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Sometimes when we think about doing fewer things, we’re focused on the big commitments. The small task can also be destabilizing. Because if you have a dozen little small things you have to spread throughout your day, it makes it hard for you to give any meaningful effort to the big things that actually matter. So we do have to be careful about not necessarily eliminating all the small things. It would be nice if we could, but we probably can’t, but containing them.
What most people do, which is what I call the list-reactive mode of time management, which is I mainly am just reacting to the stuff that’s coming in on email and Slack and in between that pulling things off a to-do list to try to get them done. That’s a very flexible way of working, but it’s also very haphazard. It’s also not trying to fit work to the right time to do the work, and it forces you to have to make decisions all day long. What should I do next? Should I take a break now? Should I check email now? Should I do this work now? I don’t want to do this work now. We all do this right now, which is a very draining way to organize your activities.
When you time block by contrast, you’re taking full advantage of the time you have available. Time blocking is a simple strategy for time management and you actually block off your time for specific activities. You’re giving every minute of your day a job. So you say specifically: From nine to ten, I’m working on this, and then I have a meeting from ten to eleven. From eleven to eleven-thirty is a task block. I’m going to do these five tasks. And from eleven-thirty to twelve-thirty, I’m checking email. And from twelve-thirty to two, I’m working on this memo. You see in advance, this block right here is my longest block in the day. That’s the time to do the hard thing. Oh, see these short blocks between all these meetings? Let me move all these small tasks to happen there instead of doing them first thing in the morning where I had more free time. You make smarter decisions about your time. You just follow the plan.
What I’ve observed is that people that switch to time blocking informally report about a 2X increase in the amount of things they get done. Now, of course, the issue with time blocking is that you’re almost never going to successfully stick with that plan. You’re going to underestimate how long things take or there’s going to be an unexpected occurrence. That’s fine. In time blocking, you don’t get a medal for following your plan. The goal is not I followed my plan and this is somehow intrinsically good. All the value comes from being intentional about your schedule. So if you fall off your time block plan, it’s not a big deal. You wait until the next moment you have free, and you fix your plan for the rest of the day.