Hi there! Today, I want to talk about time blocking again, but this time around, I want to look at it from a different perspective.  I think when you start looking at time blocking  the way I'm gonna present today, then you might find time blocking being a lot more flexible, freeing and not as strict,  imposing and  hardcore as you thought about it before. 

Let's go. 

One of the things that I've started doing recently is to have my planning sessions on Fridays instead of over the weekends or on Mondays as I used to do before.  

Well, first of all, I highly recommend it. It's been working really great. 

The reason I decided to do it is because I felt that if I spend this time on Monday morning to plan my entire week, I'm already using the best mental resources that I  throughout the week on planning.  Not that there is something wrong with planning, it's useful, but wouldn't I want to spend my Monday mornings on actually doing the hard tasks or working on the projects or actually doing the work because on Monday mornings, that's when I have the most energy, the most enthusiasm and the most motivation.

 In comparison by Friday, I'm most of the time is quite tired.  I can do admin stuff; some less cognitively demanding tasks.  

So I decided, okay, let's just move the planning session on Fridays.   That's what I've been doing for the past few months and it's been working really great. First of all, I never miss it because, I haven't done my calendar for Fridays and I'm always excited to show up. I never felt guilty that I'm doing planning instead of doing something else because on Fridays, I don't usually do a lot of earth shattering activities, anyways. 

And also around that  time, I was already thinking about the Spring Capacity episode that I'm gonna record which was released last time. So, you can check it out. 

And I was thinking, okay, why don't I approach time blocking the same way scrum teams approach sprint capacity calculation but I would do it every single Friday for that coming week. 

So, I decided to kind of change  the way I look at my time blocking.  How I used to look at it? It was helpful at that stage in my life is to  have very strict boundaries for when I start working on a task and for when I finished, for example, recording this episode, I would put it from 10:00 AM till 11:00 AM on Wednesday morning. 

And so, I would be very strict with myself and say, hey, it's 10, AM, you better head upstairs and record that episode. 

So it was more  like a timetable that you would have at school, at university  when the class starts at a certain time, you have to be there. You show up and you finish by the time you say you are finished.  It works really well when you are in the busiest times of your life.  It saved me when I was doing my master's because I had my master's, I had some jobs and so I really had to be very strict with my time. That was the only way I could actually get things done and also have my weekend to myself.

So, there's definitely time and place for this very strict time blocking. But, I find that at some point you get really burned out because you know,  you're always in this go go, go state of mind.  I think throughout the year we have different seasons and it's nice to change things up.

Right now,  this very strict timetable and the enormous amount of self discipline that it requires doesn't really work for me, even though it provides outstanding results. 

So, what I decided to do for let's say less busy periods of my life is to have a different view at time blocking.

Nowadays, when I do my planning sessions on Friday, I have my sprint goals, my backlog and everything, I look at that coming week, all the appointments that I have scheduled, and then I start plugging in these time slots for all the sprint goals and all the activities that I want to do.

As I mentioned in my previous time blocking episode, I start with the most important tasks and go down the list. And so I start plugging these tasks in, but at the same time, I have very clear boundaries for when my day starts and for when it ends. 

I schedule my dinner time slots, my lunch time slots. And then all the other tasks. They kind of go in between. I try to be realistic, maybe a little bit conservative on the amount of time it requires to finish each tasks, but then when my calendar is full, it means that  I'm done for the week. There is nothing I can do. I will schedule something for the evenings. Usually, doing some chores. Maybe going to the store to buy something or doing some house tasks. But even then, I only have space to schedule one or two per evening.

 Again, having the calendar in time block, I talked about the same idea in my previous episode about Sprint Capacity. Having Sprint Capacity number in mind, serves as a boundary, serves as a stop sign for you to say, hey, I cannot do more stuff. And so same with time blocking, having the calendar and actually plugging in all the activities that you need to do,  very soon, you run out of time, that's where you can say, okay, that's it, I can stop here. 

So now, the difference between the old approach and the new approach is that every day,  I would look at my calendar and see a very limited number of tasks that I've scheduled for myself. I already accounted for  how much time they will take. And then right now, I decide to look at it, these are the tasks for the day. What order I do them and doesn't really matter. I don't have to follow the exact schedule that I've established. I don't have to record the podcast at 10:00 AM. I can record it at 2:00 PM. As long as I record it today, it doesn't really matter what time I do it.

Somehow, it made it a lot less serious and it kind of gave me a little bit more freedom into deciding what activity I would want to do today. I have a list of what needs to get done today, but when and how I do it, it's up to me if I finish earlier, amazing more time to myself.

The analogy that I have here is like, once you are done with time block, and once you are done planning your week, then every week, you kind of have a budget, right? 

So you have a budget of eight  hours. You know that realistically speaking, you can do maybe five tasks if most of them take like an hour or two. 

When you go to the store and you have a budget and you have a list of things that you need to buy, you just buy them in random order, right?   In the order that you see them, okay, I can pick pineapple here, because it's the first thing I see. Then I can go and pick up some eggs or fish.  I can go and pick up some yogurt. It doesn't really matter what order you pick up your groceries as long as you picked up your groceries and you stayed, within your grocery list, within your budget, then you're done. 

All these extra ,trying to make it extra efficient, minimize the time between the aisles and all of that, it's just some extra stress and effort that doesn't really have a high return on investment. In contrast, it makes it a lot more stressful and makes you burn out a lot faster.  

Again, right now I decide to look at my time blocking as more of a way to realistically  figure out the to-do list for every day because without having time blocking, I would definitely put more items on my, to-do list every day, then I can realistically achieve. Having more to-do items would cause stress and all of that.  

So instead, I do the time blocking, I say, okay, recording a podcast will take an hour, maybe editing a podcast will take an hour and a half. 

Going to the gym will take two hours with the commute and everything. After like three, four activities, I realized that I only have maybe an hour and a half. What can I do in this an hour and a half? So maybe pick another two tasks and that's it. You are done for the day. Move on, move on to Wednesday, move on to Thursday. And then when the day comes, you look at your calendar, you see a very small number of things that you need to get done today.  And I just look at it and I say, okay, so today, what are the things that need to get done?

Okay, podcast needs to be recorded. Gym session needs to happen. Maybe I need to do meal prep. 

So these are the results. The definitions of done that need to happen at some point today,  I know that I have enough time to get it done, then let's go. 

What do I feel like doing right? In the morning, do I have energy for this? Or do I want to do that? 

Knowing myself, I know that I should do the most difficult tasks in the morning because then I get tired  and I don't want to do them. 

So, I just work through the list. If it takes a little bit longer, fine, because other tasks might take less time, but having this very manageable   list of tasks for the day, makes it a lot more enjoyable, calm, and  very manageable.

This is what I wanted to offer to you today. If you are not in crunch time. If you are like in a normal season of your life, you don't have to be as strict about time blocking. Time blocking should serve you more as a boundary for your to-do list. You should estimate how much each task will take you. You can plug them into your calendar, approximately for when they will happen. And that's it.  You don't have to stick to the exact schedule, to the exact time. Just look at your, to-do list for the day and start working on it. Maybe you will be late on some tasks, maybe you will be early.

It doesn't really matter.

So that's what I wanted to share with you for today.  Also, as I said in the beginning, try having your planning sessions on Friday  or even Thursday for that coming week. Somehow, for me personally, it works much better and I can be a lot more consistent when I do it at the end of the previous week for that coming week.

So, yep. That's it for today. Have a wonderful week. And I'll talk to you in the next episode. 

Cheers.