If you can just take the time off and be gentle to yourself, great. But if that’s not going to happen, here’s another idea. If you can’t work, plan. Using low-energy time to think about what Future You could do can turn what might feel like wasted time into something more fruitful.

This realization is how Friday became my weekly planning day (see Tranquility by Tuesday Rule #2: Plan on Fridays). Many of us who work a Monday to Friday week are pretty much sliding into the weekend by Friday. It can be hard to start anything new, particularly after lunch. But I realized that I might be willing to think about what Future Me should be doing. It takes less effort to write “revise book proposal” on a planner page than it does to actually, you know, revise that book proposal. So I began creating the next week’s plans on Friday, trusting that Monday Morning Me would have more vim and vigor for these things than whatever I’d morphed into by Friday afternoon.

This insight can work for all kinds of planning. If you’re spinning your wheels on Thursday afternoon you could take a stab at a weekend plan. If you’re feeling like you’re banging your head against the wall you could regroup and write a Summer Fun List, or a List of 100 Dreams, or do something random like plan next year’s holiday vacation. Or plan something completely unrelated to your current slump… like next November’s podcast episode topics?

Perhaps the sense of devising a plan will feel energizing. That energy might help you get going on something else. But even if not, now you’ve got a plan for next weekend. Or a Summer Fun List. Or next November’s podcast line-up. Those are things that didn’t exist before, and probably should happen at some point. Productivity is all mental anyway. If you feel like you should be getting something done, and then you do get something done, whatever that something happens to be, that tends to register as a win.

By far the most common form of “effortful fun” people choose is reading. This is wise, because reading can pretty easily fit into patches of leisure that are unplanned, uncertain in duration, or that happen at low energy times — the factors that lead people to reach for their phones (or binge Netflix all night). For people who spend 2 hours of leisure time on various screens per day (not that unusual — much of it unnoticed in 10 minute scrolling bits), devoting half of this to reading means an extra hour a day, or seven hours a week. If you read 40 pages per hour, that gets you an extra book a week right there. Not that there’s anything particularly virtuous about posting an impressive book tally BUT reading 50 more books a year would definitely open up a lot of reading possibilities.

Making this switch — and hence reading quite a bit more — involves doing a few things.

Make it easy to read. Some people always have a print book with them, but for most of us this means making peace with ebooks, and (sorry!) even ebooks read on a phone. Is it ideal? No. But putting the Kindle or Nook app, or Apple’s Books app on your phone means that you can read a book anytime you have your phone with you. Which is probably all the time.

Always have books available. For those of us whose libraries have entered the digital age, an easy way to do this is to use the Libby app and borrow lots of ebooks from your local library. You can put holds on popular books the same way you would with physical books, but lots of back list titles will probably be available immediately. Or…

Put money into it. Price wise, ebooks are the new paperbacks. If you want to read more, you want to have appealing books available. You can download an ebook to an app instantly for usually less than $20. Buying a new ebook every other week or so just might make reading more appealing. Pro tip: If you’re unsure whether you’ll like a book, download the free sample first. I have been saved a few times from buying a real dud this way!

Go with what you like. We’ve talked in the past here about how few more books any of us are going to read in life. Even if you read 100 books a year and live for 50 more years, that’s only 5000 more titles you will read. And to be honest, both of those numbers are optimistic estimates for many of us. You will never make it through thousands of books you’d love. So don’t waste your time on things you aren’t really drawn to. If a friend or reviewer whose taste you trust recommends something outside your normal tastes, absolutely try it out BUT if you know you hate false accusation stories…just don’t bother.

Feel free to lower the energy level. For really low-energy times you might have some more accessible reading available. I like magazines, and sometimes I’ve read books of very short essays, or joke books or comic books because I can’t deal with a full page of text. Pro tip: You can borrow magazines through the Libby app. So you don’t even need to subscribe or visit a news stand! And finally…

Read first, but it doesn’t have to be forever. The point of the “effortful before effortless” fun rule is not to banish all effortless fun. It’s to change the balance, so busy people don’t spend all their precious leisure time on things that aren’t necessarily as rejuvenating as they might have hoped. So if you find it hard to get going on reading, tell yourself you only have to read for two minutes. Two minutes feels like nothing! Then you can binge Netflix or go on an Instagram bender all night if you want. Most of the time you’ll likely read longer, but if not, oh well. Reading for two minutes five times a day during those little spots of time that pop up still means reading for another ten minutes a day…which isn’t nothing. That’s probably about how much time it’s taking me to read through all the works of Jane Austen this year.

How do you make time to read?

