Leveraging unstructured time
Lessons from scheduling unstructured time at work for 5+ years
Have you ever tried scheduling “unstructured time” as a means to bolster creativity? This is a technique I picked up early in my career from LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner - at the company, he often talked about blocking off certain afternoons for thinking and processing, which helped him be more creative and strategic as a leader.
Building products is a creative endeavor at its heart, and I decided I would apply this concept to help me be a better product leader. I’ve been actively scheduling unstructured time in my work schedule for 5+ years now. Below I share how unstructured time helps me, and what I’ve struggled with.
What works well
Processing information overload- There is no denying the fact that product managers are processing a high volume of information at any given time. A typical day might have you digesting a customer complaint, responding to a legal blocker, back and forth-ing with engineering on a product spec, managing a leadership escalation or other key stakeholder’s expectations. All of this requires high compute power from our brain. Unstructured time offers a window for your brain to process and think through the events that have transpired and glean patterns and insights. I like to do a non-work related activity (often in nature) like taking a long walk or hike which helps me gain time to process & return with a fresh perspective.
Reaching flow on a project- Sometimes my unstructured time block ends up being the largest contiguous blocks of time I have available to think through a major product strategy or organizational challenge - which often require more than 30min to think through. Having a chunk of time blocked off, helps me with getting a level deeper in my thinking with second/third order effects of my ideas and proposals.
What I’ve struggled with
Creativity on demand- What inspires people to be creative varies wildly from person to person. For me, I’m a huge sponge of outward influences- the people, events, places, environment I am in has a major impact on my creative process. The reality of this is that I can rarely predict exactly when I’ll be inspired by a new idea or thought. It’s impossible to try and line up those “inspire moments” with when I have unstructured time scheduled. Instead, in recent years I’ve taken to writing a quick note to myself on my notes app when I’m inspired by something but not in a place/time that I can act on it. Then later when I have time, I try and return to it.
Upholding my calendar block- As product managers know, there seem to be an infinite set of meetings that you could be attending or people who want your time. This leads to encroachments on your unstructured time block making it difficult to uphold, especially when the encroacher might be an authority figure like your manager or leadership. I’ve found it helps to be upfront with folks like your manager and collaborators on the value you place on having the unstructured time and how it makes you better at your job. If that fails, I’ve also found it helpful to break up that block of time into smaller blocks on your calendar as that seems to deter more people from making an encroachment vs. when they see a larger lump block of time.