The Practice Playbook is the day-to-day side of running a practice: the daily habits, weekly rhythms and small decisions that decide whether the practice runs you or you run it. Start with the overview below, then use the chapters to find the specific habit for whatever is costing you time right now.
Start here
This chapter has one article, an overview of the whole Playbook. Read it before the other three chapters.
Where your week actually goes, the few things only you can do, and the daily and weekly routine you use to manage them.
Running your day
This chapter covers how you decide what to work on during the day: keeping one list, rewriting it each morning, and sorting it when everything feels urgent. Two of the articles are about email, because for most owners, opening it first decides how the whole day goes, more than the list does.
The first habit in this chapter: one list for everything you have committed to, rather than several scattered lists.
How to keep that one list from going stale once you have it.
A full triage pass for sorting a long list into what actually matters today.
A simpler method than ABC, for a day when you do not have time to label every item.
What to do the moment something lands in your inbox.
When to check email, so your morning starts with your own priorities instead of whatever is waiting in the inbox.
Protecting your time and focus
This chapter is about getting time to act on your list, not just keeping one. It runs from deciding which block of the week matters most, to defending that block in the calendar, to the conditions you need in place once you are using it.
Decide which block of your week matters most, before your calendar fills up with other things.
The mechanics of actually putting that block in the diary and defending it.
A second filter for choosing what goes in the block: work that is urgent now, or work that saves you time later.
What single-tasking inside that block actually requires, and why it works better than switching between several things.
The specific conditions that have to be in place before single-tasking actually works.
The actual time cost, in minutes, when something interrupts that focus block.
A method for finding out what is actually interrupting your focus, before you try to fix it.
Stepping back to plan
This chapter covers the reviews you run to check whether the practice is actually moving: a short one at the end of each day, a longer one at the end of each week, and two more detailed tools for when the daily and weekly reviews are not enough on their own.
Looking past today's list to the three-year picture for the practice.
The daily close: a few minutes at the end of the day used to set up tomorrow.
The weekly close: the point in the week where you plan the next one.
What it means if you keep doing the reviews but the practice still is not changing.
A more detailed diagnostic than the weekly review, for working out which of your tasks are worth keeping and which ones you should hand off.