{"id":12332,"date":"2020-08-29T06:53:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-29T14:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=12332"},"modified":"2020-08-28T09:55:39","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T17:55:39","slug":"take-control-of-your-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/29\/take-control-of-your-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Take Control of Your Time"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The following is the third and final lesson from Cal Newport for Focus Week<\/a>. Click to read the first<\/a> and second<\/a> lessons.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Cal and I will be opening our new course, Life of Focus<\/em>. We’ll send registration information then.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I’ll leave it to Cal for the lesson…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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In\u00c2\u00a0the first lesson<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0of our\u00c2\u00a0Focus Week<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0series, I suggested that you unplug to give your brain and emotions a breather in our current moment of constant, agitating distraction. In\u00c2\u00a0the second lesson<\/a>, I suggested that you implement a daily deep reading habit to retrain your neural networks to sustain and find satisfaction in unbroken concentration. In this third and final lesson, I want to talk about how to leverage this newly reclaimed clarity to focus your life.<\/p>\n

At the heart of my advice is a simple recommendation: take control of your time. <\/em>To be more concrete, when thinking about your work day, I suggest that you give every minute a job<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I call this technique “time blocking,” and I’ve been talking about it here since at least 2013<\/a>. I also popularized it in my book, Deep Work<\/em><\/a>, discuss it often on my podcast, Deep Questions<\/em><\/a>, and am even releasing a planner dedicated to the method<\/a> in November. Which is all to say: I’m a fan of this strategy.<\/p>\n

Here’s the basic idea…<\/em><\/p>\n