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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Good morning. This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is to focus on one sphere of your work at a time.
Today's tip, like another this week, comes from psychologist Tessa West. She is a professor at New York University and author of the book Job Therapy, Finding Work that Works for You.
West explains that jobs have different spheres, that is, different areas that require different sorts of tasks.
For instance, the spheres of my work are my two podcasts, Before Breakfast and Best of Both Worlds, my blog and newsletters, speaking, and writing books.
For a teacher, the spheres of work might be lesson planning, grading, providing extra support tailored to students' needs, and other things.
A freelance graphic designer's spheres might be design, administrative matters like billing, and marketing.
Or she might think of the spheres of her work as each of her major clients.
West says that people are more productive, and interruptions are less costly, when they generally stay within a sphere for a while, rather than switching among different spheres of their work.
This makes sense to me.
If I am spending the morning on Before Breakfast, there is an elegance and efficiency to writing writing scripts, then reviewing audio files from a previous batch of recordings, then brainstorming topics for future episodes.
If I need to let in the plumber to fix a leak, it is fairly easy to get back in the zone of before breakfast once he's gone, because I was so focused on it before the interruption.
On the other hand, if I had spent the morning writing before breakfast scripts, making notes for my next book, and working out travel arrangements for a speech I'm giving, I would have been less efficient to start with, and recovering from the plumber's interruption would have taken longer, because I might not be so sure what to work on after.
Given that we can be more productive and less vulnerable to interruptions when we're working within one sphere of our work, West suggests planning each day by identifying the spheres you'll work in that day and the tasks you'll do within each sphere.
then she advises working in one sphere at a time not switching back and forth among the spheres planned for the day she suggests doing the miscellaneous tasks associated with a given sphere like emails right after you complete the other work within that sphere it could also be helpful to plan work within a given sphere around the same time that you will have meetings related to that sphere.
West suggests using physical cues like a whiteboard with color -coded tasks or post -it notes on your desk to remind you of your spheres and your tasks within itch. I think working within one sphere at a time could work well for many people.
Much like time blocking, working in one sphere at a time will make you as focused as possible and will probably lead to some insights, because your brain is in one particular space.
What's more, I suspect that planning which spheres you'll work on in a given day also helps ensure that you actually work in all the intended spheres of your core work over time.
It is easy to realize you have spent a whole day on email and meetings, or a whole day in reactive mood, dealing with what's urgent, without Without even touching a particular aspect of your work or a major project that you know is due soon.
Planning which spheres you'll work in lets you avoid that.
You probably won't work in every sphere every day, particularly if you have a lot of spheres.
But you can be sure that over the course of a week or so, you will invest time in all of them.
So if it feels like your work days are all over the place, consider planning your days to stay in your sphere.
You may just find yourself feeling much more effective.
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening.
And here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, back, you can reach me at laura at lauravandercam .com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeart Media.
For more podcasts from iHeart Media, please visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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