In other news: This rule to do “Effortful before effortless” fun comes from Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters. If you haven’t read a copy of the book yet, please do! You can request it from your library or download the ebook from major retailers immediately and make it your effortful fun today

Even the busiest people have some leisure time. The problem is that it is often unpredictable, short in duration, or happens at low-energy times (like at night after the kids go to bed). Screen time fits these constraints incredibly well. Most people have their phones with them at all times, and you can scroll online for 2 minutes or 2 hours. You don’t have to plan ahead to watch Netflix.

The result is that screen time winds up consuming the bulk of people’s leisure time. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a little online or TV-style fun. But many busy people also lament that they have too little time to read, do hobbies, etc. So there needs to be some way to repurpose low-quality leisure time for these higher quality pursuits.

The answer is Rule #9: Effortful before effortless. Commit to doing just a minute or two of “effortful fun” (reading, hobbies, crafts, connecting) before switching over to “effortless fun” (generally social media, scrolling, TV, etc.).

A few minutes doesn’t seem like a huge ask, so this strategy can feel pretty doable. But one of two things winds up happening. Often times, people get so into their effortful fun that they never switch over. You want to find out what happens in that mystery novel and you never wind up over at Facebook. Oh well! It will still be there next time.

But even if you do read for ten minutes and then go binge watch something the rest of the night, at least you’ve gotten to do both kinds of fun, and that can make leisure time feel far more balanced.

So, this week, think about what sorts of “effortful” fun you like to do. I enjoy puzzles, reading magazines, and reading books (not all great books…plenty of mindless fodder in there too). I try to keep ebooks on my phone so I can read those in little bits of time. I’ve set up my dining room table to be a puzzle station and generally have a 1000-piece puzzle going at any point.

Figure out how you can make your fun accessible, and then, when a spot of time opens up, challenge yourself to do one of these effortful forms of fun for just a little bit. This seems simple, but it can have a huge effect. In the Tranquility by Tuesday project (the subject of my most recent book), agreement scores with the statement “Yesterday I didn’t waste time on things that weren’t important to me” rose 32 percent over the course of the study. Not bad — especially for people whose lives didn’t suggest a lot of wasted time in the first place!

In other news: Wondering why the TBT week starts on Friday? It’s because of Rule #2: Plan on Friday. You can read more about that here.

Check out this TBT In Real Life video of how one busy woman decided to spend more time on effortful fun, rather than the effortless variety.

Here are some questions to help you reflect on the past week:

• Think back over the past week. What times did you designate for little tasks during your workdays?
• What windows did you designate for household tasks and chores?
• What effect did you see in your life from batching the little things?
• What challenges did you face in trying to batch the little things? How did you address these challenges?
• If you modified this rule, how did you do so?
• How likely are you to continue batching the little things in your life?

As we hurtle toward the last week of this Tranquility by Tuesday Challenge, it’s also worth reflecting on the previous rules:

• Did you observe a bedtime this past week?
• Did you plan on Friday? (And is planning on your to-do list for tomorrow?)
• Did you move by 3 p.m. most days?
• Did you do your chosen activity three times per week?
• Did you create a back-up slot, or build more open space generally into your schedule?
• Did you have one big adventure and one little adventure this past week?
• Did you take one night for you?

I’ll be back with the final rule from Tranquility by Tuesday tomorrow!

In other news: Sarah and I talked a bit about batching the little things in order to reduce transition time in our most recent episode of the Best of Both Worlds podcast. If you haven’t listened to it yet, please do!

Ideally, I would go off to a cabin in the woods somewhere (well, perhaps to the beach somewhere) and work on these things for the next month. I might pop home for a day or two here and there to say hello to everyone but other people would be managing all the details fabulously. Not only would all the logistics be flawless, potty training would be done, all the camp sign-ups finished, etc.

I will wind up taking a few days away at some point to work on my big projects (so this is not exactly a woe-is-me post), but a month probably isn’t going to happen.  In the meantime, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about such lofty matters as how to prove a child understands the quadratic equation so he can take a summer engineering course (harder than you might think when your district doesn’t do a standard algebra 1-geometry-algebra 2 sequence, but combines topics from each in different years). Also, a competition blazer that was dutifully ordered during one week’s Friday Punch List has gone missing. UPS claims it was delivered. The package is no where to be found.

Anyway, there is much to be written about who does what work, and much has been written on this topic. But if you happen to be in a situation where you are carrying a substantial mental load, I think batching the little things is one of the most practical strategies for at least keeping the heavy mental load in check so time is available for longer projects that require focus.

This somewhat radical proposition is that you carve out time for your highest value work, or the work you want to do, and then you force as many of the other things as possible into the remaining chunks that you allot for them. I know this doesn’t work for all professions, or even make sense for some. But if you are in the business of coming up with ideas or analyzing complicated matters, there is no substitute for time and attention. It’s just a matter of what you give your time and attention to.

