How do I handle direct reports who need immediate answers during my morning block?

Establish clear escalation criteria: 'If it's a production issue, team conflict, or client escalation, interrupt me immediately. Otherwise, I'll respond by 10am.' Most management requests are not truly time-sensitive; establishing this norm shifts team behavior toward batching non-urgent requests.

Should 1:1s be weekly or bi-weekly for most managers?

Weekly 1:1s for most direct reports. Bi-weekly for very senior or highly autonomous team members. Monthly is typically insufficient for managers who want to stay ahead of team member development and mood. The regularity matters more than the frequency — predictable 1:1 timing builds trust.

How do I maintain personal deep work as a manager?

Be clear with yourself about what management work requires depth (strategy, performance, difficult decisions) versus what's administrative. The morning block is for the former. Accept that your individual contributor deep work capacity is reduced from what it was before management; that's a feature, not a bug, if you're investing the capacity in high-quality management.

What's a good daily outcome for a manager to use in today?

A tangible management output: 'complete the Q1 team development plans,' 'draft and send the project debrief,' 'finalize the hiring decision for the senior role.' Not 'be a better manager' — a specific deliverable that requires your full attention and judgment.

Template for Manager

Time blocking template for managers: lead your team without losing your own output

Managers balance team coordination, 1:1s, strategy, and reactive requests. This time blocking template structures all four without losing the deep work that only you can do.

The manager's attention allocation problem

New managers often make the mistake of trying to maintain their individual contributor output while adding management responsibilities on top. The workday that accommodated 5 hours of deep individual work doesn't accommodate 3 hours of 1:1s, team syncs, and blocking calls on top of the same 5 hours. Something has to give. The effective answer isn't doing less management — it's restructuring the day so that management work is batched, self-directed work is protected in a smaller (but defended) window, and reactive work is bounded rather than open-ended.

The template: a manager's structured week

A well-designed management day (for a team of 5–8 direct reports): 8:00–9:30am — management deep work (performance documentation, strategy documents, difficult email composition, anything that requires thought rather than reaction). 9:30am–12:30pm — meetings window (1:1s, team syncs, cross-functional meetings, stakeholder updates — all batched here). 12:30–1:30pm — lunch. 1:30–3:00pm — available for team (office hours, impromptu questions, review requests). 3:00–4:30pm — administrative and async (reviews, approvals, documentation, email). 4:30–5:00pm — daily review, tomorrow's prep, shutdown. 1:1s on the same day each week reduce context switching across the people layer.

The 1:1 meeting structure within the template

1:1 meetings are the highest-leverage management activity — well-run 1:1s surface problems before they become crises, develop team members, and create the trust that enables delegation. They deserve dedicated blocks rather than being squeezed between other meetings. In this template, 1:1s are in the morning meetings window. Each 1:1 is 30–45 minutes; managers with more than 6 direct reports may need a second meeting window or shorter 1:1 frequencies. The key: treat 1:1s as the anchor around which other meetings are scheduled, not as the flexible meetings that get squeezed when the calendar fills.

Protecting management deep work in the morning block

Manager deep work — strategy documents, performance reviews, difficult decisions, important email drafts — is typically neglected because it has no external deadline and can always be deferred to another time. But the quality of this work determines team direction and performance over months. Protecting a 90-minute morning block for management thinking, before the day's reactive and social demands begin, is one of the highest-leverage structural choices a manager can make. Today's daily outcome is useful here: set it to a specific management deliverable ('complete the performance review draft for Sarah') and protect the morning block for it.

Frequently asked questions