It is a common practice to 'Time Block' your day, so you reserve segments of time for different tasks. You have to be quite strict to follow this type of regime.
This type of practice is useful if you find yourself flitting from one thing to another all day long and you feel like you are being 'controlled' by your notifications or you find you are easily diverted.
I discovered the following posts that help to explain this idea without me repeating them here!
- 3 time blocking methods to boost productivity
- Time Blocking
- How to boost your productivity with time blocking
A lot of articles will recommend the use of their own respective apps to regiment your day/week, but I'm sure you can adapt the methods to a paper planner easily without any additional cost.
Try not to over book yourself like a 'retired person' does... You have an event for 40-60 minutes, so you block out the whole day. Or a day long event, you block out the whole week. You are thinking of going away for a week, so nothing else can happen for the whole month! You mean like you Steve? Guilty!
Have you tried 'Time Blocking' ?
I do time blocking! Sort of. I'm a visual person, so I much prefer weekly calendars where the days are listed side by side with the hours listed underneath. So work, meetings, commute etc are marked out when they occur and for how long. Otherwise I have no idea if my planned schedule is reasonable or not.
ReplyDeleteTasks I don't time block, though. That feels much too restrictive. Unless it's crunch time before a deadline, then I might timeblock in my work calendar so no one can even attempt book a meeting with me.
/Mathilda
Yes, I use time blocking all of the time for my job. As I spend the majority of the day focussing on specific clients, I schedule this into my calendar to ensure that their work is done on a regular basis. It also helps me to keep to deadlines as well.
ReplyDeleteI've been using vertical weekly planners with timed daily columns for several years now. I time block any appointments and things like picking up my kids from afterschool activities. I also make sure to block out travel time to and from. Time blocking in this way lets me see what time I have available between responsibilities to get tasks done.
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