Time-Blocking

Take more control over what you do, and when

For quite a while I was good at managing and supporting my team, but not so great at managing myself.  I’d plan my day and often find by the end of it I’d achieved little, and yet I’d been busy all day!  I was often stressed, working extra hours to meet deadlines and generally tired.  However, I thought this was better than the alternative.  Making sure my team had the clarity and support they needed from me, with me being chaotic was better than me being organised and clear and them all being stressed and worried.

I’d occasionally block out time in my diary to work on something specific so I could focus and get ‘stuff’ done.  I don’t know why it took me so long to realise that there were greater benefits to ‘time-blocking’ on a regular basis.  Once I got into the habit of regularly blocking time out in my diary everything became a lot calmer, I felt more in control, and I also found that I was getting my work done without having to resort to working extra hours so often.

I thought it was about time I shared this secret with you!

What is time-blocking?

Exactly what it says on the tin.  Blocking time out in your electronic diary to spend time on specific tasks, it’s essentially booking a meeting with yourself.  It works brilliantly if you’re working from home, or splitting your time between home and work, but even if you’re office based it has benefits.  People immediately around you will see you are not physically in a meeting (although you could choose to work away from your desk in another office if you wanted to), but generally the distractions/interruptions will come from those outside of your office.

Time blocking is not just setting time aside; it has to have a specific purpose. If I just put an hour in my diary with ‘focus time’ or some other vague description I’d not necessarily work on what actually needed doing.  No, you need a plan.

When I first started time-blocking regularly I felt guilty about filling up my own diary. I couldn’t block out more than a couple of hour-long sessions a week. “What if someone needs to see me about something urgent?” “What if my staff feel they can’t approach me because my diary looks so busy?”

I quickly realised there was nothing to worry about.  It takes a bit of work initially, but once established it’s very easy to maintain. So here’s how I made it work for me.

To start with I went through my things to do list (and outstanding emails), and by considering a task’s priority/urgency allocated time in my diary to complete it over the coming days/weeks.  I set recurring sessions up for regular jobs. Large jobs I split into several sessions.

When estimating the time needed for each task I considered how long it would take and doubled it!  Sounds crazy, but we’re often far too optimistic about how long something will take, by doubling the time I allowed for my optimism bias, and also gave myself some contingency for things not going to plan. The minimum I allocated a task was half an hour – even if I thought it would only take ten minutes! If I finished with time to spare I’d look at my next scheduled task and spend some time on that.

I would also plan to do the work a couple days ahead of any deadline if possible – again it gave me some contingency and reduced stress.

Each task description was very specific, especially where I’d split something down into several sessions. For example rather than just setting the session up with the description ‘report writing’, I’d put ‘introduction and background information for x report’.

If there was an email/file relating to the task I’d add that to the ‘meeting’ information – or at least include the path for me to find it something like ‘see email from x dated 15 August’.

I’d deliberately leave some gaps in my diary between these ‘meetings’ with myself, so that anyone needing to see me had some options, and to give me flexibility.

After setting this up the first time it’s easy to keep up. 

Any new tasks were allocated time in my diary – ahead of any deadline.  Often this would be via email, which I checked twice a day – once at ten in the morning and then again at three in the afternoon – and yes, I did allow half an hour each day at ten and three to review emails!! Sometimes the new work had a greater priority/urgency than tasks already scheduled so I’d put the new task into an already scheduled session, and move the work that was originally there to some time later. I was in control - I knew what I could move. I could also relax that all my work was still scheduled, I didn’t have to worry about forgetting something.

I even made an appointment if I told someone I’d call them at a future time, or if they promised to call me. I’d note the reason for the call too - otherwise I might get a notification to call someone - but not recall why!!

When reminders popped up I made sure to work on that task.  It meant I was working on what I needed to be working on, when I needed to be working on it – rather than just picking something off my list of things to do.  This stopped me from procrastinating on my more challenging tasks, which saved me from having to work on them under pressure as deadlines loomed!

I did wonder if working this way would cause issues with others trying to get a meeting with me. People would say to me “Gosh you’re busy aren’t you, you’re always in meetings!”.  Shows you how much attention they really paid to my diary!  But I thought “Yes, I am really busy, and so are many others, we just don’t realise because they don’t have lots of meetings in their diaries.”  It made me more respectful of other people’s time.

But it didn’t cause problems for anyone wanting a meeting. Prior to time-blocking people had looked at my diary and set up a meeting at the first opportunity that tied in with their availability – regardless of whether it was urgent or not.  I’d accept the invite, even if I’d anticipated spending that time working on something else.  After I started time-blocking people still sent meeting invites – but now they were at times that suited me, sometimes a few days away.  Occasionally someone would call, after checking my diary, asking if I could make time for an urgent meeting.  This gave me control over deciding which of my planned sessions could be moved.

I told my team if they needed to speak to me and my diary said I was busy they just needed to check the meeting – if I was the only attendee then they knew they could call.  Often though they could wait a short while until I was ‘available’. This doesn’t work quite so well in the office environment, but you can have other ways of letting your team know you are busy.  Someone I worked with a few years back used to wear a baseball cap when they were focussing and shouldn’t be disturbed!

The impact of all of this was that I was far more in control of what I did and when, I found many of the meetings I was invited to weren’t that urgent and were scheduled for a time convenient to me.  As I had planned all my known tasks I didn’t worry about forgetting something important. My stress levels dropped significantly.

There were of course times where I had to ‘drop everything’ and work on an urgent issue, but these times caused me far less stress than they had previously.  Now I looked at what I had planned and rescheduled it – sometimes there was a bit of a knock-on effect of having to move a few tasks back, but I was in control and knew what could be moved and what couldn’t.

After a while of having this work smoothly I shared it with my team, and they successfully adopted it – they’re still using it as far as I’m aware.

Could time-blocking help you?  Give it a try and let me know how it goes.