WHAT I REALLY THINK ABOUT “TIME BLOCKING”
Every minute is accounted for. You have no wasted time in your day and you complete everything you want to get done. Your “whatever” tasks feel like obligations, and you only leave the right amount of room for your eating, sleeping, and showering. And it’s a straightforward way of planning your life out.
Sounds like a pretty good idea, right? I guess — people like Bill Gates use it, and he’s really productive.
Google Calendar’s design is perfect for time blocking management. The principle of time blocking is also intuitive and creates a perfect setup for “scheduling to get things done.”
In practice, though, I don’t jam with it. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t, but if you’re like me who has seen all the praise that time blocking gets and think, “Yeah, but it’s not all that,” it’s okay. You’re not alone.
I wondered if I wasn’t doing it right. Theoretically, I do see the pros in time blocking. For one, it tries to give you control over Parkinson’s Law — the law that dictates that the amount of work will spread in the time allotted for it. Allot a specific amount of time for what you want to accomplish. The Pomodoro technique does the same thing, except its approach is short-term.
Here’s what I think time blocking has a really difficult time overcoming — the planning fallacy. This is the name given for our tendency to miscalculate how much time something is going to take. If you’re really going to use time blocking to your advantage, you really have to acquire a stronghold over the planning fallacy and know what’s realistic for you. “Yes, it would be awesome to do everything in the world in one day, but realistically, I should really give myself a good hour to do this task.”
When you chock your schedule full of things to do, the planning fallacy becomes easy to forget about. That said, even when you try to control the planning fallacy, this happens: “I’m only giving myself an hour to do this thing, and that’s good because that means I’ll really focus on it!” That’s great in principle, but you can’t do that for everything.
Another thing where I think time blocking can put you at a disadvantage is the tendency to micro-manage your day. Of course, you control your schedule and time block as much as you want from it. Still, you’re giving yourself a “perfect day” scenario.
People who are proponents of time blocking will tell you that there are ways around the “perfect day” trap. Creating a blank column next to your time-blocked day will give you leeway to change. “Instead of working on my paper during this time, I wanted to do my daily run here instead because the forecast is predicting rain later. I’ll work on my paper afterward.”
Fantastic, you have leeway. However, if you micromanaged your day and, perhaps, filled every single minute with something productive to do, then that “leeway” screws up your whole day. Where am I going to fit in this task now that I did a different task? Oh no, I slept in — I guess my entire day is out of order. It adds an unnecessary layer of stress to your life — and more planning. How much time are you really spending planning and fixing your plan when you could…I don’t know….do something productive?
There is no magic answer to time management. We all want to get stuff done, and we don’t want to waste any time getting it done. With that said, I think this hyper-planning of life has an almost too-ideal ring to it. Logically, it’s a great tool, and if it works for you then keep at it.
In practice, though, we overestimate things, over-plan, and give up. We’re human, after all.
