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Jory MacKay on April 09, 2024

Jory MacKay

Jory is a writer, content strategist and award-winning editor of the Unsplash Book. He contributes to Inc., Fast Company, Quartz, and more.

April 09, 2024 · 11 min read

Time is one of the resources no one seems to ever have enough of — which is why it’s so surprising that a recent study found that only 18% of people use a time management technique to stay on track.

Even worse, the same study found that 25% of people openly admit to abandoning their daily schedule the second an urgent task comes across their desks.

Whether you’re a manager, developer, or team leader, one of the best ways to reduce the amount of chaos and reactiveness in your day is to practice time blocking.

Time blocking provides a simple “template” for your day, helping you to stay organized while limiting context switching between different tasks. Not only does this help you to be more productive, but when done correctly, time blocking will also boost your energy, increase motivation, and give you more time for the things that really matter.

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In this guide, we’ll walk through the theory behind time blocking, illustrate the benefits, and give you a simple eight-step process to get started time blocking today.

What is time blocking? Who should use it?

Time blocking is a time management and scheduling technique that divides your available time each day into “chunks” — each of which is allocated to specific tasks.

Where a traditional to-do list tells you what you need to do, time blocking allows you to know for certain when to do it.

A technique like time blocking can remove distractions, but it requires a serious level of discipline to do so. Unlike simply planning out your day, time blocking requires you to be diligent with your schedule and delay meetings, calls, and emails to specific times of the day.

For example, you could create a block between 9 am — 11 am every morning to do focused work, leaving another block at 1 pm — 4 pm available for meetings in the afternoon. This way, you organize your day to complete activities at a time that works best for you and your working patterns.

But, time blocking doesn’t just help you stay organized. In a recent workplace study, 45% of people agreed that regular context-switching made them less productive. Time blocking is perfect for eliminating context-switching as it provides dedicated time to focus on specific tasks, such as analytical work, phone calls, or building presentations.

This boost in productivity means you get more out of your working day, allowing you to increase your overall output and free up time for new tasks, personal development, or even some much-needed rest. But it can also be hard to adapt to — especially if your workplace or working style is more reactive.

As a general rule, you should consider time blocking if:

• You’re swamped with “reactive” work (emails, meeting requests, etc.) Time blocking ensures you have dedicated time every day to deal with urgent requests. This way, they don’t constantly interrupt your flow and focus, giving you control to deal with high-priority items.
• You’re juggling responsibilities (such as managing teams, writing development code, or design work). Rather than badly juggling different responsibilities, time blocking helps you structure your time to tackle each responsibility with a fresh mind. This way, the quality of your output is higher and you perform better across the board.
• You find it hard to make real progress. Time blocking is incredibly popular with analytical, administrative, and creative workers, where constant distractions stop them from progressing. Time blocking provides the opportunity to turn off your phone, emails, and instant messenger to create a calm environment that’s perfect for charging through work.
• You’re constantly putting out fires and can’t spend time on the big picture. Like focused workers, if you’re a manager or leader overseeing a big team, finding the time to step back and strategize can be hard. Time blocking helps you carve out time to focus on building a long-term roadmap.
• You’re overworking and on the edge of burnout. When our days get busy, seeing the wood from the trees can be hard. If this continues for too long, it becomes overwhelming, leading to stress and burnout. Time blocking helps keep that at bay by providing a structure to tackle different buckets of work at specific times.
• You can’t work out where your time is going. Ever look up from the screen, and suddenly it’s 5 o’clock? Time blocking is great at helping you identify where large chunks of your time are spent by breaking everything down into clearly defined windows. If you’re constantly running out of time in a certain time block, it’s easy to see where you need to re-balance your workload.

45% of people agree that regular context-switching made them less productive. Time blocking boosts your productivity and gets you so much more out of your working day.

When people first read about time blocking, they often dismiss it because they’re simply too busy with reactive meetings, emails, and phone calls. But, even time blocking a small section of the day can make a huge difference to anyone, helping them stay on top of the to-do list, become more creative, or do some big-picture planning.

Why time blocking works: 6 benefits of blocking out your day

While time blocking is great for helping you be more productive, it also provides several other benefits, each contributing to an overall increase in mood, performance, and well-being.

Let’s look at the most common benefits of time blocking.

