The term Time Blocking has been floating around on productivity Subreddits for a while, but it got a booster shot of popularity after Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work, was published in 2016.
The book’s thesis is that in a hyper-connected (and hyper-distracted) world, we’ve lost the sense of craftsmanship, and consequently, the satisfaction that comes from being deeply engaged in an activity.
According to Newport, Deep Work is a skill that we can develop. He posits that the majority of the workforce has lost touch with this skill and that most people hurry around in a state of scattered, shallow attention, (and here I infer), never reaching mastery, rarely experiencing flow, and churning out mediocre products for consumers that are too distracted to notice.
Newport recommends Time Chunking (or Time Blocks) to cordon off periods reserved for Deep Work.
By returning to a spirit of craftsmanship, we allow ourselves access to creativity and imbue our work with meaning.
That’s what the book claims, anyway.
We launched Momentum Lab in January of this year (2021 for future generations reading this). We’re all-hands-on-deck for the ML clients, but we can’t let the quality slip in our flagship product (TPA).
This has required much more precision in scheduling. I decided to put some time blocks in place.
Because this is not a skill that comes naturally to me or one I have much practice executing, I went to our Chief Operating Officer and my systems guru, Amy Bouldin.
Amy was generous enough with her own Time Blocked schedule, pulling herself away from the 7.93 TRILLION things she does to keep TPA running like a well-oiled machine, so she could make a sketch of a Time Blocked week for me.
It was beautiful. Color-coded blocks of focused, deep work structured my day, giving me permission to reduce my distractions and enjoy some flow – instead of the frenzied, thousand-arm beast we call multi-non-tasking
There was an intelligence to the way one task flowed to the next. There was a natural rhythm to my day, magically summoning order out of chaos and promising to make all my productivity dreams come true. It was a work of art.
And it nearly gave me a panic attack.
I’m not used to looking at my time in such a structured way. My initial physical reaction to the technicolor calendar page was not pleasant.
I called her to discuss.
“The best way you can approach this is to be prepared to throw it all out the window when reality has other ideas and then to calmly come back to it as soon as you can,” Amy told me, sensing the panic in my voice.
As we discussed the finer points of the tool she had created and what it was meant to achieve, I could feel myself relaxing into it.
Much like the accountability we cultivate on the AIR calls in Momentum Lab, Time Blocks are not meant to make us feel bad or wrong if we don’t fulfill the expectation; they simply support us to operate at our best.
Amy invited me to play around with the calendar, to shift some things around and make it my own.
The more I did, the more I began to see its true genius
I integrated my weekly tactics. I added a strategic block. I made room for my self-care, workouts, and core practices.
I checked the rhythm against my own experience of my energy levels throughout the day and adjusted accordingly.
The more I adjusted it to fit my needs, the more I began to see it for what it was – a powerful shield from distraction.
Part of doing this work in an online world means having to manage communications across many channels.
We have 6 Group SLACK channels across two companies. Every day I’m added to a new Whatsapp thread with one or another social group or community to which I belong. Last week I was added to a group thread on Whatsapp about leaving Whatsapp and moving to Signal because of something Elon Musk tweeted – then that same group invited me to another group thread on Signal. The messages continue to come prattling through the now-defunct Whatsapp channel.
We have the TPA Facebook community, the Momentum Lab Circle. Let’s not forget about OUTLOOK.
And then there is this fledging collaboration with my new hero, Ankur Shah Delight
Ankur and I have known each other for one year, and we’re still in the courtship phase of what is sure to be a lifelong bromance.
Ankur is a Quick Start 9 on the Kolbe Index, meaning he has a supernaturally low barrier of entry when it comes to trying new things and getting a task started.
For months before the launch of Momentum Lab, Ankur has been a bubbling cauldron of creativity and collaboration. He’ll send me a link to a TED talk in our Slack channel around 11 am, a question about it in Signal at 11:15, a spreadsheet of five-year Momentum Lab projections to our shared Google Drive at 11:30, and then a detailed vision/purpose statement to my email at noon.
If I’m stuck in the weeds with admin tasks and don’t respond until sometime in the afternoon, Ankur will have already moved onto version 13.4 of each of his ideas. I’ll be woefully behind.
More importantly, Ankur may get the wrong idea about my level of enthusiasm about our collaboration – and I could miss out on the opportunity to help cultivate a great idea.
Amy explained that my time blocks serve to protect my periods of focused work from inputs that come from outside those domains
The schedule allows me to receive information in the moments when it is most actionable.
By putting the Time Blocks into a dedicated Google Calendar, I was able to share the schedule with Ank. Now he knows that my notifications will be set to “Do Not Disturb” during the TPA calls and periods of Deep Work.
And the calendar pushes to an app on my phone that presents it in a way that works better for me.
Now I can put specific blocks on the schedule for collaboration. I can hop on a call with Ankur at our designated time and get the full download of his energy without feeling like I’ve fallen behind.
Furthermore, holding clear definitions about my time communicates to my teammates that I am single-tasking my interactions with them. They can be confident that they have my full attention whenever we are engaged.
Bromance preserved!
What about my panic attack?
I still value my unstructured time. Something deep in me would mourn the loss of it. I thrive with a spirit of play, and I cherish the surprises in my life. At first glance, that Google Calendar made me feel like all of that was being packed up and crated off in little multi-colored boxes, fanned out across my screen.
Well, at least in the experiment of the past week, drawing firmer boundaries around my focused working hours meant I could set work down more confidently.
When it was time to step away, I didn’t have an eye cast back on the day – looking for something I missed. I could relax and be present for my Me Time and show up in my relationships slightly less frazzled.
Try implementing one 3-Hour Time Block this week. Use it however best suits you.
It can be a period where you were already going to be engaged in a task. You could block off time to check social media so you can ignore it all other times. It can be a strategic session where you reconcile your week and plan for the next. It can be self-care time or time with a loved one.
Whatever you choose, eliminate all non-relevant inputs. Put the computer screen on Do Not Disturb, leave the phone somewhere out of reach, close all apps and windows that don’t pertain to the task at hand.
Optional tool: If the activity requires enough focus to create fatigue, try using the Pomodoro Technique Work in sprints of 25 minutes, separated by 5-minute breaks.
Instead of using your break to check your phone or social media, get up, move your body a bit, drink a glass of water, and try some gentle stretching.
Let us know how it goes in the comments below.
Do the blocks make you feel claustrophobic? Do they satisfy your organization fetish? What do you notice about the quality of your time within the block? What about the quality of your work?