Time blocking, do you do it?
Hey everyone!
Do you have any experience with time blocking? Do you use any apps to help or do you do it all manually in your calendar? I recently watched a video I found on Tildes by Answer in Progress (https://youtu.be/vYaNiC4kchg?si=zh02N4bStqAhBBAe) about attention span. I have heard a lot about time blocking in the past, but always thought I never really needed it.
However, recently I've been starting to realize maybe I'm not doing well mentally..days can slip by on YouTube, or a video game, and the things I wanted to get done get pushed back to the next day..and the next day, and so on..or things I was passionate about, things I want to succeed in that I am good at..just sort of slip away, and I stop doing them and lose my drive. So maybe I need to block time to get it done... I'm not sure. So I guess I can try Meditation and time blocking..
Anyway, anyone have some suggestions if they do this? Have you found that it helped?
I've used the Pomodro technique, which is similar, when I am doing something I really don't want to do. I shorten the intervals. Every 15 minute block becomes an achievement, with a check mark as a reward.
In my experience, once I start something motivation and enjoyment comes.
To help get through the discomfort of starting I promise myself ( and mean it ) that I only have to do the task for a ridiculously small mount of time, like 5min ( also less sometimes ).
That's really smart! I was using pomodoro to study in the beginning but slowly moved away from it because I thought I was doing so well. Perhaps I should start it back up again. I never thought of changing the intervals either.
Yah, if your attention span is shot 25 minutes can be too long, especially for a task you dislike.
I started blocking some of my morning and evening time (within working hours) in order to start and finish the day easy, doing whatever I need to do to feel good with myself.
This makes my mornings much less stressful and only meeting that absolutely have to happen at those times, happen, with the context of me not being 100% communicated clearly.
This is kinda what it looks like: https://0xff.nu/calendar-organization#after
As a student, I never did this.
As an engineer, I never did this.
As a manager, I was completely and hopelessly overwhelmed until I did this (and even then still fairly overwhelmed).
When you have a LOT of different balls your juggling and many are high priority that require attention soon, time-blocking helped in my calendar helped me to see what and when. This also assumed that I could reasonably estimate how long. Sometimes, though, for higher risk things, having lots of unknowns, blocking out time just to understand WTF helped me figure out the rest.
Guess what? This is almost exactly how I manage teams. And I only realized this, right now, writing this. The differences are:
When it's just me, doing the tedium/paperwork/meetings/planning, I'm a team of one doing my work to support me and my teams.
This shit scales.
Also, nice to realize that at least sometimes I practice what I preach (because I'm a lot harder on myself than I am on anyone who has ever worked for me—another topic and an area that I'm now working on improving; it turns out that, if doing "your best" means that you have to nearly bleed yourself dry, you're killing yourself for everyone else around you because you value yourself that little.... and this should be a separate post perhaps sometime).
Thanks for the very insightful post.
Do you use anything to help manage your time blocking, or do you just enter it all manually in a calendar?
I put it all in the calendar.
Since I'm Apple most things, I use Apple Shortcuts that set a timed Do Not Disturb along with a timer that alarms when the DND turns off. I sometimes use that like a pomodoro but also to make sure that I come out of my focus when I need to.
Unrelated: could you have ADHD? Asking as someone with it. Your loss of time to procrastination-like activities smacks of ADHD.
I've suspected I might have it, though I have not gotten tested for it yet. Perhaps it's time though 😅
Medication is extremely effective with ADHD. Highly recommend seeking a diagnosis.
If I'd had treatment when I was in college, I'd be leading a very different life. Instead, I discovered my ADHD in my late 40s. So many missed opportunities.
I tried using tiktok and instagram as an adult and its insane how fast you can become enveloped in it. I think 3 hours passed by of just mindless scrolling. I ended up deleting the app, but one method I use at work is set an alarm for the end of my shift and dont look at the clock. Time goes by so much faster when you're not constantly checking the clock.
As far as stuff at home and wanting to do things, when i come home from work i go down my pre-made check list and immediately do all my chores. saturday, clean the house when i wake up. sunday laundry first thing in the morning. when i use a dish i instantly clean it. just got home from work? immediatly do my workout. I go to another room when i need to study/learn and leave my computer and set my phone in the other room.
I'm a huge procrastinator so I know when i get on the computer i'm probably not getting off it until its time for bed and i need to reset for the next day.
I think instagram has a daily limit which you can use to control yourself, but it doesn't really work too well. I would delete the app but I use it for contacting close friends, so...