In the 1970s, time management consultant Alan Lakein addressed the concept of contact time and thinking time.
Most of us require both contact and thinking time in our personal and professional lives. Contact time refers to our interactions with others, whether to develop the relationships in our lives or conduct our work. Thinking time, on the other hand, is the time we need for ourselves. This is the heads down time we need to really focus in on our work, and the time alone we need to recharge.
Often we allow contact time to take priority over our thinking time. At work, a colleague interruption may completely derail focus on a project. A client may have questions that we feel we need to address right away.
We may even seek out a contact time interruption when we procrastinate on a task that requires our full thinking time efforts.
And in our personal lives, anyone with kids knows the luxury of uninterrupted thinking time. Even without kids, the relationships in our lives are important, and time spent in them is often fulfilling.
Yet I can bet we have all felt the toll when we haven’t taken a step back and found time to recharge amongst all this interaction. Even extroverts need this time to disconnect, reflect, and be present with oneself.
As I’ve thought about Alan Lakein’s distinction of contact and thinking time, I realized how technology has made it especially easy to get overloaded on contact time.
Many people I know have their phones on them almost constantly. And they have access to phone calls, text messages, social media, email, and a slew of other communication apps. Constantly.
It’s possible to feel perpetually stuck in contact time with this constant access to communication.
Alan Lankein offers two strategies for navigating the need for contact and thinking time. These strategies have had an impact in how I schedule my days, how I give myself permission for thinking time without feeling guilty, and how I don’t lose my productivity while making more time to disconnect.
Availability Hours
Lankein suggests that we create our calendars to clearly set our contact times. Rather than being open to interruptions at any given moment throughout the day, he suggests we block in time periods when we are available to take on spontaneous questions, meetings, and other communication.
This has worked well for me, especially when it comes to my email inbox and the other platforms I use to communicate with my clients.
Rather than constantly having my email open on my computer (and rather than having notifications set on my phone), I schedule email availability hours into my day.
When scheduling coaching sessions, discover calls, and other client meetings, I will have predetermined availability on my calendar. Obviously I can be flexible on a case by case basis, but this has been an enormous help in lowering the pressure to constantly be available for others.
Quiet Hours
Just like availability hours, Lankein suggests blocking time in our days for quiet hours. This is the space when we can get into our flow, focus on heads down time, and get work done. This is the time when we can step away from everything and take time for ourselves to recuperate.
I’ve found that I need to get specific about my quiet hours in order to respect them. Rather than saying, oh, yeah, I’ll try to fit in some thinking time sometime today, I set that time in my calendar.
Morning and evening routines have been great practices for my personal quiet time. Rather than hustling myself out of bed every morning and back into bed each night, I schedule short periods of quiet time where I can get grounded, wind up for the day, and wind down at the end of the day.
Within my work day I also get specific about setting quiet time in my schedule. This balances well with actively setting my availability hours.
When I look at my calendar, I have clear distinctions between the times I’m available for my various contact activities, and times I’m only available for my personal focus and flow.
With this compartmentalization in place, I can better focus on my work and intentions for each part of my day. I feel less stressed, more clear on what I need to get done and how/when that will happen, and more fulfilled by my time.