What I Use: 15% Time

Stephen Covey makes a distinction between production and production capacity. In factory work, the former is cranking widgets today and the latter is greasing the gears to crank more widgets tomorrow.

Since I am a scientist, I have to operationalize the conceptional definitions I use. Enter - My 15% Time. I spend 85% of time "cranking widgets" (e.g., designing studies, running subjects, analyzing data, writing, and answering email). I spend 15% of the time improving my ability to do those tasks. For every six hours on a task, I will spend ~1 hour thinking and tinkering with methods to increase efficiency (do more in less time) or even better, increase effectiveness (do the work that matters). These activities include reading books, learning keyboard shortcuts, and going on coffee dates with people that I can learn from.

What makes this work for me is blocking out the time with a timer.