The Psychology-Fit Calendar
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Ek copied a board member's celebrated productivity calendar wholesale and, two weeks in, describes it as the worst schedule ever — he did a lot of things but wasn't productive and had no energy. The lesson: productivity systems are psychology-specific, and importing someone else's is a reliable way to destroy your own output. His method is to work out your own psychology and where you add the most leverage, then build the calendar around that. Some people gain energy from meeting people; some are great delegators who coordinate like a spider at the centre; some need three or four blocked-out hours to do fewer things at higher quality. Ek's own answer is a famously empty calendar — one or two things a day — so he can roam free to the highest-value problem.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Stop copying successful people's schedules
Ek used to model himself on people he looked up to and copied a board member's published calendar template straight off. Recognise the copied system as a hypothesis about someone else's brain, not a best practice.
Watch out A brilliant system with smart ideas can still leave you with no energy at all — Ek's copied calendar did.
- 2
Diagnose where your energy comes from
Run the copied or current system for a short period and note honestly where energy is gained and lost. Ek's realisation came within two weeks: he was doing a lot but wasn't productive, which is the signal that the structure is fighting the psychology.
Pro tip Track energy, not just completed tasks — volume of output hides the problem.
- 3
Classify your working type
Ek sketches three: people energised by meeting others, great delegators who get most work done through others and coordinate the web, and creative types who need two to four hours of blocked time and do fewer things of higher quality. Most people, including Ek, are a hybrid.
Pro tip Name your type out loud — it makes the next scheduling decisions obvious.
- 4
Identify where you add the most leverage
Separate what you're capable of from where your contribution multiplies. Ek's leverage is providing leverage to a team who already run the day-to-day: taking the hairy problems that need two hours or two weeks of his attention.
Pro tip Ask your direct reports what they get stuck on that only you can unstick.
- 5
Deliberately under-schedule
Ek keeps most weeks fairly empty — one or two things during the day — because pre-booking his time sets him up for failure by leaving no room for what turns out to be important and quite urgent. The empty space is the mechanism, not the slack.
Pro tip Expect it to feel unproductive; Ek notes this messes with people psychologically.
Watch out Empty calendar only works if you actually roam to the highest-value action rather than drifting.
- 6
Adjust for your real constraints
Ek explicitly concedes that if you work a nine-to-five with a boss requiring your presence at meetings, four-hour blocks may be impossible. Apply the principle to the extent you can — being true to your psychology where you have discretion still yields large gains.
In the wild
Ek's board member Shishir published his productivity rituals, including a mock-up of his ideal week with one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many meetings on regular and occasional cadences. Ek thought it was brilliant and copied it directly. Two weeks in he describes being about to kill himself over it — the worst schedule ever, no energy at all, plenty of activity and little productivity. The failure produced his core principle: understand your own psychology and where you add the most leverage, then build from there rather than from someone else's template.
→ Abandoned the copied system and moved to a deliberately sparse calendar that leaves him free to jump to the highest-value action.
A team lead runs a back-to-back calendar because that is what senior people around her do, and finishes each week exhausted with nothing shipped. Auditing energy rather than output, she finds meetings drain her and long uninterrupted blocks produce her best work — she is closer to Ek's creative type than to a delegator. She keeps the two recurring meetings her role genuinely requires, converts the rest to written updates, and reserves two four-hour blocks a week. She does fewer things, at higher quality.
→ Fewer commitments per week and a visible rise in the quality of the work she personally produces.
Common mistakes
Importing a famous productivity system whole
The system was tuned to someone else's psychology. Ek copied a genuinely well-designed calendar and it drained him within two weeks — activity stayed high while productivity and energy collapsed.
Reading an empty calendar as laziness
Ek notes people struggle psychologically with unbooked time, feeling they aren't being productive. That discomfort pushes them to fill the space that exists precisely so they can move to the highest-value work.
Pre-booking the time your real work needs
Scheduling in advance guarantees there is no capacity left when the important and genuinely urgent problem lands. Ek calls pre-booking setting himself up for failure.
From the transcript
“most people are surprised if if they get a glimpse of my calendar because it's quite empty”
“my realization through that process is you have to do things you have to understand your own psychology uh uh and you have to understand…”
“the most important thing for me is to be able to roam free to the highest uh and most important area and what I find…”
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