In today’s workplace, if you don't control your schedule, it will control you.
How do you balance the necessary evils of meetings, email, team chat, and "busy work" with focused time for the things you truly care about? We need concrete strategies to help us focus in a world designed to distract us.
Time blocking is a simple, yet effective way to take back control of your workday.
Try time blocking if you...
- Juggle many different projects/responsibilities
- 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
Time blocking is a time management method that asks you to divide your day into blocks of time. Each block is dedicated to accomplishing a specific task or group of tasks. Instead of keeping an open-ended to-do list of things you’ll get to as you’re able, you’ll start each day with a concrete schedule that lays out what you’ll work on and when.
The key is prioritizing your task list in advance. A dedicated weekly review is a must. Ask yourself what’s coming up for the week ahead and make a rough sketch of your time blocks for each day. At the end of each work day, review any tasks you didn’t finish — as well as any new tasks that have come in — and adjust your time blocks for the rest of the week accordingly.
With days that are time blocked in advance, you won’t have to constantly make choices about what to focus on. All you need to do is follow your time blocked schedule. If you get off-task or distracted, simply look at your schedule and get back to whichever task you blocked off time for.
So start blocking time today.