And so, yesterday, despite the missing competition blazer (re-ordered because we need it) and the camp issue (I gave up and my kid chose a different class with no algebra 1 pre-req), I carved out time to write a new short chapter and revise a different one. I’ll do more today and Thursday as well.

I guess I could end the blog post there, but there’s a second and related point about deep work and mental load, which is that if you do want to do creative work, or speculative work, or any sort of focused and intense work, it can be easy to tell yourself a story that you need a month in that cabin to do it. Or even that you need a free day. I had been somewhat telling myself this story as I looked at this week’s schedule. The only really open day is Thursday, so I figured I’d work on the novel then.

In particular I did not think that Tuesday (yesterday) would be a good day for creative work. I was a guest on several podcasts (batching those on the schedule too of course). I love talking about time management and I’m flattered that any host wishes to talk to me about it. I also know that as an introvert, talking to lots of people all day can take a lot out of me.

But I had a two hour break between shows in the middle and I had a revelation (as I might tell someone else…) that you don’t actually need a whole day to make progress. You can do a lot in two hours if you just get started.

And so I did. Perhaps I would produce better work in that cabin. But if the cabin is not happening soon, something is almost always better than nothing.

So batch to reduce the mental load. And then don’t wait for perfect conditions to do the work you want to do. That’s how these things actually fit into life.

In other news: Wondering what this talk of batching is about? This is Rule #8 in Tranquility by Tuesday, my most recent time management book. We’re working through the nine rules over nine weeks here on the blog, and are nearing the end! If you’d like to pick up a copy of Tranquility by Tuesday there are links to retailers here.

During the week, I keep a “Friday Punch List” where I write down all my non-urgent tasks. I then get to all of them in one fell swoop on Fridays. It’s kind of fun to do 20 little things in a row. I feel like a machine as I cross them off! If things can’t wait until Friday, I’ll aim to do a (very) small window in the afternoon on another day (as mornings tend to be my most productive time).

When I’ve explained this rule to people, a few have brought up the “2-minute rule.” The particular version of this rule they’re often referring to is that if a task will take less than 2 minutes, you should just do it when you see it. In other words, the complete opposite of batching the little things.

And on some level this makes sense. If it occurs to me to ask someone about test taking skills programs in my area, it would be reasonably quick to just do it when I think about it. It might take me the bulk of 2 minutes to get in the mindset of sending a text on that topic if I push the task forward and do it later. Well, perhaps not me since I tend to make quick transitions (the subject of an upcoming BOBW podcast, incidentally…), but many people.

However…there are problems with this 2-minute rule. First, am I sure this is a 2-minute task? Texting someone about the test skills program might lead to a conversation about something else. I might also see another text I haven’t responded to yet and feel like I should answer that. Or I might note that there is now a higher number on my email icon on my phone and so I should check those messages. And distractions aren’t the only problem; sometimes the tasks themselves turn out to be bigger than expected, and humans in general are terrible at time estimation. Even me! Getting an address changed for something the other day turned out not to be a simple online matter, but involved calling the customer service line and getting a form filed. Not 2 minutes!

And second…how shall I put this…I think that perhaps some folks advocating the 2-minute rule have fewer personal small tasks on their plates than many people reading this blog. If someone else in your life is filling out all permission slips/yearbook order forms/cast party food contributions forms, and being the recipient of the texts about changing times for kids’ tutoring/therapies/private lessons, and doing camp sign-ups (with the associated medical/contact/etc. forms…), or none of those things are germane to your situation, then one might be more free with the limited number of tasks that need to be done. Those of us who do have a lot of small things on our plate have to be careful or they will literally consume our entire lives.

(And I say this as someone who has outsourced A LOT, professionally and personally.)

There is one useful aspect of the 2-minute rule, which is the truth that if you don’t do the task immediately, it might keep weighing on you. You want to write the Great American Novel but you need to buy cat food, and so you keep thinking “cat food! cat food! cat food!” Or you forget about the cat food and then remember it at 3 a.m.

But! Here is another truth. You will not be perpetually bothered by your lack of cat food if you write “order cat food” on a list that you know you will look at, and that you know you have a set time for completing.* If you schedule a dentist appointment for 8:30 a.m. next Thursday, you probably wouldn’t sit there obsessing about it as an “undone” task (even though the appointment hasn’t happened yet). It is a defined task, assigned to a set time, and so you’re good.

Done well, a Friday Punch List (or an any day Punch List!) can serve the same purpose. Whereas going off to do 2-minute tasks whenever you think of them is a recipe for getting very little of substance done.

