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💡 The Big Idea: Time Blocking May Not Actually Give You More Time, But It Sure Feels Like It

When it comes to effective time management, there are 2 important things to be aware of:

1. Did we have a solid plan for how we intended to spend our time?
2. How well were we able to stick to that plan?

The first objective is accomplished through a practice called time blocking, while the second is measured via time tracking. They are bookends to any successful time management strategy and essential for getting more life out of the time you have available to you.

This week, we’re going to dive into time blocking (we’ll cover time tracking next week).

Time Blocking

Perhaps you’re familiar with the budgeting advice to “give every dollar a job.” Time blocking is essentially the same idea, only applied to the hours available in your day.

Just like with your finances, the principle here is that whatever is not budgeted is likely to be wasted.

With an intentional plan for how you’re going to spend your time, you’ll be amazed at how far your 24 hours per day can go.

The best part is that the plan doesn’t have to be accurate in order to be useful. Your plan will likely never go exactly the way you hoped it would.

But that’s ok because the real value comes from simply having a plan in the first place. Just by creating the plan, you are able to apply intentionality to every hour of your day. This allows your brain to stop worrying about all the other things that you could be doing instead and focus on the task at hand.

Time blocking is successful simply by thinking about how you want to spend every hour you have available.

By doing this consistently, you’ll put yourself in a better position to not only accomplish what you set out to do but also to adapt and roll with the punches when things do inevitably go sideways.

It can seem counterintuitive, but the structure provided by your time-blocked time plan actually allows for greater spontaneity.

The bottom line is this: when you are careful about how you choose to invest the time you have, you’ll find you can do more with it.

How to Time Block Your Day

Time blocking is simply creating a list and giving every hour a job. But the order in which you add things to your time-blocked plan matters. A lot.

Here’s the order I recommend that you put things on your time-blocked plan:

• First, schedule your routines (morning routine, evening routine, and shutdown routine). This will protect the space for the little important but not urgent things that make an outsized impact on your overall well-being over time.
• Next, add your meetings and appointments. These are things that require you to be at a certain place at a certain time. I keep these in my calendar but write them in my notebook when I do my time block planning.
• Next, schedule your Most Important Tasks (MITs). I recommend you don’t have more than 3 MITs in any given day. If you have more than that on your list for the day, pick the 3 that are the most important and block time to work on them.
• Finally, fill in all the gaps until every hour has a job. You want to pre-determine how you are going to spend every hour of your day. Note that it doesn’t have to be all work stuff! Make sure to block time for the fun things you want to do, too, so you don’t end up resenting your schedule.

Whether you do this using analog or digital tools is completely up to you. The important thing is that you do it every day. So, pick the tools that you enjoy using and stick with them.

There are several apps that have time-blocking features built-in, or you could simply create a new calendar in your digital calendar app and use calendar blocks there to plan your day. Personally, I use a fancy notebook and a fountain pen when planning my day. Then, I transfer the tasks to an index card that I prop up on my desk so that I don’t have to go back and look at my digital tools during my work day. That way, I can stay focused on doing the work (most of the time, that’s writing).

Time Blocking Tips

Once you get into the habit of time blocking, here are a couple of additional tips and best practices that can make your plans even better.

First, make sure that your time blocks are at least an hour long. By using larger time blocks, your plan will be simpler, increasing the likelihood of successfully sticking to it. By scheduling larger time blocks, you will naturally build in a buffer to your day. This will be important when things inevitably go off track, giving you the margin you need to recover without everything breaking down. But that doesn’t mean that everything must be in exactly one-hour blocks! You might have a block that is an hour and a half, for example. Just don’t use anything less than an hour when time-blocking your day. Put the big stuff in, then use the margin your schedule provides to help you do the little things.

Start where you are with what you have. A common mistake people make is that they plan out their day, but then their boss or manager asks them to do something, and all that planning goes out the window. This can be discouraging and enough for some people to give up on timeblocking altogether. If you work in an office environment, these types of distractions can feel like they come out of left field (though if you use time tracking, you’ll probably find they’re a lot more regular than you thought and can be planned around). That’s ok! Yes, maybe you don’t have control over your entire day - but maybe you can have a conversation with your boss or manager and carve out at least a couple of hours of uninterrupted focus time, and you can use time blocking to make the most of those hours. Don’t feel bad if you don’t have complete control over your day. Just work with what you have, even if it’s only a couple of hours here or there, and apply intentionality where you can.

Don’t try and do too much. This is a common mistake a lot of people make at the beginning. They assume everything will go perfectly simply because they made a plan, and when even one thing doesn’t go perfectly, their whole day is shot. Their schedule is like a house of cards that comes crashing down the minute there’s resistance. Don’t build your schedule trying to accomplish 15 different things on your todo list! Pick a couple of the most important things and plan those. If you get through those, great! You can always go back and pick a few more things to work on. Just make sure that you set yourself up for success by not trying to bite off more than you can chew. Be realistic, especially at the beginning when you’re trying to figure things out.

Try using modes when time blocking instead of tasks. For example, instead of putting the task on your time-blocked plan, you could put the place you plan to do the work. I do this occasionally when I go to the coworking space - I’ll just put Coworking on my time-blocked schedule because I know it will be easy for me to enter into the proper work mode when I get there. Or if I have multiple writing projects I need to work on I might create a longer block called Writing. Figure out for yourself what contexts are useful for the way you work, and consider bringing those into your time-blocking practice.

Schedule your distractions. This is especially important if you struggle with things like email and social media. For example, if you find yourself constantly checking your email, you could put some filters in place and then schedule a block for you to go through everything and get caught up. Maybe you want to combine email and social media messaging into a Communications block, or you want to check in with your teams during an Admin time block. By putting it on your time-blocked plan, you significantly increase the likelihood of being able to revisit the temptation to go check those things because you know when it’s going to happen. This allows your brain to relax and focus on the task at hand, freeing you up to do deep, focused work.

😎 Something Cool: Funnel 1.6 Update​

Obsidian is great, but not on mobile devices, especially for quick capture. It takes way too long to open the app and jot down a note.

That's where an app like Funnel can really streamline your capturing workflow.

Funnel is a great little iOS app that lets you send things directly to Obsidian (and a bunch of other PKM-related productivity apps). I’ve always been impressed with the way Funnel lets you capture images in addition to just text, and the 1.6 update takes this even further by letting you use the iOS Markup Kit to capture doodles or sketches as well. This version also adds the ability to send events straight to your calendar and various Markdown improvements.

While I have used Drafts for years as my quick capture tool of choice, I have to admit Funnel has caught my eye. While the killer feature for Drafts, in my opinion, continues to be the ability to capture things with my voice via my Apple Watch (it seems I often get good ideas when out for a run), if you want to capture images (or now sketches/doodles), then Funnel is definitely worth a look.

📚 Book Notes: 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam

​168 Hours is one of those classic time management books that shows up on all the lists. Named after the number of hours available to us in any given week, this book is about using our time intentionally to do more of what matters. While I personally didn’t love this book (I found a few things in here a little hard to relate to), the key idea that we have a limited amount of time to do our work and that it is firmly within our control is powerful. Learning to reframe things from “I don’t have time” to “It’s not a priority” changes the way that we manage our schedules, and I like how this book encourages us to think about creating the kind of life we want.

If you want to download my mind map book notes for this book, click here.

— Mike

P.S. Obsidian Pro Vault update: I’ve wrapped up the text-based lessons, and the beta-testing process has begun! I’ve also created a webpage with a short promo video and an FAQ section. If all goes well, hoping to release this in about a month 🤞🏼