• Maximizes your energy cycles. To get the best results, many people align their time blocking to their body’s natural ebb and flow of energy throughout the day. This allows you to do your highest-value work when you have the most energy instead of forcing you to fight against the low points during the day.
• Helps you get into a state of flow (or “deep work”). Whether it’s work, playing an instrument, or going for a run, there’s nothing quite like reaching a state of flow. Time blocking gives you time to focus on deep work without distractions from meetings, phone calls, and chat messages.
• Gives you more awareness of how you spend your time. For those looking to take back control of their working day, time blocking helps provide visibility on how long different tasks take. If you regularly exceed time blocks for certain tasks, you know they take too long.
• *Forces you to work through “shallow work” quickly. *Shallow work — such as answering emails — has a habit of taking over your day. Time blocking gives you dedicated time to complete these shallow activities, freeing up more time to focus on the higher-value items.
• Can counteract procrastination and perfectionism. Time blocking is great at reducing procrastination and perfectionism by providing a balance of variety and ring fencing that helps keep you in the perfect sweet spot.
• Reduces decision-making and promotes healthy prioritization. Time blocking takes away the endless “what shall I work on next?” decision-making by giving you a clear view of structure throughout the day. This reduces indecision, giving you a clear mind to complete the required work.

How to start time blocking your days in 8 steps

Getting started with time blocking is all about stepping back, reflecting on your work, and planning a more structured way-of-working in place.

Here’s a simple process to help you get started time blocking today:

1. List your regular tasks and break them into categories

To get started with time blocking, you need to create a clear view of the work that makes up your day. From there, you can assign each task into a category that will form the basis of your different work blocks throughout the day.

Things to think about:

• When listing your tasks, keep the descriptions high-level. For example, rather than ‘Monthly Finance & Budget Report for Geoff Stelling’, summarize it as ‘Monthly Finance Reports’. To help, the Planio Guide to Task Management has some great tips to help you break work down into smaller tasks.
• When you have your tasks listed out, categorize them into distinct types of work. Again, keep it high-level by using categories such as emails, admin work, focus work, and reporting to show clear differentiation.

If you need some help…

Planio’s task management module provides simple and intuitive functionality to help you identify, plan, schedule, and view your tasks in one place. You can configure it to suit you and your team, with customizations for task categories perfect for getting started with time blocking.

2. Reflect on your own patterns and productivity peaks

We all have certain times of the day when we feel motivated and focused and other times when we feel lethargic and reflective. To get the best results from time blocking, you need to align your work with your working patterns. Understanding this will help you plan your time blocks accordingly.

Things to think about:

• Reflect on the times of day you feel at your best and worst. For early risers, there’s a chance to get productive, focused work in at the start of the day. For those night owls, you might need an hour or two to get up to speed by working through daily routines before focusing harder in the afternoon.
• When reflecting on your work pattern, remember you won’t be able to have it all your own way. Many organizations have meetings (such as Agile ceremonies) that are fixed in the calendar for everyone to attend. While you want to maximize your own peaks and troughs, consider other people’s commitments too.
  

3. Set up individual blocks for each ‘category’ of work

With your tasks and working pattern locked down, it’s time to start filling in your blocks of time. It’s best practice to break these down by the categories you identified earlier, scheduling particular types of work at different parts of the day.

Things to think about:

• Don’t give all of your time blocks equal time. No one works a perfect day where their ratio of focus work, meetings, and reporting is evenly split. To size each block correctly, we recommend the Planio Guide to Estimating.
• Another common mistake new time blockers make is allocating entire days to a particular category. You must ensure every day has variety to help you stay engaged, motivated, and avoid procrastination.

4. Put aside some flexible time for reactive work

Just because you’ve time blocked your calendar doesn’t mean emergencies won’t come out of left field. To master time blocking, you need to keep some flexibility in your schedule, giving you the capacity to react to important work when it crops up.

Things to think about:

• Are there particular times of the day or week when reactive work is more likely to arise? For example, straight after the weekly board meeting or the lunchtime call center rush? If so, give yourself some flexible time to react accordingly.
• Remember, just because someone else thinks a task is urgent doesn’t mean it actually is. Be careful not to become too reactive and lose all sense of time blocking discipline during these flexible time blocks.

5. Add in some buffer for breaks and resets

Time blocking is excellent at removing context switching by splitting apart different types of activities. But at some point, you still need to change between categories, and the best way to do this is with a reset in between.

