Strategy hour

I'm still thinking about new ways to overcome interruptions at work. We are under directive to "be more strategic," which means spending more time on things like market analysis, competitive intelligence, innovation, and the product roadmap. All of those things take a tremendous amount of time and effort, and are impossible to do well in a distracting environment. They are also among the chief responsibilities of a Product Manager, so they are worth doing right.

After disabling Outlook and TweetDeck notifications, so that my computer doesn't beep at me every 30 seconds anymore, today I rolled out phase two of my plan to increase my ability to focus: I scheduled one hour every single day—2:00 PM to 3:00 PM—during which I will turn off my computer (unless I have a strategic task that requires the computer) and work on nothing but one of the items that are strategic.

I'm actually really proud of this idea. There is a very clear list of "strategic" tasks for Product Managers, provided by a top consulting/training firm, and my plan is to go right down the list, spending an hour on a topic one day and then an hour on a different topic the next day. It might not sound like much, but time for thinking and strategy is hard to come by, and I think that even one hour per day will make a huge difference.