How to Create Space When Your Working Day Is Already Full

Creating Space When Your Working Day Is Already Full

When your working day is already full, it can feel impossible to create any breathing room.

One meeting runs over. An urgent question comes in. You move straight from one task to another, eat lunch at your desk, and the work you had planned gets pushed back again.

By the end of the day, you have been busy for hours but may still feel that you have not got to the things that mattered most.

There are some practical reasons for this. We may need to get better at prioritising, delegating, using time-management approaches, saying no, or recognising where interruptions are dictating our day and making changes.

But there can be other reasons that we are busy.

Perfectionism can make it difficult to leave something unfinished, or we may keep redoing work and use up time. Alternatively, we may feel that we should be the person who gets things done, worry about disappointing people, or find it difficult to say no, adding more and more to our diaries. Sometimes keeping busy can even be a way of avoiding something more difficult.

Expectations and workplace culture can also have an impact. Being overly busy is sometimes seen as a good thing, or simply expected.

Understanding what is driving the behaviour can be as important as learning another time-management technique.

What Does It Mean to Create Space in Your Working Day?

It is as it suggests, creating space between things or for things.

That might mean leaving time between meetings rather than booking them back-to-back. It might mean protecting an hour for work that requires concentration rather than allowing every available slot to be filled with calls and small tasks. And then deciding each week what work will be used for that weekly protected time.

It can also mean leaving some capacity in your day to deal with the unexpected without your whole plan collapsing.

For many of us, there are simply too many things in our diary, our minds and our to-do lists. We do not allow enough space between them.

When we do not, it can affect both how we work and how we feel.

Here are some ways this occurs.

1. We do not allow enough time between commitments

We often move straight from one meeting or task to the next without giving ourselves time to process what has just happened.

You may leave a meeting with actions that you intended to deal with immediately, but then another meeting starts. Or you move on to another piece of work while still thinking about the previous conversation.

You can end up carrying the stress, frustration, or unfinished thinking and tasks, from one interaction into the next.

It also becomes much harder to catch up when something takes longer than expected, because there is no capacity in the diary to absorb it. You may also find that you do not retain or process the meeting as well as you would have done if you had allowed yourself some time afterwards.

2. We keep going without pausing

It is easy to keep moving through the working day without ever stopping to consider what you have actually done, what still matters, and what can wait.

You finish one task and immediately start another. An email arrives, so you deal with that. Someone asks a question, so you respond. The next meeting begins.

Before long, the day has disappeared.

Without a pause, it can be difficult to notice whether you are spending your time on what actually matters or simply responding to whatever is in front of you. It can also be incredibly tiring.

3. Everything starts to feel urgent

When there is no spare capacity, more and more things become urgent.

A task that could have been dealt with next week becomes something that has to be done today. A small delay creates another problem. You find yourself firefighting because there is no time to deal with things before they become pressing.

There can also be a psychological element to urgency. Sometimes we call something urgent because we want to get it off our list, because it is our latest idea, or because somebody else has asked for it. Sometimes we treat most things as urgent as habit.

Not everything that feels urgent is genuinely urgent.

We can also take this sense of urgency and rushing into our personal lives, losing some of the pleasure of activities or time with friends and loved ones.

Ways to Create More Space in Your Working Day

You do not necessarily need a completely different diary. Small changes can still make a difference.

Leave gaps between commitments

If your meetings are regularly back-to-back, allow enough time to finish the previous task, make any immediate notes or decisions, and prepare for what comes next. You may also want to do something to separate the concerns or taking the emotional impact of one meeting to the next, particularly if a difficult conversation has affected your mood or concentration.

Protect time for important work

If work requiring concentration is repeatedly displaced by meetings, questions and smaller tasks, put protected regular time in your diary and treat it as a genuine commitment. Decide each week what priority tasks that time will be used for.

Notice what you automatically say yes to

Look at the meetings, tasks and requests you regularly accept. Ask yourself:

• Does this genuinely need to be done?
• Does it need to be done now?
• Does it need to be done by me?

You might also experiment with giving yourself 24-hours before agreeing to something that is not genuinely urgent.

One way of deciding what genuinely needs your attention is to use the Traffic Lights approach.

Batch tasks

Respond to emails at different points in the day rather than allowing them to interrupt periods of concentration and planned work. You might also group calls, administrative tasks, or even meetings at certain times or on certain days, where practical. This can make it easier to sustain focus rather than having to start afresh every time you switch tasks.

Notice what you make urgent

Look at the tasks that regularly become last-minute or pressing. Could they have been dealt with earlier? Are you putting them off because something else feels more important, or because you do not want to start them? Are tasks or requests genuinely urgent because of a deadline, or have you made them urgent because you want to get everything finished?

Look at what makes creating space difficult

If you repeatedly protect time and then allow constant interruptions or changes to your focus, the problem may not be your diary.

Perhaps you feel responsible for being available. Perhaps you do not want to disappoint people. Perhaps you find it difficult to leave something unfinished.

The useful question may not be ‘How can I manage my time better?’ It may be ‘What makes it difficult for me to protect my time in the first place?’

Creating space does not mean having an empty diary

There will always be interruptions, urgent work and competing demands.

We cannot stop all of them. The aim is to stop every available minute being claimed by whatever grabs your attention before you have decided what matters.

Start by noticing where your time disappears. Is it emails, social media, administrative tasks or work that is easier to do but has less value? What do you automatically say yes to? What do you allow to become urgent? Where are other people’s priorities regularly taking precedence over your own?

A little more space can make it easier to think, prioritise and deal with what is genuinely urgent without everything becoming a firefight.

In conclusion

It is a layering process, so try not to make too many changes at once.

Pick one or two changes and apply them for a while. Notice what difference they make before deciding what else needs to change.

If you are a law firm owner, partner, or sole practitioner struggling with competing demands, interruptions, or a diary that is constantly being taken over by other people’s priorities, this is the kind of  challenge I can support you with to create a change.