You want to move demanding work to the morning. It seems this would leave more time for everything else. But messages arrive early, colleagues expect replies and your usual schedule is already established. The discussion goes in circles: “This will help” - “There will still be interruptions.”
In this journal, we explore the questions “What should you do? When? How?” associated with the book's practical approach. In this situation, they can guide a small test. The following example was created by the editorial team to connect a goal, missing information and action.
Name the unknown that is holding up your choice
“I will work better in the morning” is an assumption. “I want to finish a demanding task during working hours, without carrying it into the evening” is a goal. The connection between them needs testing: would a protected morning slot help you reach that goal?
Identify the missing information. Perhaps the time of day matters. Perhaps interruptions or the size of the task are the issue. The test should answer a specific question.
If you can get the information from your schedule, work log or a conversation with a colleague, start there. A trial is useful when a question remains about how an option would work under your own conditions.
What: make the change smaller
Choose one recurring task and set aside the first 45 minutes of the working day for it. Keep the other conditions as similar as possible. This gives you a clear change to examine.
Agree with colleagues on when you will reply and how they can contact you about urgent matters. A small trial still needs to respect your commitments to other people. Make sure you can return to the previous schedule.
When: set a start and an end
For example, allow five working days and schedule a review before you begin. This is an illustrative duration for this situation, rather than a universal testing period.
For comparison, use a few recent days with similar tasks. If you have no earlier records, collect them first. Comparing the trial with a memory that “things were usually worse” leaves too much room for guesswork.
How: decide what to observe in advance
At the end of each day, briefly record whether the chosen task was completed, how many interruptions occurred, whether you returned to it in the evening and whether the work needed substantial corrections.
Before starting, state the condition you will use to judge the option. For example: “On four of the five days, the task was finished during working hours, without reducing quality or neglecting other commitments.” These numbers illustrate an agreement for the review. A suitable criterion depends on your work.
A small trial is useful when you know in advance what you need to learn from it.
Check what the experience actually showed
One successful week does not establish that the new schedule will always work. Perhaps the tasks were easier, meetings were cancelled or a colleague helped more than usual. Record these circumstances alongside the result.
If conditions changed sharply, your conclusion may be “not enough information.” Refine the question or repeat the test under comparable conditions. Avoid treating every inconvenient result as a reason to extend the trial indefinitely.
End the trial with another decision
Choose one of three steps: keep the new schedule, adjust one part and test again, or return to the previous option. Set a further review date if you need one.
An unsuccessful trial can still provide useful information: you discovered a limitation before making a larger change. But its result applies to the conditions you tested. For a decision with consequences that are difficult to reverse, a small trial may be just one part of a more detailed assessment.
Before starting, it helps to decide when to stop looking for information. When reviewing the result, check whether you are only looking for confirmation.
Prepared by the editorial team using ideas from the book. The situations are examples created for this journal.
