How This Googler Redesigned The Workweek

Jake Knapp works with computers – first at Microsoft, and then at Google. Being a busy person all his life, he has always concerned himself with time and how he spends it. He came up with the idea of a work week sprint, completing jobs in teams within a short period of time. This frees him up to spend more time with his family. He is the author of a book on this topic.

Key Takeaways:

• “There’s one bank account of hours in my whole life,” Knapp remembers thinking, “and I want to spend it well.” If one is only spending time in business meetings, or in any other activity without balance, one will not do well.
• But what if he could convince entire teams to rethink the ways they spent their time? … So Knapp began using his own 20% time to start rethinking how teams could restructure their time and energies.
• The upshot of Knapp’s investigations was the idea of a “sprint”: a five-day period in which a team can focus on problems, generate ideas, and test them within a standard workweek.

“Meanwhile, just two years into their young marriage, Knapp and Holly began discussing the feeling like there was someone missing from their family. By 2003, they had their first son, Luke. Again, despite being years ahead of their contemporaries, the decision, he says, “just seemed really clear.””

http://www.fastcompany.com/3058876/your-most-productive-self/how-this-googler-redesigned-the-workweek?partner=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29