Time Blocking fights off procrastination and gets you to work. It is a method that frees time for leisure too. The technique is practical, easy to follow, and tracks how you spend your time.
Don’t delay; jump in, as this time-saving hack makes work more productive, increases your workflow, and leaves more time for fun.
So, where to start?
Here’s a look at how Time Blocking makes your life less stressful:
1. Time Blocking Organizes Your Life
Time Blockers get twice as much done in a day. No wonder Time Blocking has a #1 job skill hashtag.
Workaholics do Time Blocking to get out of the digital hermit trap and find time to socialize too. Always looking for lost time or feeling there needs to be more time? Now you can time manage and track your time with Time Blocking.
Time Blocking busts procrastination as the go-to solution for nearly everyone.
This strategy, dubbed ‘deep work’ or ‘dw,’ sets aside a chunk of daily time for urgent tasks or activities. The time management technique schedules priority work and personal off-time.
You even have a record of your actions.
The strategy keeps time-consuming phone calls, emails, and chats from interfering with getting work done, as these are slotted into specific daily sections. Not any time, each day.
By the way, Time Blocking is similar to the time management system Time Boxing. Still, it differs as Time Boxing limits the Time to complete a project.
In Time Blocking, there’s a concept called: ‘when you fall off which means that you can pen in tasks for the next day too.
Also, at the end of the daily schedule, you decide how far you are. There’s a ‘shut-down’ box to tick when you’re done. You don’t need to lie awake at night wondering about tasks, as once you’ve ticked the box, you know you’re done.
2. Time Blocking As New-style Personal Task Management
The fun part is that time blocking is old-school with new-style thinking. You can use your Monte Blanch fountain to draw up a schedule.
Yes, the outline for organizing your day and week (even longer ahead) in time blocking-style is on paper and done by hand. An ordinary notebook will do, but you can use a special graphed time-blocking notebook.
Think of Time Blocking as a procrastination buster. Start with each day planned on a double-spread page.
The right-hand side is divided in two, with the date at the top. The hours follow line-by-line down the page. You control your hours, which can be 9 am to 4 pm.
Then fill in the amount of time needed for urgent projects and other tasks.
3. Time Blocking Is Goal-directed
Time Blocking is not a cure-all for procrastination but a time management strategy that puts you in charge of your workload and frees up personal Time.
You can break tasks into manageable chunks and even control unnecessary interruptions during your work time.
In Time Blocking, you decide on the importance of tasks and set goals. You choose how much time you allocate to these.
The goal is to complete what you want to do in a set block of Time. And as this Time set aside is interruption-free, your productivity increases.
You set your goals and mark the hours that you guess-estimate these will take. Use the early slots – 9am to about 11am – for the tasks that are urgent or most time-consuming.
This is also when your concentration peaks.
4. Time Blocking Divides Work And Leisure
As a hybrid worker, part at home and attached to a remote office, Time Blocking is essential to keep abreast with work. With work-from-home as a new norm, it is more pressing to draw a line between work and leisure.
The demands are high with work monitored from afar, and the need for real-time phoning and web talks are giving specific slots, as are real-time chats with colleagues.
Time Blocking promotes a healthy work-from-home scenario in which you control your workload and Time instead of double duty or sweat.
Time Blocking is your work time, and most Time Blockers get the bulk of new work done in the morning. They keep the afternoon slots for meetings. You plan your day, which includes lunch and an early knock-off time.
5. Time Blocking Prioritizes Tasks
Time Blocking is as much a personal management tool as a way to get started and monitor your work.
You might have the autonomy to choose your working times, but it’s easy to fall into the procrastination trap. It’s worse to delay the start of tasks.
A whole lot of work that lands on your desktop at the same time can be intimidating.
That’s why Time Blocking works on a framework in which you can prioritize what to do first. You work on a 9 am – 5 pm double-page and organize your day into manageable slots.
6. Time Blocking Sets Daily Goals
Time Blocking regards daily emails, messages, social media, and lunches as distractions. Meetings have specific slots.
So, instead of meetings four times a day, these are block slotted in the afternoon, one after the other.
And with Time Blocking, you aim to check your emails and social media in specific slots.
Time Blocking has specific goals and outcomes in mind. With Time Blocking, goals are set in advance, as are the tasks. New tasks can be sketched in rough and reviewed at the end of the day.
7. Time Blocking Schedules Tasks
You might wonder how Time Blockers keep track of work in progress.
Well, you manage your time with your schedule, that is, 8 am to 4 pm or 8 am to 6 pm.
The deadlines for each are dependent on your work breakdown structure.
8. Time Blocking Tracks Time
What makes Time Blocking stand out is the time set aside to do specific tasks. Like other time management techniques, such as Time Batching, particular tasks are given slots and times.
In Time Blocking, emails are given 20 minutes, saving time in the day.
Some even argue you can save up to 2 hours a day by cutting down on how often you look at emails or social media.
9. Time Blocking Banishes Distractions
Did you know that Time Blocking, goal-directed and time-managed, can save you almost 2 hours a day?
This means in a 12-hour day, you can save a sixth of the time if you manage casual calls, emails, and social media. That’s why Time Blockers literally block distractions.
As the inventor of Time Blocking, Cal Newport, says that sticking to a specific ‘time block’ on emails and social media stops you from going ‘down the social media rabbit hole.’
He is convinced that we fall behind in our work as we give in to distractions all day long.
We work longer and harder, but not as efficiently as we can, by sticking to Time Blocking’s time management strategy.
10. Time Blocking As Efficiency
Author Newport says the starting point for planning is the day before. Time Blocking allocates a 20-minute slot to schedule the next day’s work.
And he is convinced that a 40-hour time-blocked work week can produce the same work output as a week of 60+ hours. The difference in the number of hours is none other than a series of distractions.
Time Blocking, as a technique, focuses on doing a single task in a dedicated time slot rather than simultaneously working on several projects.
The success of Time Blocking has focused attention as opposed to split attention.
Possible Disadvantage of Time Blocking
Of course, Time Blocking is not criticism-free. Many regard Time Blocking as rigid and not open to new projects that can arrive at any moment and demand attention.
For those keen on Time Blocking, this is not the case. Time Blocking is yours; you can manage and add in projects based on their priority.
Overall, it all comes down to how you use them, like all productivity strategies.