Michael Sliwinski's Weekly Routine

Michael Sliwinski founded Nozbe, a task manager whose team has always worked remotely, and has written about productivity on his blog since 2010. The surprise in his weekly routine is how little he asks of the morning. He says he can't start on his most important work first thing, so the hard work waits until 11:00 AM.

He set out his week in 2024, and every weekday has one theme. Monday is CEO and product work with no meetings, Tuesday product and marketing, Wednesday marketing and podcasts, Thursday his directors and one-on-ones. Friday is a weekly review, a long lunch, sometimes with his wife, and an afternoon of reading and talks. Inside each day the shape stays the same: meetings and feedback first, 2 protected hours of deep work, then lunch or a run, then the team. When the deep work starts at 11:00 AM his phone goes to do not disturb, he wrote in 2025.

It suits founders and managers whose days belong to everyone else, and parents who work from home around a school day. If you change hats ten times before lunch, you'll recognise the problem it solves.

You change hats once a day, and the deep work gets the same 2 hours every day, guarded by caps on meetings and customer calls. Start by blocking the same 2 hours tomorrow and silencing your phone for them. The school run, the lunch runs, the evenings and the weekend are our estimates, and his sleep is from 2017.

Sources

• Michael Sliwinski 2024, "How I plan my week? Cal Newport's Weekly Template my way"
• Michael Sliwinski 2025, "Core Hours: how to change the world in 2 hours a day"
• Michael Sliwinski 2025, "Kindle before bed instead of iPhone"
• Michael Sliwinski 2017, on sleep, from his review of Sleep Smarter