Why You Need an Untouchable Day Every Week

When you’re doing deep creative work, meetings can disrupt your flow and decrease your productivity. That’s why you need to schedule one “Untouchable Day” per week, where nothing can interrupt you — no texts, no e-mails, no phone calls, and absolutely no meetings. But what happens when you get an incredible speaking invitation or somebody much more important has this one day to get together? Stick to this simple rule: Untouchable Days may never be deleted, but they can move between the bowling-lane bumpers of the weekends. They can’t jump weeks, though. If they need to move from a Wednesday to a Thursday or a Friday, that’s fine — even if you have to move four meetings to make room. The beauty of this approach is that when you plant the Untouchable Day flag on your calendar, it really does feel permanent in your mind. You start feeling the creative high you’ll get from such deep output as soon as you start booking them in.