Tag: work/life balance

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Living Productivity

The Architecture of Arete

In the modern landscape of productivity, we are drowning in “how-to” guides and “ten-step” frameworks. We treat our lives like machines that need oiling, rather than gardens that need tending. But David Sparks’ recent work on an updated productivity field guide brings back a much older, more grounded philosophy: the marriage of roles and arete. This is the third edition of his field guide with refinements that he’s made along the way.

To understand why this matters, we have to look at how we usually define ourselves. Most of us operate via a chaotic “to-do” list—a flat, untextured pile of tasks. “Buy milk” sits right next to “Finish the quarterly report,” which sits next to “Call Mom.” This flatness is where burnout lives. It lacks a sense of who we are being when we do those things.

“A role is not just a job title; it is a container for responsibility and relationship.”

This is where Roles come in. When we organize our lives by roles, we stop seeing tasks and start seeing stewardship. We aren’t just checking boxes; we are fulfilling a duty to the parts of our lives that actually matter. But roles alone can become burdensome—mere masks we wear—unless they are infused with arete.

The Greeks defined arete as “excellence” or “virtue,” but its deepest meaning is “acting up to one’s full potential.” It is the act of being the best version of a thing.

However, a warning from the 2026 guide: Do not treat Arete as a yardstick to beat yourself up with when you fall short. Instead, treat it as a compass bearing. You will never perfectly ‘reach’ North, but you can always check to ensure you are rowing in that direction . Success isn’t matching the ideal; it is simply making progress from who you were when you started .

When you combine a defined Role with the pursuit of arete, productivity shifts from a mechanical burden to a philosophical practice. You are no longer just “writing an email”; you are practicing the excellence of a “Clear Communicator.” You aren’t just “doing the dishes”; you are practicing the excellence of someone who “Values a Peaceful Environment.”

To keep these roles authentic, we must also identify their Shadow Roles. If your Arete is the ‘Present Father,’ you must recognize the Shadow Role of the ‘Distracted Dad’ who is physically in the room but mentally scrolling email. Identifying the shadow doesn’t make you a failure; it gives you the awareness to course-correct before you hit the rocks .

Implementing this requires what Sparks calls the Arete Radar. In a world demanding instant responses, we must cultivate a ‘meditative gap’—a pause between a request and our answer . In that gap, we ask a single question: ‘Does this commitment serve my Arete, or does it distract from it?‘. This turns the act of saying ‘no’ into a strategic ‘yes’ to your deeper purpose.

This framework rescues us from the “productivity for productivity’s sake” trap. It suggests that the goal isn’t to get more done, but to be more present and excellent in the specific seats we have chosen to occupy. In the end, we don’t need better apps. We need a better understanding of our station and the virtue required to fill it.

Finally, we must stop solving for speed and start solving for meaningfulness. Efficiency is the enemy of Arete internalization. Sparks suggests the ‘Blank Page Ritual’: rewriting your Arete statements from scratch every quarter rather than just editing an old file. This intentional slowness forces the values out of your computer’s storage and hard-codes them into your soul’s permanent memory .

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Living Productivity Work Work/Life Balance

Take Back a Day per Week

Non-conformist #3 Non-conformist – San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park

Update: I first wrote about this back in 2012. The lessons remain powerful – even in retirement! Suggest you give these techniques a try if you have the freedom to do them! With the New Year, I’ve been looking back at some of my older posts – and this was one I re-discovered with a couple of important lessons!

Back when I was a senior executive in a big company, I had an amazing executive assistant who made a big difference in how my work flowed day to day. She could read me like a book – as they say – and could tell when my frustrations started to build. She guarded my calendar carefully (back in the days before meetings could somehow just pop up on your online calendar) – but most days I was almost zombie-like moving from meeting to meeting.

One particularly frustrating day – one of back to back seemingly endless meetings – she caught me at the end of the day. She’d noticed that one hour meetings on my calendar seemed to take all that time – and that I’d often have no time in between one meeting and the next. A day of this kind of back to back meeting schedule was particularly grating on me.

She had a very simple suggestion: saying to me “Let’s change your minimum meeting time block to 90 minutes instead of an hour.”

