What You Need to Know About Time Blocking

Now that we’re all still working remotely, it’s important to keep to some sort of routine and schedule. It’s all well and good to make a mental checklist, however we are all human and the odds of forgetting major tasks, minor requests, or anything else in between is high. So, to avoid making errors or forgetting duties, why not take a stab at time blocking your day?

What Does it Mean to “Time Block”?

Time blocking is a way to manage your time throughout a day or even a week if you’re really diligent. This is a great way for those of you who have a lot on your plates or are easily forgetful. According to doist.com, time blocking is great for those who:

• Juggle many different projects/responsibilities (Elon Musk uses this method to run two major companies at the same time)

• Spend too much time in “reactive mode”, responding to email and messages

• Find their day chopped up by meetings

• Battle constant interruptions throughout the day

• Struggle to find the time and mental space for big picture thinking

Additionally, time blocking is a great way to juggle work life and your professional life and any other side hustles you might have. Whether you spend 8-10 on emails, 10-12 on phone calls, 1-2 on personal tasks, and 2-5 on any other duties, tasks, etc you need to complete. You can even break it down even further and make it hyper-specific to tasks. For example: 8-10 scheduled social media posts, 10-12 write tomorrow’s blog, 12-1 lunch, 1-2:30 email building, and 2:30-5 miscellaneous. Basically, everyone can benefit from time blocking and time management skills. It’s something you can do everyday before work or everyday after work in an effort to plan.

Types of Time Blocking

Now that you have a general understanding of what time blocking is, let’s get more specific. There are different types and ways and methods in which you can block your time such as task batching or day theming. Here’s another great example from doist.com on the two ways in which YOU can time block:

Task batching is when you group similar (usually smaller) tasks together and schedule specific timeboxes to complete all at once. By tackling similar tasks in a group, you’ll limit the amount of context switching throughout the rest of your day, saving precious time and mental energy. For example, scheduling two 20-minute blocks to process email during the day is more efficient than constantly checking your inbox throughout the day.

Day theming is a more extreme version of task batching for people who have a lot of areas of responsibility competing for their attention. For example, an entrepreneur often has to pay attention to marketing, sales, product development, customer support, and HR all at the same time. Instead of setting aside time blocks for each area of responsibility each day, day theming dedicates a full day each week to each responsibility.

It’s totally up to you how you want to time block whether it be task batching or day theming. And, it definitely depends on how determined you are to get stuff done. Whether you’re incredibly detail oriented and love to have a rigid schedule or you’re totally bonkers lately and have to reel it in, time blocking your day can lead to greater productivity levels, organizational skills, and time management to the max!

Have you ever time blocked your day? Are you a time blocker currently? Do you hate time blocking all together? Let us know! We want to hear about your experiences and if you feel this method of scheduling boosted your productivity.