schedule, and why you believe it will enable you to be the most productive → “I’ve found that I am most productive throughout the day if I workout in the morning, and I’d like to take a yoga class on Tuesday and Thursdays at 8:30am. I’ll check my slack and email before class and respond to anything urgent and then be back online and available for meetings at 10am these days. I’ve found that working out at this time gives me more energy throughout the day and I’m more engaged and productive on these days. Do you think this could work?”
Be flexible and align on non negotiables: If your manager is hesitant or has specific questions or concerns about your request, be open to this and understand what is driving the hesitation. Would a different day or time work better? There may be real constraints and it’s ok to be open to a friendly negotiation.

Tips for Managers

Build trust with your team members and learn how they do their best work: Understand what makes your team members do their best work. Check out our personal user manual exercise for an easy way to lead a discussion about this.

Establish working norms and leave room for some flexibility: Are there non-negotiables like specific times of day everyone needs to be available for customer meetings or expectations for how quickly a team member responds to a message during working hours? Be explicit about these, share the why and get buy-in from your team on why these norms are important.

Don’t use hyper-surveillance to avoid performance management: If you find yourself wondering “is this person really working during their focus block on their calendar?” or “why does it take this person longer to respond to my slacks than other team members?” do not default to just keeping a closer eye on them or reducing their flexibility. Open up a conversation with them and understand what is actually happening. If it is a performance issue, deal with it through setting clear expectations and performance management strategies.
Periodically check to ensure your team’s priorities are delivering the value you expect: Things can change and something that seemed like a home run in January may be delivering mediocre results in April. Periodically check in to ensure that where your team is spending their time delivers the expected results. And if it’s not, don’t be afraid to pivot and focus them on more impactful activities.

Tools & resources to use

Personal user manual exercise: use this to document your personal working style in a format that you can share with your manager and colleagues. Using this tool can help build trust and psychological safety with the people you work closely with.

Time audit template: This will allow you to easily track how much time you’re spending on activities throughout the day. Curious how long you’ve accidentally scrolled on Instagram? Set a timer in Toggl and stop when you’re done so that you can gain more awareness of time spent on social media.

💡 Ready to rethink your workday? Tune into this episode of The Glass Sessions and start building a schedule that fuels both your productivity and your peace of mind.