Time Blocking as your productivity tool!

Focus on certain tasks during the day could be a very challenging process. You probably can refer to certain situations when 8-hour working day brought you with no results and you felt like you just wasted time, being angry and exhausted at the same time.

There are known obstacles during your working hours which makes your work awfully difficult at times. Whether it’s one of these endless phone conversations with your clients, meetings which took too long, constant bombarding with emails or “quick chats” with work colleagues which burn your productivity and focus time.

In previous articles I have mentioned many times that you need a plan, a to-do list, a workable schedule so you can go through your day and you can expect certain things to happen. However to-do lists aren’t the only way you can organise your daily work schedule. Some of the world’s most productive people have sworn off to-do lists in favour of something else, something new: time blocking or calendar blocking.

Let’s start from the definition itself, what is the time blocking?

It is a practise of planning out every moment of your day way in advance in order to dedicate specific blocks of time for certain tasks and actions.
The main difference from to-do list is that instead of creating a list of WHAT needs to be done, you prioritise time and you focus on WHEN you’re going to do it.

It may sound like a revolution for your calendar converting it to a chaotic mess, but it can have completely opposite effect. When you start filling calendar with the tasks and other things which you need to do at certain day and time, it will be harder for others to steal your time!

How does this technique work?

Time blocking is designed in 100% for focus, by scheduling every minute and hour of your day you not only guard against distraction from other things but you also multiply the concentration and focus.

Where to start with time blocking?

Start with priorities first, make a list marking all the tasks and see which ones are the high-level, which ones can be done at the later day. High-level priorities should be placed where you most productive time is during the day – you usually have only 3-4 hours of the brain peak time during the day. Use it well.

Start creating your blocks in calendar, fill the time fields with tasks based on priority and specify on how long they should take – don’t worry, at first you may have difficulties estimating certain tasks but it will get better over time, you simply need practise. It is worth mentioning that you don’t need to “block” entire 8hours during the day, by doing this in early stages you may get mental 🙂 I will advise to select tasks which needs to be done and start with 2-3hours of time blocking per day, once you feel comfortable you can start increasing the productivity time.

Once you complete a task – mark it off but don’t delete it, that way this would be a little award and your brain will register these “successes” and will treat them like some sort of achievements, brain likes stimulation and this would be an ideal example of one.

The other thing is to schedule your breaks as well as some “cool off” periods (short breaks) between the tasks. Make sure you set an “overflow day” during the week to stop you from feeling overwhelmed.

There are some apps which can help you with time-tracking and time-blocking, you can also use a native calendar app on your phone, tablet or pc. I cannot offer any third party application as yet as I haven’t found one which works in the way I want it, but I do use Siri Shortcuts as well as native Apple Calendar to block certain tasks.

Hope you enjoyed today’s article.

Cheers,
Lucas