Guardrails: Handling Interruptions and Reality
Of course, no plan is foolproof. Life is messy, and a perfect, uninterrupted 90-minute block is not always possible. The key to long-term success with any time management system is having guardrails—simple rules for what to do when things go wrong.
What happens when an urgent email from your boss lands in your inbox at 8:59 AM? This is the first test of your commitment. The rule is to quickly assess: is this a true emergency that requires my immediate action, or is it just someone else’s priority being pushed onto me? A server being down is an emergency. A request for a non-urgent status update is not. If it’s not a true fire, it can wait 90 minutes. Acknowledge it if you must (“Got it, will look at this after 10:30”), but do not let it derail your frog. If it is a genuine crisis, handle it, and then return to your frog as soon as possible, even if you only have 30 minutes left in your block. The goal is progress, not perfection.
Meetings are another common obstacle. What if you have a standing team meeting every day at 9:00 AM? You don’t abandon the method; you adapt it. Your frog-eating time becomes the first available, high-energy block you have. Perhaps that’s from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM, right after the meeting. The principle isn’t strictly “first thing in the morning,” but rather “your first and best block of focused time.” The worst thing you can do is let a meeting-heavy schedule become an excuse for never tackling your most difficult tasks.
Then there’s the issue of overruns. What if your frog is bigger and uglier than you anticipated, and it takes more than your allotted time? You have two options. If you’re in a state of flow and your schedule permits, you can extend your time block. Seize the momentum. However, if you have another commitment, you must stop when the time is up. In this case, your goal is to end at a good stopping point and define the very next concrete step. That next step then becomes a prime candidate for tomorrow’s frog. This prevents burnout and keeps the task from feeling like an endless slog. Remember, consistency is more important than intensity.
Finally, you have to be prepared to renegotiate. If you consistently find that your days are derailed by “urgent” requests from others, it may be a sign that you need to set clearer boundaries. This could mean communicating your focus blocks to your team, or having a conversation with your manager about priorities. Learning how to do hard tasks first is as much about managing others’ expectations as it is about managing your own time.
