Time blocking is one of the best ways to knock out your to-do list and complete projects. Everyone knows that getting things done requires planning and focus. You can compete more with a to-do list and get further on your projects with dedicated focus time. But with the busy nature of modern life, there’s always another distraction. Checking your email or phone, making time for meetings, and juggling priorities can reduce your overall productivity because you are switching tasks too often.
This is why time blocking has become a transformative strategy. By planning your focus cycles, you can ensure that you get everything important done in a day, even making time for periodic distractions and emails. It has always been one of the most popular methods among highly productive people, from Benjamin Franklin to Bill Gates and Jack Dorsey.
Time blocking is the ideal way to avoid distractions, reduce procrastination, clarify your priorities, and improve your focus on every task. This also makes it the perfect strategy to skyrocket your own productivity by mastering time blocking for your workdays and every to-do list.
The Science Behind Time Blocking and Productivity
The success of time blocking is rooted in psychology and neurology. Your ultradian rhythm is made up of neurological cycles that determine your energy and focus throughout the day. These are sub-cycles of your circadian rhythm that last about 90-120 minutes each. You sleep in ultradian cycles, but you also focus in them.
Ultradian Time Blocks
Time blocking optimizes your natural ultradian cycles by helping you build focus sessions that fit into your brain’s natural rhythm. This creates deep focus sessions where you can get a lot done on a single task or project. You can avoid mental fatigue by anticipating your cycle lengths and taking a break or switching tasks at the right time. This is why your day works best when broken into “blocks.”
Psychological Benefits
There are significant psychological benefits to blocking out time for specific tasks. You will be able to dive deeper and achieve more without distractions, partially because you are certain there is already time allocated to your other priorities, with pre-determined breaks for decompressing or checking emails.
How to Implement Time Blocking for Maximum Productivity
Time blocking can help you achieve your full daily potential by dedicating specific blocks of time to each item on your to-do list. This ensures that you have time for everything and can focus on every task without distractions. Of course, getting started with time blocking is easier when you have a few simple steps to follow.
As time tracking experts, we can break down how to bring time blocking into your routine to help you skyrocket your productivity every day. Get ready to define your priorities, divide your day into blocks, and cultivate a productive time-blocking style that fits perfectly into your life.
Step 1: Identify Key Tasks and Priorities
The first step is to determine which tasks get to be blocked. Write out your to-do list and prioritize what needs to get done in your day. Some tasks require big time blocks to optimize productive focus, while others need smaller blocks throughout the day to ensure you stay tuned in to your environment and updates.
You can use a prioritization technique like the Eisenhower Matrix to sort your priorities and determine which tasks should be given blocks in your day, which to plan for later, and which to delegate or discard. The Eisenhower Matrix involves separating tasks into four categories.
- Important and Urgent – do now
- Important but not urgent – do later
- Not important but urgent – delegate to someone else
- Not important or urgent – discard
Step 2: Estimate Time Needed for Each Task
Take your list of today’s tasks and estimate how much time you need for each of them. Give yourself 5-10 minutes to check your emails but designate a full 90-120 minutes to make progress on long-term projects. Smaller tasks might take only 20 minutes, 45 minutes, and so on, depending on what is required to complete them.
Use your experience and the amount of work necessary for each task to estimate the time needed. Remember to calculate for prep and travel time if your tasks take you outside the office or require you to assemble resources before getting started.
Write the estimated time next to each task on your to-do list to determine the size of each block on your schedule.
Step 3: Use a Time Blocking Planner or Digital Tools to Schedule Tasks
Now that you have your blocks ready, it’s time to build your schedule. Time blocking planners can help you separate your day into blocks and write in which tasks occupy each block. Some pre-determine block sizes, others separate your day into 10–30-minute intervals so you can draw in the blocks yourself with a wide-tipped pen or marker.
You can also use digital tools to schedule your tasks. There are tons of scheduling apps that will help you plan your day and have tools available to establish dedicated blocks of time.
Step 4: Set Boundaries and Minimize Interruptions
Here’s where the magic happens! In addition to planning out blocks of time to work on specific tasks, you also need to set up boundaries to help minimize interruptions.
- Decide which blocks are deep-focus sessions and switch to “do not disturb” on your phone and communication channels.
- Make sure meetings don’t interrupt your blocks. Plan smaller blocks around scheduled meetings.
- Share your deep focus schedule plans with colleagues or family so they know you are busy.
- Increase the focus quality of your office by closing the door, turning off media, or improving sound proofing.
- Dedicate your whole focus to each task during the block.
Step 5: Adjust and Refine to Improve Effectiveness
Your first few time-blocked days will likely have a few hiccups. Few plans are perfect the first time. Fortunately, time blocking is something you can improve every day as you learn what works best for you. For example, you might forget your lunch break on the first day. You might realize over time that you focus better in 90-minute blocks and get distracted if the blocks are too long. Or you might start double-blocking your favorite projects with a short break in between to optimize deep focus and productivity.
Let your own natural ultradian rhythm and the demands of your daily schedule shape the way you block time. This way, you gain the full advantage of focus sessions and a well-prioritized schedule while adapting to your individual needs.
You can take time for meetings, designate flexible blocks of time, and work in whatever way makes you the most productive.
Best Tools for Time Blocking
What tools can help you optimize your time-blocking strategy? There are many different tools, apps, and systems that enhance your ability to plan, prioritize, and focus. Some people prefer physical planners and hand-written task lists. Others thrive with an ecosystem of apps that help you designate blocks and eliminate distractions.
