I tend to generate a lot more opportunities and ideas and projects than I can

reasonably follow through and I have a really hard time choosing between things

because I'm interested in all of them and they're all relevant to the broader scope of my work.

I'm Cal Newport and this is a deep questions,

habit, Mini episode.

The format here is straightforward.

I will answer voice questions from my listeners about

how to tune up their productivity habits in this moment of increasingly

disrupted professional work.

If you are listening to this podcast, on the day it comes out, which is Thursday, in the United States, then happy Thanksgiving.

Now I am taking this entire week off as a vacation.

In Georgetown University where I work we skipped the

standard days off during the fall and consolidated them all into this week so

this whole week as a vacation and I am actually taking it as a

vacation at least to the extent that I'm able I'm still recording this

podcast I still wrote a blog post I had an NSF final report to file and there's a little bit of logistical wrangling but by my normal standards it is a vacation

I think the the biggest mark of it not being a normal week is that I am not time blocking my days.

I am treating each day like a weekend where I sketch out a rough plan of what needs to get done or

anything that has particular times. I will sketch that out, but I don't time block the times in between just like I would a Saturday or a Sunday.

I do still use my metric tracking for each day,

as I think that's important every day. I still use my capture, so that's just a little view into what vacation looks like for a time blocker.

The other thing in my productivity world that has made a big difference recently is I have continued to tighten my rules about news consumption.

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