How to Add More Margin in Your Day

Creating a buffer around calendar meetings can help you become more productive.

if your schedule doesn't have margins in it (that is, blocks of time between your scheduled items), i'd like to suggest that you consider adding some.

why? because just as you need to work both sides of a muscle (cat/cow in yoga, for example), if you're only "on" and are not taking time to pause, you are missing the opportunity for critical things to sink in, for disparate ideas to connect, and for insights to make themselves known to you.

many of us have been socialized to believe that productivity is queen and that it's only feasible in go mode. yet, think back to a time when you paused and things clicked. 

in a recent client conversation, we discovered that one root of her hesitation to create margin was fear that the spinning plates would fall and that she'd be seen by others as lazy. 

yet, when she started to carve margin out on her drives to work and between meetings (by asking her assistant to block that time from booking calls), she began to have access to intuition, which supports her decision-making, and she found clarity she never had before.

margin is a multiplier. Her creativity and productivity skyrocketed even though, technically, she was doing less. 

she also realized that how she was showing up improved. and, as her company had grown from 12 to 24 employees in the last two years, how essential her presence was versus the sheer quantity of deliverables she could produce. 

as a results-oriented person, this wasn't a simple shift. but she knew that something had to give and it was worth trying. fortunately, the results began to present themselves quickly, which started a positive feedback loop to encourage her to keep going. 

she realized that what got her to one level wasn't what would get her to the next. and that it took an inner shift to support who she wanted to be to create the results she sought to create. breaking that cycle wasn't easy (or linear). having cues to remind herself to pause helped, when, historically, she would have bulldozed ahead. 

she also realized that fear underpinned a lot of this. and that making the effort to create margin and pause allowed her to connect more deeply with her intuition (and to discern the difference between fear and intuition), which in turn helped her clarity and effectiveness.

so, i turn it back to you: how might creating space for margins and pauses in your days support your clarity, creativity, and productivity?