*Actually this is a bad example as stuff like maintaining the cat food inventory should be automated.

In other news: Add this to this week’s task list! My Best of Both Worlds podcast co-host Sarah is hosting the first ever Best Laid Plans LIVE session in Ft. Lauderdale this fall. It will be November 2-4, and she’s going to be guiding us through planning 2024 to make it the best year yet! I am signed up and looking forward to it — and looking forward to meeting other BLP listeners/TheSHUBox readers in person. Hope to see you there!

Then there’s the reality of our to-do lists: Fill out permission slip, return that form to HR, email John about the office party three weeks from now, sign up for the next session of parkour, send $25 by Venmo to a friend’s gift collection, book the dog sitter for next weekend. And so on.

The result of hacking through all these little things is that we can feel incredibly busy, yet still feel like we’re not getting much that matters done. Or, in the words of Tolstoy about his W&P character Prince Andrei, “He was so busy for whole days together that he had no time to think about the fact that he was doing nothing.”

Napoleon’s invasion solved that problem for Prince Andrei, but in the absence of that, I’d suggest Rule #8: Batch the little things. By designating a small window in a schedule for doing lots of little tasks back to back, you can keep other times open for deeper work or relaxing.

I’m posting this on a Friday, and long-time readers know I create a “Friday Punch List.” This is a running list of all my not-terribly-urgent little tasks that I allow to accumulate during the week. Since I mostly leave Fridays open, I can work through the punch list during an hour or two in the morning, checking off thing after thing.

Batching the little things has a few upsides. First, a limited window creates efficiencies. Tasks tend to expand to fill the available space. To make them take less time, give them less time. If “order a birthday present” is on the list, and I’m aiming to get through the whole list in 60-90 minutes, I won’t hunt through the entire universe of available options. I just pick something, order it, and cross that off.

Second, I don’t feel guilty about not doing any of these tasks at other points. I know I’m going to respond to person X on Friday, so I don’t worry about the fact that I’m not doing it on Thursday morning. This allows for more focus.

It also creates more discipline. I’m working on a novel right now, and sometimes it’s tempting to stop working on it to go order a birthday present. If I know that Friday is the time for birthday present ordering, that takes away some of this procrastination temptation.

I’d note that you can batch chores as well. Rather than have house cleaning hanging over your head the entire weekend, decide that you’ll tidy for, say, 60-90 minutes on Saturday morning. If it doesn’t happen during that time, it was probably not terribly urgent. And if you find yourself looking at a dirty floor at some other point, you don’t need to hop up to clean it. There is a time for that, and now is not that time.

Anyway, I know not everyone can follow this rule. Some sorts of work are more urgent than others. But even people who traffic in tight deadlines often have some little, non-urgent tasks that might be suitable for batching. You can file your breaking news stories right away…and fill out those forms or send invoices or respond to that email about the networking lunch in one fell swoop on Fridays. And even with things that can’t wait too long, you can create a small batching window during a non-peak-productivity time on any day. The point is to separate out the tasks that need to be done, but don’t require your best self, from the tasks that do.

Do you batch the little things?

In other news: This rule, like all the rules I’ve been writing about over the last eight weeks, comes from my new book, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters. If you haven’t checked it out, please do! And if you have read the book, and enjoyed it, would you consider writing a review? Reviews on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other book sites really do influence other people’s purchasing decisions. I would appreciate it! Let me know if you do write a review so I can thank you.

Also…do you have Friday planning on your to-do list for today? There’s an excerpt from the book over at Quartz this week about why Friday is the best day for weekly planning.

Perhaps this shouldn’t astonish me, but it does. Work was heavy, though not overly so. The planned personal events consumed many hours — the new house end-of-project walk-through, organizing and wrapping presents (that took over 3 hours to ensure under-the-tree equity…), a child’s band performance, choir practice — but these were built into the model. The complications happen when you throw in the curveballs: the forgotten earth science project materials that necessitated a trip to Michaels, the 6-year-old scratching his eye with the foam at gymnastics last night such that it is swollen and he can’t keep it comfortably open so he is home with me today, a during-the-week house showing that came up yesterday….

Life seldom goes as planned. But the upside of thinking through the week ahead of time — which I do each Friday — is that you can identify what absolutely has to happen. Then you can think about when it can happen. And then you can build in open space for when the inevitable crises arise. Since you know what has to happen, those priorities get automatically rescheduled for the available open space. And one way or another, stuff gets done.

Well, most of it. I didn’t order the mat to go under the exercise equipment at the new house, but to be honest, despite the time sensitivity there, it probably wasn’t a top priority…

Do you plan your weeks on Fridays?