37signals: Buckets of Time

Most people think they don’t have enough time, but what if they’re just using it wrong?

💡 Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founders of 37signals, believe in a radical approach to managing time: bucketing. Instead of jumping from one task to another, they focus on batching similar tasks and protecting time for deep work. Here’s how they do it:

☑ Organise tasks by "buckets"
↳ David answers emails just once every two weeks, batching 70+ replies in one go to save time and mental energy.
↳ Limiting time on emails means he spends two minutes per response—efficient and effective.

☑ Focus on 1–2 key tasks daily
↳ Jason avoids a long to-do list and instead hones in on just one or two critical tasks each day.
↳ Focusing deeply on a small number of tasks makes a more significant impact and cuts down on task-switching.

☑ Work in six-week cycles
↳ Projects at 37signals are planned in six-week chunks. Once a cycle starts, priorities don’t change—it’s a non-negotiable commitment.
↳ This organisational approach helps the whole team stay focused and avoid “whiplash” from constantly changing priorities.

☑ Protect attention as carefully as time
↳ David stresses that constant interruptions—like short meetings or quick chats—kill focus. Each “quick switch” can break the flow and steal productivity.
↳ Jason reinforces this by working full-screen on a single laptop app, minimising the temptation to multitask or glance at notifications.

☑ Say "no" more often to regain control
↳ Both Jason and David believe setting boundaries (saying no to “ASAP” requests) makes their time more valuable and focused.
↳ It’s OK to let things wait. Most "urgent" requests aren’t really urgent if you give them a bit of breathing room.

Big takeaway: It’s not just about managing hours—it’s about preserving attention. Imagine if instead of filling your day with “busy” tasks, you grouped them into buckets and gave your full attention to the things that really matter.

The way I found to be most effective is to bucket that time in ways that I'll do a certain activity

I'm going to spend 30 minutes or 40 minutes answering 70 emails, which means that I'm actually only spending two minutes an email

My favorite days are the ones where I set up these buckets that collect all the rainwater that's falling down in terms of interruptions

Not about eeking out more hours, about collecting all these tasks that come in that are not urgent, that are not ASAP, which is 99% of everything, and dealing with them in bulk

The key here is to figure out what's not worth doing, um, right now

I try to always have like one or two things to do in a given day, um, and not nine things

I use a single laptop. I have one computer, so it's single laptop, it's a 13 inch laptop. I don't have an external monitor, I don't have a second computer

If half of your mental energy or a quarter or whatever is, is always drawn to the right side of your screen, the left side of the screen... you can't do one thing at a time

If you interrupt someone for just 10 minutes, how long does it take for them to ramp back up into productive mode? And for some people to take as much as 45 minutes

When priorities keep changing and points of view or, or responsibilities keep changing... you can be doing a bunch of stuff and not getting anywhere

Time and attention are very different things and attention is far more limited than, than time

While you have 24 hours a day, you don't have 24 hours of attention a day

This notion of why we try to have... the discipline to only change our mind or make determinations on the big projects we're pursuing every six weeks is to enable that

You confuse enthusiasm with priority. The thing you were so excited about three weeks ago, you're not actually that excited about when you have to to do it

You can be doing a bunch of stuff and not getting anywhere. That's what happens when priorities keep changing and points of view or, or responsibilities keep changing

You actually have probably have a lot more control over this than you think you do

Try letting that one thing slide a little bit longer than you normally would and you, you'll find out the sky's not falling and the world doesn't end

If you actually set some boundaries, you appear more valuable

Just become a person who's not just automatically saying yes to everything, no matter how unreasonable the demand is