Things to think about:

• Factor in short breaks between each block to give you the chance to rest and reset. This is especially important when transitioning from high-intensity tasks (such as meetings or phone calls) into focused tasks (such as creative work or reporting).
• Time blocking helps put a boundary around different types of work, giving you a clear indicator when you and your team’s workload is out of balance. If you try and plow through long periods of overworking, it won’t be long until you succumb to burnout.

When done correctly, time blocking will boost your energy, increase motivation, and give you more time for the things that really matter.

6. Communicate your schedule with the team

Before you jump into living your first week as a time blocker, you need to ensure everyone around you knows what’s going on. Communicate your new schedule with the team, explaining why you’re using time blocking, how your day is structured, and what changes it means for them.

Things to think about:

• Ensure your plans align with those around you. Consider team members’ working patterns, special adjustments, or time zones when building your blocks — especially for relationship-focused tasks such as one-on-one meetings.
• As a people manager, you are responsible for looking after your team’s welfare. If you’re blocking large periods of focused work, ensure your team still has a way of contacting you in an emergency. Outside of emergencies, encourage using asynchronous communication techniques to manage distractions accordingly.

7. Get started by adding tasks for your first week

Now that you’ve laid all of the foundations, it’s time to start working in your time blocks. As you begin your first week blocking, add the specific tasks on your to-do list into your daily categories and work through them at the correct times to get your work done efficiently.

Things to think about:

• The first few days of time blocking will be an adjustment. Not responding urgently to particular tasks will feel strange, but you must remain disciplined. Like all new habits, they take time to form properly, so make sure you don’t give up too soon!
• You may find that specific tasks don’t fit perfectly into one category or another. That’s ok. Just use your flexible slots to fit them in. If you find tasks are regularly falling through the gaps, it may indicate the need to create a new category, with its own slot, somewhere in the day.

8. Track your time on tasks, revise, and adapt as you go

Like many things in project management, you’re unlikely to get it right the first time. As you get into time blocking, keep track of the time you spend in each category to understand if you’re under or over time based on your workload. From there, adjust accordingly to find a schedule that works for you.

Things to think about:

• As you get into time blocking, ask colleagues, team members, and project stakeholders for feedback on whether your time blocking is working for them, too. Ultimately, you have to find a balance between your productivity and being a valuable member of your wider team, so make sure you’re keeping both sides happy.

If you need some help…

When we get busy, keeping track of time is hard. But, Planio’s time tracking feature can help, with a simple system toggle to start tracking the time spent on particular tasks.

Once recorded, you can measure your time using reports to see where you’re over or under on your time box schedule.

5 other methods to try if time blocking doesn’t work for you

Everyone manages their time differently — despite giving it a good try, time blocking simply might not be for you. Luckily, there are several other time management techniques to help you stay productive.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the most popular time management techniques and who should use them:

Ready to start time blocking? Don’t fall into these traps

Managing your time is essential to boost productivity, balance workload, and promote a healthy sense of well-being. But, only a small percentage of people use a time management technique to help them plan their day.

Time blocking provides structure, boosts productivity, and reduces context switching between high-intensity tasks (such as meetings or phone calls) and focused tasks (such as creative work or reporting).

If you’re ready to start time blocking, keep an eye out for these three common pitfalls to ensure it’s a success:

• Underestimating how long tasks will take. Task estimation is at the core of time blocking. If you consistently underestimate the time it will take to complete a task, you’ll end up always feeling behind and will give up. When you first start, try giving yourself a 1.5x multiple on how long you think a task will take. Then, track your time to see how reality matches your estimation.
• Ignoring breaks and resets. Whether time blocking or not, we’re all guilty of becoming a slave to our to-do list. Don’t fall into the habit of skipping over your regular breaks. Not only can it lead to stress and burnout, but regular short breaks actually make you more productive in the long run.
• Build in some flexibility. No job is a perfect breakdown of different tasks at different times. Things change, team members need help, and emergencies happen — so, don’t get into time blocking and make it too rigid. Instead, keep some flexibility to ensure you can react when you really need to.

If you need a little extra help with scheduling tasks, communicating with team members, and tracking your time, check out Planio. Our all-in-one project management tool provides everything your team needs to stay organized and hit your goals.

Try Planio for yourself — free for 30 days (no credit card required!)