The Power Of Time Blocking Your Calendar

Before we dive into this concept, little backstory for where I learned this term from (just addressing your curiosity here :P). In May last month, I finished reading the book Deep Work by Cal Newport.

Staying true to the title, the book has quite deep concepts and theories imprinted in them. It was a heavy read which needed a lot of time to process. Like any other self-help book, there is a fundamental idea and small concepts that revolve around it to integrate seamlessly.

To quote Newport's words:

Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

This book tries to explain - The attraction to depth over shallowness. The core idea is to have three to four hours a day, five days a week, of uninterrupted and carefully directed concentration on the task that matters the most to you. This will generate a lot of value over the shallow distraction-driven time dedicated to your craft.

I guess you got the core idea (If not feel free to read Deep Work). One of the chapters in the book that influenced me the most was "Schedule every minute of your day" (seems extreme?)

Before getting into why and how it helps? Let's address the problem we are trying to solve. How many times the day passes by, you are not sure where all the time went? More often than not are you bored during the day, not knowing what to do? Is the time dictating your action rather than you controlling it?

We spend much of our day on auto-pilot - not giving much thought to what we are doing with our time. That my friend is a concerning problem.

If you wish to tackle this problem and find time for all the meaningful things you wish to do. Keep reading! :)

I know I have intimidated you by saying, Schedule every minute of your day. I take the responsibility to make it more simple too.

At the end/beginning of each day,

Schedule Work Time: Start with dividing various hours of your workday into blocks in your calendar. Meetings, checking emails, write code or analyze logs (Any of your work tasks) - put it all in blocks. Feel free to club the irrelevant but required tasks in one single block.

Each block can be for at least one hour or more based on your convenience. I mentioned starting with a work schedule because work is inevitable and everything else in our day voyages around our work.

After all our work is packed in various blocks on our calendar. It's FUN TIME. We will schedule all our distraction time, breaks, and routines.

The thing about distraction is that it is better to schedule a time concerning it and give the attention it craves before it can come and devour our work time

Schedule Distraction + Your Routine Time: Add everything in here - your wake-up and sleep time, breakfast/lunch/dinner breaks, walk with your cat/dog, Instagram scrolling time, Netflix time. If you have regular habits(reading, working out), add them too. Capture it all on your calendar.

Once this is out of the way, we can focus solely on the most crucial block for the day.

Schedule Deep Work Time: Add a block of 3-4 hours of focussed time for DEEP WORK. It does not have to be scheduled all at once. We can break it down into two/three parts however it fits in our day.

Call this your Highlight if you wish - Replacing stressful busyness with empowering intention.

When we are working on this, we need to ensure that everything else (phone calls, meetings, checking social media) is on hold. The entire world can wait while you focus on your significant work. If you are wondering, the examples of deep work blocks could be - Spending time with family if you haven't been doing so. Reading for the exam you aspire to give. Take up a certification course you fancied to. Practice Guitar/Piano. Pick up a brush to paint. This block signifies what is important to you today. Ain't nobody messing with that.

After you are done scheduling your day. You have, in effect given every minute of your day a job. As you go through your day, use this as a guide.

For reference attaching screenshots of my calendar for Monday (7th June 2021) - not everything with go according to this plan :P

It is precisely hereafter that most of us will run into trouble. Three things can (most likely will) go wrong with our perfectly planned day.

1. When you get interrupted by unexpected obligations. Responsibilities that pop up at the run time demanding your attention can mess with your stainless system.

2. You estimated it incorrect when you thought a specific task would take 1.5 hours. But it ends up taking two hours instead.

3. You are your enemy. All this utterly feels overwhelming to you, and keeping on top of things will drive you down a rabbit hole. You will blame Ambica, saying this is not operating well for me.

How do we fix all this? 🤔

To start with, know that it is OKAY if your schedule gets interrupted.

Addressing the first issue, if other urgent tasks need your attention then feel free to revise your calendar. You have created this and you have the full liberty to destroy or revise it if it does not work out for you.

For the second issue, I have personally fallen into this trap when I started with this. When we are new to this habit of time blocking, we tend to use our schedule as an embodiment of wishful thinking - We plan our day as a best-case scenario. Over time we realize what went wrong and where we overestimated ourselves. By trial and error, you will right on the money with predicting the actual time it takes to finish a particular task.

The third one is the biggest issue of all. It will likely happen if you are going to let this drive you rather than you practicing it to guide you. This type of schedule is not about constraints - it is instead about thoughtfulness. It is your little way of asking yourself - What makes sense for me to do with my time right now? The goal of this is not to force you into a rigid plan. Feel free to allow spontaneity in your day on a need basis.

We often underestimate the role of uncertainty. When the day is left open in an unplanned fashion, it easy to allow our time to slip away into shallow things (social media, web browsing, overthinking, binge-watching). It would just be a momentary satisfaction at the cost of something important that we could have done.

I would like to close by quoting the lines from the book,

Your goal is not to stick to a given schedule at all costs; it's instead to maintain, at all times, a thoughtful say in what you're doing with your time going forward - even if these decisions are reworked again and again as the day unfolds.

Let's make a pact together to treat our time with respect.

See you next Monday. Until then Mask up, Stay Safe and Stay Healthy

P.S.: Fun fact - scheduling like this has made me reduce the usage of line - "I am so bored I do not know what to do right now" By planning every minute of my day, I always have some task accounting for my time.