In praise of the fortnight

[Trigger alert: Slightly rambling and inconclusive post ahead. I should probably have called this ‘productivity hacking’, or ‘agile calendar thinking’ or something. But do you really want to read another blog like that? They’re exhausting. Sorry, this is going to proceed at a much more gentle pace…]

So, anyway:

I’ve always liked the word fortnight. It’s from the Old English feowertyne niht, literally ‘fourtneen nights’. Its use has been in steady decline for the last 200 years or so, and Americans don’t use the word at all, so alas it’s probably doomed. The general consensus there is that ‘two weeks’ does the job just as well, so having a separate word is a perverse and unnecessary waste of time.

But I think that’s wrong. The fortnight deserves to be a thing-in-itself. It has something to teach us. And if we think of it as two-of-something-else-bolted-together, we’re missing the special power and flavour it has.

Partly, I’ve been thinking this because I’ve been working for myself for a few months now, and one of the things this has brought is a more careful tuning-in to my own sense of time:

For years, I worked on a monthly magazine, where the ebbs and flows of the press cycle dictated everyone’s lives (In a nutshell: a week of slack, two weeks of normal, and a week of insane. Repeat. The monotony of this pattern was offset by an amazing benefit: every month you basically got to wipe the slate clean and start over.)

And for nearly the last decade, I’ve worked in agencies, where there are essentially only two units of time: 1) the 60-minute chunk (because, Outlook.) And 2) the month — because, targets and salaries.

So, now I’m in control of setting my own schedule and booking my own meetings, and I’m re-learning just how much more you get done there aren’t three 60-minute status update calls scheduled into your day by someone else. Which is well and good, but to be honest I was expecting that, and it’s been written about a lot. (This much-lauded Paul Graham post from 2009 is the grandaddy of them all, and sums it up perfectly.)

What I wasn’t anticipating — and am much enjoying — is tuning into the subtler rhythms: how I realise I have a ‘golden slot’ from 8.20 am — 9 am in which I seem to be able to get a ridiculous amount done (which I’ve only discovered after 20-odd years because I no longer commute. How very Pomodoro technique of me); how reverting to using a week-to-view paper diary after years of electronic calendars helps me shape my time more effectively than Outlook ever did; and — (finally, we’re back on topic!) — that the fortnight is a really key unit of time:

I first noticed it, because I had decided to try and keep about 10% of my time free for doing totally random stuff — because we all know that the totally random stuff is inevitably what sparks the best ideas. (Which I’ve since learned is also Google’s 70/20/10 innovation model. Get me.) But 10% of a week is half a day. And, well, half a day of randomness ain’t ever going to really get off the ground, is it? But 10% of a fortnight is a whole day. Just right.

I’ve also noticed that if I set myself any targets (say, a number of new business meetings), a week is too short, too much at the whim of circumstance, while a month is too long, too impersonal. But a fortnight? Again, just right.

And the other day I realised that I’ve actually known the power of the fortnight all along: the fortnight is the holy grail of corporate holiday bookings, isn’t it? Take a week off work and you barely wind down. But take a fortnight, and it’s magical. It has shape, a beginning, middle and end. You properly switch off. (Whereas take three weeks and you suddenly you need reasons, and have to start telling everyone you’re ‘travelling’ and there’s a terrible pressure to Do Something Meaningful because you’ve blown almost your entire annual leave allowance in one go.)

I have no grand conclusion here, other than it’s obvious that the tyranny of the 60-minute-slot and the month-chunk have deadened us to other, possibly more fruitful, blobs of time. It’s something I’m going to stay mindful of, as I’m certain the fortnight has more to sh0w me yet.

Who knows, perhaps the Pomodoro and the fortnight will be built into the Outlook defaults of tomorrow…