Timeblocking

I wrote a little while back about how I was going to start timeblocking to try to get more big things done during my work day. A few weeks later and I have to say I'm pleased with the results so far. Before I started timeblocking, I had a set routine that was working pretty well for me. It started with my morning workout, then 15 minutes to flesh out some ideas from my notebook and write a bit in this blog. Then after that, I would start my day, without much focus on what I was actually working on.

I was really happy with my morning routine and felt like I was making great progress in terms of my health and building up my writing muscle, but I didn't feel like I was consistently focused on big things that were moving my business forward during the rest of my day. These last few weeks, I've added an additional step to my routine: immediately after I finish my writing time, I take 15-30 minutes to plan my day. Additionally, on Mondays I will pick the big tasks I should be working on for the week ahead.

To put this in practice, I have a list of big things I'm working on in Notion. Every Monday I look at this list and add things to it and move them into the column of "Doing this week". Then every morning, I will take a couple of tasks from this column and block out a couple of hours in my day to focus on them exclusively, interspersing some half-hour blocks in between to do admin and lighter tasks. Then once the tasks are fully done, I move them into a different column for "Done".

It doesn't feel like a big change in terms of the admin overhead required and it has made a pretty big difference in terms of the work I'm getting done. I find myself less distracted as I know that I have admin time coming up where I can batch a bunch of smaller tasks together. I do find that I regularly go over the time I've blocked for big tasks, so I probably need to be more conservative with my scheduling. Also, these last few weeks I've had to do a lot of product work for things I've committed to clients, so it has been work that is generally easier for me to focus deeply on. We will see what the result is when I'm back to more growth related tasks, like creating content, where I find it easier to let my mind wander.