How to Use Time Blocking to Increase Productivity

We asked one of our writers to share her experience on how she stays focused while we all make the adjustment to work from home. She shared her secret weapon: time blocking.

Background

I’m a freelancer and I work from home. I’m also a wife and a mom to a very active 5-year-old and newborn.

I can pretty much guess what you’re thinking. “She works from home. How does she get any work done?”

Yes, it is a challenge. There’s laundry, dirty dishes, Netflix, the bathroom, snacks, Instagram…and I can keep going. For a while, I felt like I was working a lot, but I wasn’t completing my assignments. But one of my latest jobs introduced me to a time management strategy called, “time blocking.”

What is time blocking?

Time blocking is literally how it sounds: blocking out chunks of time for a given activity.

Reserve a time slot for every activity, yes, every activity. The goal of time blocking is you against the clock. You have one task to focus on during that chunk of time and you need to complete it before the time block is up.

How is time blocking different from a to-do list?

I suppose you can think of it as your to-do list on steroids. A to-do list is brain vomit. A list of everything that you need to check off by the end of the day or week or month or year. That’s precisely the problem. A to-do list doesn’t necessarily come with accountability.

Time blocking takes your to-do list, gives each activity value, and actively assigns a time to do it. That also forces you to consider just how long each activity needs, which can also help you jump start subtasks. You’re basically hacking your mind to put things in sequential order so that you can execute them with voracious efficiency. I may be exaggerating there.

But it’s based on Parkinson’s Law, from the study of behavioral economics. Basically, you’ll get the work done in the allotted amount of time. Even if you don’t need an hour, you’ll fill it will that activity, perhaps just by stressing about it. Or the other extreme is that if you honestly allotted one minute to something, you’ll theoretically take one minute to get it done.

Plus, after you’ve time blocked your schedule, you’ll know what you can realistically get done in a day. And nothing gets forgotten.

And the more you time block, the better you get at gauging how long you'll need per activity, the more accurate your schedule will be.

Time Blocking Tips Before You Get Started

Here are some tips I’ve uncovered trying to balance home and work life.

Schedule your activities in 90-minute intervals

Chronobiology is the field of biology that studies cyclic rhythms. According to the Ultradian principle, our brain works best in 90-minute intervals.

And if you combine that with the Pomodoro principle, you should break up that 90 minutes into 25 minutes of focused concentration followed by 5 minutes of rest. So that’s 3 sets of 25 minutes + 5 minutes to complete one long activity. Then, you need to walk away, because science.

Schedule time to check your emails, the news, and social media

No one is asking you to give up Facebook. And I need to check my emails for work. But it’s easy to get distracted, for hours, catching up with posts and emails.

Instead, schedule time to check these time-suckers before you start your workday. This helped me immensely to have my neurons start firing at the beginning of the day, and I didn’t feel as much pressure to check my phone when I started another activity.

Schedule activities at home too

If you work from home, or if you need to get things done at home, schedule your time there too. I include showering, breakfast, laundry, and even tidying up in my time block to make sure those things get done. You may also consider a block of just family time. If it’s important, schedule it.

Schedule wiggle room

You are not a robot. Be flexible and don’t get discouraged if something takes you longer. Schedule some time to catch up on things that you may have underestimated.

How to Time Block

Here’s how to get started and some templates to jumpstart your schedule.

1. Make a to-do list

Go ahead and brain vomit. Write down everything that is important to you. Most people start with recurring tasks and then big, project-based tasks. Once you’ve got those out of the way, you can brainstorm the smaller things, which usually distract us the most.

2. Block out the time

Take the most important items on your list and block out the time. I like to time block week by week. It helps me with recurring things that I do, like laundry or blogging. Remember, this is about being specific. Block out when you’re going to do it and how long you’ll be doing it for.

3. Follow through

This is the hardest step. If you’ve blocked out time to write that research paper, do NOT check Instagram. Why? Because you’ve either completed your Instagram block or you still have an Instagram block reserved for later. (Let’s be real, Instagram is important.)

4. Reflect and revise

You may have found that you overscheduled activities and underestimated how long something would take you. Or, you’ve unlocked your productivity and got things done sooner than you thought.

Edit your time block schedule for the following week.

Time blocking is like Sheldon-Cooper-does-laundry-every-Saturday-night-at-8:15-pm meets Shia-LaBeouf's-Just-Do-It. So whether you’re a stay-at-home mom, an entrepreneur, or a freelancer, go ahead and take back the day.