Time Blocking

Time Blocking- have you heard of it? No? Okay, let me explain it to you. It’s where you schedule your day by blocks of minutes in order to stay on task and get as much done as possible. During my exploration of different organizational tools, this was the most recent that I tried. 

Now, to be fair, I really only tried this for one day so far, but I’ll tell you what it was like. 

I started my day by having a coffee and getting out my trusty notebook, I didn’t use anything fancy, just a coil notebook so I had lots of room to write.  While sipping my java I thought about everything I wanted to accomplish throughout the day. 

Generally speaking, we all know roughly how long our usual tasks will take so while making my list of what I wanted to accomplish, I started organizing the tasks by where in my house the task would be located within the house and how long each of them would take. 

I tried to organize things in the most efficient way, for example my laundry room is in my basement while my main bathroom and bedrooms are on the second floor of my house, so to me it doesn’t make sense to be running between floors constantly throughout the day. I scheduled myself to do things in the basement, followed by the main floor, followed by the second floor etc etc. 

My list had at least 20 things on it, including prepping for dinner. I had given myself as much time for each task as I thought I needed. I went into this optimistic, but a little worried that I’d have a similar experience to the “To do list” fail that I recently experienced. 

I made sure to schedule breaks for water and lunch and such to try and incorporate as much as I could and the day started out lovely!

I was not only on task, but ahead of schedule and because everything was organized in a physically efficient way, I was able to complete a lot of things by lunch.  I sat down and had lunch and during my break realized just how tired I was starting to feel. Oh well, shake it off, finish lunch, I was in the kitchen already, so dinner prep got done and the afternoon carried on along the same lines. 

I ended up accomplishing all but one thing on my list. The one thing that I missed was clearing off a counter, so not that big of a deal, the rest of the house was clean and dinner was ready to go in the oven! 

I don’t know if it’s because I’m not used to getting that much done, or because i’m not used to walking up and down that many flights of stairs in a day, but I was exhausted by dinner. Grateful that I got the prep done earlier so that all I had to do was put the dinner in the oven, I sat down and considered how I felt. 

Yes I was exhausted, yes I missed that one thing on my list, but really I felt super accomplished. I had gotten so many things done and was able to stay focused and on schedule Yay Me!

I guess overall I’d have to say that this method of time management worked for me, I’ll definitely be giving it another go in the future, especially on days that I want to accomplish a lot. I briefly tried looking for apps that I could use for this, but in the end decided that good ol’ pen and paper were the method that I was most comfortable starting off with. There is so much satisfaction in crossing something off a list! 

I will in future try to find an app that I like, preferably a free or low cost one, as I’d rather not waste the paper if at all possible. If I don’t find an app I like, maybe I’ll consider getting a whiteboard…that way at least I can erase it as I go (satissfyyyinggg….)!

What kind of time management strategies have you used? Have you tried Time Blocking? Do you have a better option? Let me know!

XO Sabrina