Carolina de Arriba

You can't go from a hard conversation to a strategic decision to deep focus work

without paying the price.

Your nervous system needs time to regulate.

Your brain needs time to switch contexts, and you need time to breathe.

And here's what's wild.

When I started to add buffers, my productivity actually increased.

And it was easier than I thought.

Those one hour long meetings became 45 minute meetings, giving me that 15 minute buffer that I needed.

Now, there are people that see 15 minutes in my calendar and still go and schedule a meeting.

So I like to block that time as a buffer for me to decompress and transition in between activities.

What I'm still struggling a little bit with in full disclosure is those 30-minute meetings.

I can have five of those back-to-back.

And if they're all about the same thing,

If it's me batching those, it's totally okay as long as I build a buffer at the end.

But if I'm context switching from meeting to meeting

30 minutes, five times, I'm fried by the end.

So I try to avoid that situation.

Rule number five, design Mondays and Fridays differently.

You know, Mondays and Fridays are different from each other and they're different from the rest of the week.

The energy is just different.