What if an hour (two?) of most of your working days remained doggedly unscheduled?
Call it slack, or flex, or room to breathe: space for matters arising (matters always arise), for the unexpected (which you must surely have learned to expect by now), for serendipity and spontaneity.
The ability to pounce on opportunity.
Space for grace.
Space for courtesy.
This is not (to surf some antonyms) to skive or shirk, to be lax or slipshod; it is not to create a work day that is flabby, or saggy, or (heaven forbid) flaccid.
It is to have room to breathe (which would seem to be important), to have spaces that mean you don’t need respite.
It is to make your work week pliable, resilient, and supple: to have the ability to bend (and bend) and not to break. To have a kind of durability.
Cut yourself a little slack.
See also:
Vanishing time
Double discounting the future
Seth Godin on slack in systems
More from Seth Godin on slack in systems and resilience
Recommendation: Philip Marris on the Theory of Constraints
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