Traditional Planners
Some people do best with tactile planning. Traditional planners allow you to physically write out your plan for the day, sketching actual blocks into your schedule pages and writing each task by hand. For tactile thinkers, this helps ingrain the plan into your mind, and each block feels more real because you have drawn it physically.
They make planners specifically designed for time blocking so that you can easily draw in your boxes and write in your tasks. These can be inspirational and leave plenty of room for notes if you like adding details to your hand-written schedule.
Digital Tools
Digital scheduling tools are often well-suited to time blocking. Google Calendar, for example, allows you to plan ‘events’ by highlighting blocks of time in the daily schedule feature (a zoom-in on each calendar day). You can designate specific colors for each event block and write in which task you will focus on. You can also toggle email or notification reminders for each even block a few minutes before it begins.
Other calendar and scheduling features are part of similar professional software suites. There is many digital scheduling tools based on your preferred software environment.
Productivity Apps
Productivity apps are one of the most popular categories on mobile app stores. Among the top performers are Notion, Trello, and Todoist which each have their own unique style for building task lists and tracking their completion. Each of the hundreds of productivity apps has a unique set of tools to help you effectively plan, schedule, and complete your time blocks, so there’s plenty of room do find the right apps that work for you.
Time Tracking
You can keep track of your focus time for each time block with apps like Time Tracker from eBillity. Time tracking can tell you when you have successfully started and ended your focus times in alignment with your planned time blocks. It also makes it possible to maintain your planned amount of focus time even if your schedule is offset by a delay or interruption.
Time Blocking vs. Other Productivity Methods
Time blocking is one of several popular productivity methods, including the Pomodoro Technique, task batching, and deep work. We’ll compare time blocking as a technique to each of these other popular options. You will likely notice that time blocking has positive aspects from each one and can be adapted if you want to use two at once.
Time Blocking vs Pomodoro Technique
The Pomodoro Technique involves 25-minute focus sessions separated by 5-minute breaks and longer breaks after 2-4 focus sessions. Anything can go into the 25-minute sections if you dedicate time and focus.
The Pomodoro Technique is designed to reduce mental fatigue and the risk of burnout by ensuring regular breaks. As you can see, it also establishes a basic time-blocking structure in which every block is about 25 minutes long. While not as flexible in terms of block-size as time blocking, it is often ideal for students and professionals who have just one task to focus on throughout the day such as studying or a single project.
Time Blocking vs Task Batching
Task batching is the best way to get a lot of small tasks done in one-time block. It involves grouping similar tasks that can be done more easily as a group than doing them separately. Like running errands in the same area of town all at once or taking care of all emails and small digital tasks in a single sitting.
Task batching is a great strategy to add to time blocking because it helps you take care of a group of tasks as if they were a single blocked task. It’s like attaching an efficient to-do list to a time block in which all tasks can be done more efficiently as a group. It’s a good idea to add a few task-batch blocks to each day, such as answering your emails or taking care of daily upkeep routines.
Time Blocking vs Deep Work
Deep work is the principle of a deep focus session. It involves isolating yourself for one or two ultradian cycles allowing you to fully focus on challenging tasks that require your full concentration. Time blocking is an ideal way to build deep work into a daily schedule, designating specific time blocks for deep working sessions.
Common Mistakes & How to Avoid Them
Wha should you not do when boosting your productivity with time blocking? Knowing common mistakes can help you neatly avoid pitfalls that have thrown others off their blocks.
Keep It Simple Don’t Overload Your Schedule
It can be tempting to load your day with blocked tasks, but you’ll get more done if you keep it simple. Keep your large blocks limited to 2-4 per day and stay flexible with smaller blocks or task bathes. Remember that you can block your week to complete your to-do list and that your time blocking strategy will likely go through a few adjustments to find the best block structure for your day and lifestyle.
Allow for Buffer Time Between Blocks
Give yourself time to breathe. While charting blocks in a schedule or planner, you may plan in 30-minute intervals, but don’t forget to be realistic about breaks, transition time, travel, and decompression. Back-to-back blocks all day can be exhausting. Give yourself break-blocks and take a page from Pomodoro with 5-minute gaps between bigger tasks.
Leave Room for Flexibility
Your time blocks aren’t absolute. Remember that human life requires some flexibility. There may be unexpected phone calls, delays, collaborations, and family events. Your blocks may get re-arranged and the margins might be nudged during the day and that’s okay. Time blocking helps you designate focussed sessions and prioritize your to-do list during the day. But if little things (or big things) change along the way, stay flexible and get the most from your blocks when life allows for it.
Also, remember that you can always rebuild your blocks at any time. Lunch took an extra 20 minutes. Meeting ran overtime. No problem. Just plan the rest of your day with new blocks to meet your priority and scheduling needs.
Unlock Your Productive Potential with Time Blocking
Time blocking is a great way to boost your personal productivity and build a daily schedule that helps you achieve all your goals. The key is to start small with a couple of blocks each day and refine your approach over time. Soon, you’ll have a honed time-blocking technique that perfectly suits your routine, to-do list, ultradian rhythm, and personal working style.
Enhance your time blocking with Time Tracker by eBillity. Check it out with our 14-day free trial to see how time tracking can improve your time blocking technique and potential for productivity.