“Sometimes people ask why I bother with such a detailed level of planning. He dedicates 20 minutes every evening to scheduling out the next work day: This technique seems simple on the surface, but has profound impacts on your capacity to get things done: It promotes focused “deep work”Ĭal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, is a big proponent of time blocking. It can be a fun way to challenge yourself and gamify your productivity. This self-imposed "time box" forces you to work efficiently because you have a limited amount of time in which to complete the task.
Here's a time boxed version of the time blocking example above: "I will finish a first draft of my blog post tomorrow between 9am and 11am." In contrast, time boxing asks you to impose a limit on how much time you'll dedicate to a specific task. For example, "I will work on a first draft of my blog post from 9am to 11 am tomorrow." Time blocking asks you to set aside certain chunks of time to focus on a given task or activity. Time blocking and time boxing are often confused as being synonymous, but there's an important difference. As a result, I have less decision fatigue and even have more energy when I spend time with my kids.” Time boxing “Knowing what the day ‘means’ to me allows me to get the things I need and want to accomplish without seeing undetermined ‘ought to do’ items on a to do list. Vardy explains that theming offers mental clarity that allows him to focus on his family: If you get off-task or distracted, simply look at your schedule and get back to whichever task you blocked off time for.ĭedicating each day to a single theme creates a reliable pattern of work and further limits the cognitive load of context switching. All you need to do is follow your time blocked schedule. With days that are time blocked in advance, you won’t have to constantly make choices about what to focus on. At the end of every workday, review any tasks you didn’t finish - as well as any new tasks that have come in - and adjust your time blocks for the rest of the week accordingly. Take stock of what’s coming up for the week ahead and make a rough sketch of your time blocks for each day. The key to this method is prioritizing your task list in advance - a dedicated weekly review is a must. Instead of keeping an open-ended to-do list of things you’ll get to as you’re able, you’ll start each day with a concrete schedule that lays out what you’ll work on and when. Each block is dedicated to accomplishing a specific task, or group of tasks, and only those specific tasks. Time blocking is a time management method that asks you to divide your day into blocks of time. This guide will give you an overview of what time blocking, task batching, and day theming are how a combination of these strategies can help you reclaim your schedule and the best way to use your calendar and task manager to start time blocking yourself. Struggle to find the time and mental space for big-picture thinking Spend too much time in “reactive mode”, responding to email and messagesīattle constant interruptions throughout the day Juggle many different projects/responsibilities (Jack Dorsey uses day theming to run two major companies at the same time) Time blocking (and its close cousins time boxing, task batching, and day theming) is a simple, yet effective way to take back control of your workday. How do you balance the necessary evils of meetings, email, team chat, and "busy work" with focused time for the things you truly care about? Since becoming a digital hermit isn’t an option for most of us, we need concrete strategies to help us focus in a world designed to distract us. If there's one thing that can be said about the modern workplace, it's this: If you don't control your schedule, it will control you. "A 40 hour time-blocked work week, I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60+ hour work week pursued without structure."
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