Prioritizing ‘White Space’ Is the Key to a Productive Week
Take a break from what’s in front of you and finally see what’s around you
I’m a big believer that the enemy of productivity is always working. At the beginning of the pandemic, however, this belief was put to the test. Like many others, I saw my work contracts get cut in half, and I felt pressured to put in overtime to replace them. But fortunately, I didn’t have to. During this time, something surprising happened: New clients began reaching out, and I started feeling more creative and inspired than I had in years.
A big reason for this is because I continued to follow the lead of business coach Dan Sullivan and prioritized white space on my calendar. On his podcast, Inside Strategic Coach, Sullivan said, “Free time isn’t just a reward for hard work; it’s a necessary prerequisite for doing good work.” The key, Sullivan explained, is to proactively build breaks into your calendar before thinking about any work responsibilities.
At the end of each week, before I get bombarded with requests from other people, I break out my calendar and proactively put “white space” on it — time to simply be. Sullivan leaves 30% of his day unscheduled, explaining:
When you’re completely tightly scheduled, you only have time, focus, and attention for the work you are already doing. In other words, it’s just the existing projects; it’s just the existing opportunities; and you only have available to you the existing capabilities. But where your growth comes from is actually building into your schedule a 30% window each day where your time is not scheduled so that you can be aware of new opportunities, capabilities, and possibilities.
Prioritizing white space first forces you to work within limited time constraints, helping you to clearly see which tasks move your needle and which ones don’t. It also helps you to avoid burnout because it teaches you how to pace yourself. But for me, the greatest benefits of scheduled free time are twofold: It helps me to better connect the ideas I’ve been collecting, and it allows me to open myself up to opportunities I would have otherwise missed if I were only focused on the work in front of me.
