Productivity methods
Time blocking: give each task a place.
Decide in advance when you will do each task, and put it in your calendar like a meeting with yourself.
· 3 min read · 6 steps
- Known from
- Cal Newport, among others
- Unit
- Blocks in your calendar
- Planning
- 10–20 min the day before
- Best for
- Busy calendars
What it is and where it began.
Time blocking means giving your work a time, not only a list. Instead of a to-do list you pick from all day, you divide the day into blocks and decide what goes in each one: writing from 9 to 11, email at 11, calls after lunch.
Nobody owns the idea; planners have scheduled their days for as long as there have been calendars. The computer scientist and author Cal Newport made it popular among knowledge workers. He describes planning every minute of his workday on paper the evening before, and rearranging the blocks when the day changes [1].
A common argument for it is Parkinson's observation that work expands to fill the time available for it [2]. A block puts a limit on a task, and makes visible how little time is left once meetings are in.
How to do it, step by step.
List what the day needs
Write down the tasks you want done tomorrow, and roughly how long each one takes.
Put the fixed things in first
Start with meetings and appointments. What is left is the time you actually have.
Block the important work early
Give your most important task a block at a time when you think best, often the morning.
Group the small things
Put email, messages and small admin into one or two blocks instead of letting them spread across the day.
Leave buffer
Things take longer than planned. Keep a free block or two for overflow and surprises.
Re-plan when the day changes
When something runs over, move the remaining blocks instead of giving up the plan. Newport redraws his plan several times on a bad day [1].
Who it suits, and its limits.
It suits you if
- Your calendar fills up and the important work never gets a turn.
- You switch between many kinds of work and lose time deciding what is next.
- You want an honest view of how much a day can hold.
Where it falls short
- Jobs that are mostly reacting, such as support or on-call, leave little to plan, though a block for focused work can still help.
- Estimates are often wrong at first, so the first weeks feel like constant re-planning.
- A very tight plan can feel rigid. Keep it a guide, not a contract.
Common mistakes to avoid.
No buffer
A plan with every minute filled breaks at the first overrun. Leave room.
Blocks that are too vague
"Project work" from 9 to 12 invites drifting. Name the task each block is for.
Abandoning the plan at the first change
The point is not to follow the plan perfectly but to decide again, on purpose, when it breaks.
Forgetting breaks and travel
Back-to-back blocks without lunch or travel time are a plan that cannot happen.
How to do it in thisflow.
Each step uses a feature that is in the app today.
Drag tasks into your week
The calendar has an hour grid. Drag a task to a time, and stretch it to the length you need. A task without a duration gets 30 minutes.
See your meetings next to your tasks
Add the iCal link of your Google, Outlook or iCloud calendar, and its events show as read-only blocks you plan around.
Set the time as you type
Quick add reads time and duration: "Write the brief tomorrow 9:00 for 2h" becomes a two-hour block.
Plan the day, then focus
Plan your day shows how much time today holds. Start a focus timer inside each block when it begins.
Questions and answers.
What is the difference between time blocking and timeboxing?
The words are often used for the same thing. When people do separate them, time blocking is reserving time for a task in your calendar, and timeboxing is setting a fixed limit and stopping when it runs out.
How far ahead should I plan?
Most people plan the next day at the end of the current one, and sketch the week on Monday. Planning further ahead tends to need too much re-planning.
Do I have to block every minute?
No. Cal Newport plans every minute, but many people block only their most important work and leave the rest open.
Can time blocking work with a lot of meetings?
Yes, and that is where it helps most: it shows how little time is left and protects some of it for focused work.
Sources
Numbers in the text, like [1], point to these sources.
- [1]Cal Newport: Deep Habits: The Importance of Planning Every Minute of Your Work Day (2013)calnewport.com/deep-habits-the-importance-of-planning-every-minute-of-your-work-day/
- [2]Wikipedia: Parkinson's law (The Economist, 1955)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law
More methods to try.
Eisenhower matrix
Sort tasks by urgent and important, and treat each of the four boxes differently.
Getting Things Done (GTD)
Capture everything, decide what each item needs, and review your lists every week.
Personal kanban
Put your work on a board, and limit how many things are in progress.
Block your week in thisflow.
Free during the beta. Drag tasks into the calendar next to your meetings.