We all have extra-issues to handle: renew citizen card, change tires, take care of a legal issue, go to a specific shop out of the way, etc, etc. Group them at a specific day of the week (or month).

 

 

Issues that you have to handle out of your routine, can drag themselves for a long time. One of the reasons is that you keep waiting for a good opportunity in the middle of your calendar, so you don't have to get out of your way only for that specific issue. It's a nice idea, but usually becomes a trap. 

 

 

I recommend having a half-day per week when to handle what I call "system stuff". For me, this means legal stuff, finances, authorizations, bank issues, training documentation, boring little details, and all other stuff that doesn't really add value to my normal work, so to speak, but really needs to get done.

 

I corral those in a specific half-day of the week, and never deal with any of those outside that block. In practice, for example, if someone emails me or asks me for any of those on a tuesday, she will have to wait until my monday-morning-system-period. Of course, they now get me those by friday... ;) but which is great to create a pace that benefits everybody (and yes, emergencies are still emergencies like always).

 

 

Likewise, once per month, I try to dedicate the monday-morning-system-period half-day to "errands": things to be done at odd physical locations. So I really get out of the office heading specific shops, administrative buildings, that special photography lab, the year-routine dentist appointment and whatever is waiting for the "extras-day" to arrive.

 

 

For this to work, you have to protect the assigned period on your calendar. Of course you can mingle this type of tasks with all the rest on your calendar, is just that it can be quite relieving to label those stuff as "system-stuff", piling them up without hesitation, knowing it will be taken care of one of the next Monday mornings. This means low focus disturbance and nice effort optimization effect.