Issue #241: How I Use 'Schedule Blocking' to Map Out My Work Days

And a recent day in the life.

It came as a surprise to me when I realized that… I don’t have the best time management skills. In the same way I can enter a flow state and get so much done in a short amount of time, I can just as easily let an entire afternoon slip by as I toggle between tabs and open my email for the thousandth time. What ends up happening is, more often than not, I pay for it at the end of the week, and spend my weekends catching up on all the work and myriad to-dos I didn’t get to.

Issue #128: How to Build a Creative Career with Joanna Goddard

Over the past few months, I’ve developed a strategy for myself I’m calling ‘schedule blocking’ that has completely changed the way I work and approach each day, helping me pace myself and focus so that I can work efficiently and have more time for rest. The idea is to map out a schedule in your calendar, as scaffolding for a daily routine. Here’s how I created mine:

• Begin with priorities. I began by writing a list of everything I have to do in a day, like work on Morning Person, answer emails, work on my book, eat lunch, workout, etc. Then, I made a list of things that are important to me, like slow mornings, long meals, a midday walk. I estimated how much time each “task” should take me, and created blocks—two hours for writing, an hour for lunch, etc.

• Map onto your day. From there, I arranged the blocks into a schedule I felt made sense, giving equal weight to both my responsibilities and things that are personally important to me. (I found it easiest to use my Google Calendar for this!).

• Rearrange until you find your fit. For a few weeks, I tried different schedule combinations. For example, I worked out at lunchtime, until I found it really pulled me out of my work flow and took too much time in the middle of the day, so I bumped it to the end of the day.

• Add in flex days. While Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday are always the same, I try to schedule all of my meetings and appointments on Wednesday and Friday afternoons, to block them together.

• Remember it’s just a scaffolding. While I follow it most days, I also listen to my body and my needs. If I’m in a great writing groove, I keep going with it; or, if I need to get out of the house, I go for a walk. It’s there to support, not punish.

When I wrote about ‘schedule blocking’ last month, it became my most-read post in March, so I figured I would go into more detail here, with a ‘day in the life’ so you can see how it looks on a fairly average day!