The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

You know it, but do you actu­al­ly do it?

But for it to work, it has to hap­pen. Know­ing that you can do it is not enough; you also need to sched­ule the time — with rea­son­able notice before the cal­en­dar is full.

Viva books for you

For quite some time now, those who work in Out­look in Microsoft 365 can have it done auto­mat­i­cal­ly with the help of the add-on Viva Insights, which is also avail­able as an app you can add to Teams.

One of the many fea­tures in Viva Insights, with vary­ing use­ful­ness, is ​“focus plan”. It books as many focus hours as you want per day, on unbooked times, a cou­ple of weeks in advance. You can choose between 1 and 4 focus hours booked dai­ly and decide whether you pre­fer the times in the morn­ing or afternoon.

Move — don’t delete

Book­ing focus time is one thing, but actu­al­ly keep­ing it is anoth­er. It’s com­mon for my clients to ini­tial­ly delete a booked focus hour and then take a meet­ing dur­ing that time if they have to. 

Of course, you may need to pri­or­i­tize a vital meet­ing dur­ing a time you have booked for focus. In that case, don’t delete the focus hour, move it, but only with­in the cur­rent week. That way, you ​“play slid­ing-tile puz­zle with your own time” in the way I have writ­ten about before, and you still get the focus time you need.

Do this

1. If you haven’t tried the focus plan fea­ture in Viva Insights yet, do so. Here are step-by-step instruc­tions on where to find it and how to start a plan.
2. After one month, eval­u­ate how you felt about the auto­mat­i­cal­ly booked focus hours and their usefulness.
3. If you enjoyed it, keep going! If it was­n’t for you, can­cel the plan. It’s easy!

You get much-need­ed focus

If you let Viva Insights book your focus time, it becomes eas­i­er if you have pre­vi­ous­ly strug­gled to ​“make time for it”. You get the time you so des­per­ate­ly need to work on those con­cen­tra­tion-demand­ing tasks well before the deadline. 

That way, you avoid rush­ing and can deliv­er with bet­ter qual­i­ty. By using a few focus hours to reflect, you get the chance to lift your gaze to long-term ques­tions that oth­er­wise eas­i­ly get lost in the every­day oper­a­tional clutter.

How do you do it?

How have you used the focus plan fea­ture in Viva Insights? Per­haps you have found an uncon­ven­tion­al use you want to tell me about. If so, write to me and I will read about your expe­ri­ences with great interest!

(Look­ing for more ways to stay focused? Check out how Win­dows Clock can help!)