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Dan Sullivan (The Strategic Coach) teaches us about three types of days: Focus day:  A day when 65-85 percent of your time is spent during your work day doing activities that generate income. Buffer day:  This is a day where the majority of your time is spent handling the "behind the scenes" or administrative functions necessary to support your income-generating activities. Free day:  This is a full 24-hour period during which you do NO work or work-related activities, including checking voice mail or email.

1. In order to plan an activity, I consciously think about WHY I am doing it. Here are some questions that I ask myself: Is this activity moving me towards or away from my core goals for the year? Will this activity generate income? Is this activity a necessary part of supporting my core activities? If this is a support activity, is it something I can delegate to someone else so I can have more free or focus time?

After a bit of thinking I came up with a little surprise. Consider your rate of inputs ("I") vs. rate of outputs ("O"). We have these possibilities: I >> O (far more coming in that going out) I > O (a bit more coming in "") I ~= O (approximately equal) I < O (a little less coming in "") I << O (far fewer incoming than outgoing)

Drowning and desperate. This is that "utterly out of control" feeling, the sense that you'll never, ever be able to catch up. This is the source of big backlogs of email and paper. Work is falling through the cracks, and you have a reputation of "Better follow up in person or it probably won't get done." Grievously unsustainable Sinking (maybe slowly, maybe fast). This is the sense of "I just can't quite keep up," and leads to an overall anxiety about work. Your inboxes are increasing, with occasional "binge" emptying happening. Unsustainable Steady state, but brittle. You're just able to keep up if it's "a good day," but the slightest lag in work means you start falling behind - a day or two, say. And vacation or a trip? You'd better block out a good chunk of time blocked out to pay your "vacation tax." Brittle (one of the 10 GTD "holes" I identified) Smooth sailing. You've got some amount of buffer built in to your life. You can afford a few days of letting things pile up, and emptying is not usually a problem. Sustainable Couch potato/proactive monster. You have plenty of buffer. You can take off a week or two, say, and catch up with no sweat. Coasting