So simple. I agreed to give it a try – and a few weeks later noticed the difference it had made in my work day. Most of the time, my meetings ended after an hour or a bit more. Her insight was that, by blocking 90 minutes on my calendar, I’d actually have a bit of “recovery time” in between meetings. It was sorta magical – I had “think time” during the day – a time to reflect, recover and prepare.

Sometimes these simple things make a big difference – in your personal productivity and, perhaps more importantly, how you feel about your work – and, ultimately, your life.

Back when I was still working, I decided that I wanted to try to apply a similar idea to my work week. I’m fortunate – being no longer hostage to back to back meetings in a corporate setting – and I usually had quite a bit of flexibility in terms of balancing meetings, calls with clients and prospects, actually working, doing email, etc. But I always noticed the toll that interruptions and, importantly, the context switches that come with them actually took on my ability to focus and get things done.

So, I began to block each Friday as a day when I would not schedule meetings, conference calls, etc. I’d just try to protect each Friday as a day for me to get my work done. Obviously, I can’t guarantee being able to do so – clients sometimes want to schedule meetings on Fridays, important internal work requires Friday work sessions, etc. And, of course, there’s always email, Twitter, etc. But I was surprisingly successful in protecting many Fridays – so that I could focus on the work at hand. I’ve come to think of Fridays as my “crank day” – that’s about cranking on work, not being cranky! And avoiding those externally-imposed context switches which seem to add such a burden and create a hit to productivity. Flow – it’s all about creating a zone where you can focus.

It’s proven to be a very useful personal productivity technique for me. If you’re in a situation when you can apply it, give this simple idea a try!

Would love to hear if it makes a difference for you!

Categories
Living Productivity Work Work/Life Balance

Lessons from 2012: Take Back a Day/Week

Non-conformist #3

Back when I was a senior executive in a big company, I had an amazing executive assistant who made a big difference in how my work flowed day to day. She could read me like a book – as they say – and could tell when my frustrations started to build. She guarded my calendar carefully (back in the days before meetings could somehow just pop up on your online calendar) – but most days I was almost zombie-like moving from meeting to meeting.

One particularly frustrating day – one of back to back seemingly endless meetings – she caught me at the end of the day. She’d noticed that one hour meetings on my calendar seemed to take all that time – and that I’d often have no time in between one meeting and the next. A day of this kind of back to back meeting schedule was particularly grating on me.

She had a very simple suggestion: saying to me “Let’s change your minimum meeting time block to 90 minutes instead of an hour.”

So simple. I agreed to give it a try – and a few weeks later noticed the difference it had made in my work day. Most of the time, my meetings ended after an hour or a bit more. Her insight was that, by blocking 90 minutes on my calendar, I’d actually have a bit of “recovery time” in between meetings. It was sorta magical – I had “think time” during the day – a time to reflect, recover and prepare.

Sometimes these simple things make a big difference – in your personal productivity and, perhaps more importantly, how you feel about your work – and, ultimately, your life.

Earlier this year, I decided that I wanted to try to apply a similar idea to my work week. I’m fortunate – being no longer hostage to back to back meetings in a corporate setting – and I usually having quite a bit of flexibility in terms of balancing meetings, calls with clients and prospects, actually working, doing email, etc. But I’ve always noticed the toll that interruptions and, importantly, the context switches they bring actually take on my ability to focus and get things done.

So, I began to block each Friday as a day when I would not schedule meetings, conference calls, etc. I’d just try to protect each Friday as a day for me to get my work done. Obviously, I can’t guarantee being able to do so – clients sometimes want to schedule meetings on Fridays, important internal work requires Friday work sessions, etc. And, of course, there’s always email, Twitter, etc. But I’ve been surprisingly successful in protecting many Fridays in 2012 – so that I could focus on the work at hand. I’ve come to think of Fridays as my “crank day” – cranking on work, not being cranky! And avoiding those externally-imposed context switches which seem to add such a burden and create a hit to productivity. Flow – it’s all about creating a zone where you can focus.

It’s proven to be a very useful personal productivity technique for me – and it’s one of my lessons from 2012 – relearned and reapplied from earlier experience. If you’re in a situation when you can apply it, give this simple idea a try in 2013! Would love to hear if it makes a difference for you!