Make Time. Don’t Wait For It.

Last updated: 2026-09-17

I’ve seen this pattern a lot. You make a plan in the morning, the day blows up, and by mid-afternoon it feels like you’ve already failed. Then the rest of the day goes with it. That negative spiral is brutal. You miss the morning plan, you take the L, and suddenly everything else feels pointless.

Does this sound familiar to you?

A weekly review often isn’t enough. Some roles have too much chaos for a Sunday-night reset to still be true on Wednesday at 2pm. Add a 10-15 minute pause in the middle of the day. Re-evaluate priorities. Reorganize whatever is left. Then go.

That’s how you start feeling in control again.

If your job is a string of emergencies, or you’re inside a company growing 10-15% a month, a weekly review is too slow. Put a Midday Reset on the calendar. Treat it like a meeting you actually attend. Ten minutes. Fifteen max. That’s the whole protocol.

Here’s the thing that was underneath that calendar, and probably yours too.

Most people wait for time to appear. A gap opens, they try to shove the important work into it, and then they wonder why the deadline moved. That’s reactive. You are finding time. Finding time is how work that matters loses to whatever yelled loudest.

Make the time instead. Name the priority first. Then carve a block so it has somewhere to live. You will say no to other things. That’s the deal. Same as marriage: saying yes to one partner means saying no to the others. Every yes on your calendar is a no somewhere else. Pretending you can say yes to all of it is how you end up busy and behind.

So look at this week and pick one reactive habit. Waiting for a free afternoon. Letting Slack decide the morning. Skipping the reset after the plan dies. Replace that habit with a block you put there on purpose.

You still have to know what deserves the block.

You cannot prioritize if everything feels equally important. You need a North Star. A clear objective. Zoom out to the bigger picture (your life, the team’s goal, what the company is actually trying to win) and ask which tasks sit closest to that.

If you work for someone else, this means knowing what your manager or your organization values most. Explicitly. Not vibes. Not guessing from the last meeting that ran long.

Here’s a small version of the same logic. If the North Star is getting in the best shape of your life, cooking at home vs. fast food stops being a willpower fight. The objective picks. Write down your current North Star. One sentence. If you can’t, that’s why your calendar looks like a pile of equal urgencies.

Once you have the objective, protect the hours with something realistic. I use a Medal System for focus time because jumping straight to a 4-hour deep work block is how people burn out and quit.

Bronze is 1 hour of uninterrupted focus. Minimum viable effort. Silver is 90 minutes. That’s the baseline I want you treating as a normal good day. Gold is 2 hours. Exceptional.

90 minutes is a stretch for a lot of people. If that’s you, start at 30 minutes. Then move up. Track your medal for the next 5 days. You’re collecting data, not performing a personality transplant.

And when you put the block on the calendar, change the words.

Go into it intending to work on the task. You do not have to finish it.

Label the next 3 blocks “Working on” instead of “Complete.” That sounds tiny. It isn’t. “Complete” turns every unfinished item into a failure. Guilt. Pressure. Then the same spiral, except now you did it to yourself before lunch. “Working on” is a progress opportunity. The task can take longer than you thought and you still did the work. You stayed in flow instead of taking an L you didn’t need to take.

Some people hear time blocking and picture a VC who schedules every 15 minutes. I’ve seen that. Too intense for most people. You don’t need a day made of tiny cages.

Brooks uses a simpler version that still gives the day a direction. One theme for the morning. One theme for the afternoon. A single high-level outcome for each half. That’s a North Star for the day, with room to move around inside it. Less decision fatigue. More flexibility than a 15-minute grid. Before tomorrow starts, write those two themes down.

The app you use for this matters less than the mindset. Customizing the app is what helps the mindset stick.

Brooks has a rule for that. Even if you’re forced to use a suboptimal tool (Outlook in a corporate environment is the usual suspect), spend time making it fit how you work. Learn the keyboard shortcuts. Adjust the ribbon. Change the window layouts. Make the tool suit you. Living in the defaults is extra friction you don’t need.

Learn one new shortcut or one customization in the calendar or task app you already have. One. Do it today.

If the leak is your phone, add a little friction there too. There’s an app called One Sec that forces a 5-second pause before a distracting app opens. TikTok. Social media. Whatever you tap without thinking. Five seconds is long enough to ask, “Do I want to use this?” That pause breaks the automatic habit loop. It’s a nudge, not a lock on your phone.

Run a friction app like that for one week.

You don’t need to install all of this by Monday. You need to stop waiting for a gap.

Open your calendar. Add one block you made on purpose. Call it “Working on.” Show up and work on it. Finish it if you finish it. If you don’t, you still used the time. That’s the whole game.