When Discipline Becomes Stubbornness

I was incredibly stubborn about keeping the same training routine every day, even as our household dynamics changed with the kids' schedules, especially their new school times and my office hours. For months last year, I insisted on doing both weights and running in the same early-morning session. Since PT starts around 5 a.m., I frequently ended up cutting corners on either the lifting or the running.

I refused to acknowledge that I was in a new season of life. My kids' new school, with its different schedules and demands, meant my old approach no longer worked. That resistance only added stress to my predawn workouts and my mornings.

Once I adopted time blocking and rethought my strategy, I redesigned my routine to fit my new time constraints. I began time blocking not just training time, but exactly what I would do each morning. I separated lifting from running and shifted my lifting to full-body circuit training.

The results were clear: longer, more focused lifting sessions and longer runs, because each day was dedicated to one or the other. I felt less stressed since I could give my full attention to a single type of workout.

To me, time blocking is the most effective way to work. Focusing on one task at a time makes me more productive and improves the quality of my work. Different seasons of life call for different approaches, so I've experimented with various methods to strive to be as efficient and effective as possible.

I applied the same principle at work. As much as possible, I set specific time blocks for checking emails, texts, and messages, especially when I need to focus on a task that requires deep concentration.

For a long time, technology felt like a clear advantage—emails, Zoom meetings, constant phone and text access. Over time, I've come to see these tools as double-edged swords. Without healthy boundaries, they quickly take over. That's how many of us end up trapped in pseudo-productivity: answering emails and texts, sitting in back-to-back meetings, handling constant interruptions—with no real progress and no end in sight.

My solution has been to deliberately limit exposure by assigning clear times for each communication channel. When I'm doing focused work, I turn off notifications for texts and calls. Email notifications, along with most app alerts on my phone, are permanently disabled.

Saying "no" has become my default response to most business requests. Many of them are not truly productive. Any meeting longer than 15–30 minutes tends to be a waste of time, especially if the topic could be addressed just as effectively through other means. Lunches, dinners, and similar events can be useful for building relationships, but they should be exceptions, not routine expectations.

The real objective is to protect time for deep thinking: to work through complex problems, develop solutions, and imagine new ways to address organizational challenges. You do this even when no one in the organization—not even your boss—expects it, because it keeps you sharp and ready for future opportunities. And it’s worth remembering that these kinds of insights rarely emerge from hour-long meetings or corporate dinners.

There's a time and place for everything, and much of traditional business decorum is overrated. Consider open-plan offices, which became popular in the early 2010s under the promise that they would "invite creativity and create an atmosphere of collaboration through the meshing of ideas." In reality, employees ended up exhausted by constant interruptions and unable to do deep work.

Eventually, managers and executives, having recognized the flaws in the open-office concept, began occupying the few remaining meeting rooms. By that point, however, companies had already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars retrofitting their spaces. I know this from firsthand experience: I served on a transition team tasked with implementing an open floor plan and saw its before-and-after effects firsthand.

You can use this approach in your personal life, too. In our home, our children have a set bedtime, so I can time block the evening: dinner, time with the kids, writing, reading, winding down, and finally bedtime.

It's not perfect and doesn't work every day, but it offers a new perspective on your tasks and how you allocate your time. This shift in perspective can change how you spend your days.