One of the big themes over the past few weeks has been providing help without sacrificing yourself or your productivity. It's a tough balance to strike and I'll readily admit, even I don't always get it right, but regardless of how well intentioned I may (or may not) be, I find that it always comes down to my calendar.

Time is one of the few finite things we have in this world—we're not getting any more of it. That means you need to protect it as best you can because nobody else will. Something that has helped me in both my in-house days and my consulting days is time blocking.

It's a really simple concept but if you can maintain discipline it'll change the game for you because it'll add structure to your day. That structure will enable a new level of focus which will increase your productivity by many Xs (2x, 5x, 100x!).

How is time blocking different from a to do list?

In my opinion, nothing kills productivity more than to do lists. They're full of distractions and a constant reminder that there's more to do. But these existential concepts aren't the worst part of a to do list, the worst part is those sneaky, little tasks.

You know the ones...

1. "That'll only take 5 minutes"
2. "I've done this before, it's easy"
3. "This just came in, let me knock it out"

The thing is...

1. That'll only take 5 minutes to do the work, but 30 to get caught up on everything and then another 30 to context switch to the next thing on your list.
2. Yeah, you did it before but the context is slightly different this time so now you need to figure out what the new thing is
3. Is it more urgent than something you're already working on?

To do lists don't help you focus, they force you to context switch and second guess. And that my friends is the issue, because real work requires focus. 

Real work?

It feels like I'm teasing you with the time boxing concept at this point but I think it's important to spell out that "real work" looks different for different people and the blocks will differ a bit if you're a manager or a maker.

Managers oversee people and/or projects. Their roles usually require providing more direction and strategy work. In this case a manager can literally be anyone from a first-time manager to a VP (or above).

Makers are typically individual contributors that are responsible for the execution of the work. They're not usually managing people or projects, just their own output.

There are some roles like project managers for example that end up living in both worlds, so definitely see what makes sense and apply it. The key is that you actually follow the blocks.

What is a time block?

I promised we'd get here... A time block is a dedicated block of time in your calendar that is there specifically for the completion of certain tasks. There are two major ideas (at least for me) behind calendar blocks.

Parkinson's Law

The first is a concept called Parkinson's Law. It's a concept created by naval historian, C. Northcote Parkinson. He wrote that work expands to fill the available time, and I couldn't agree more. A time block let's you allocate how much time you'll dedicate to something—no more, no less.

Now this doesn't mean that you'll get a 4-hour project done in 30 minutes if that's what you allocate (you still need to be honest with yourself) but, for the procrastinators in the crowd, it does mean that if you create guardrails for yourself you'll stop messing around and get the job done. 

Defense wins championships

The second is this idea that if you let someone else manage your calendar you'll never have time to get work done. By taking ownership of your own calendar you can start playing defense. What I mean by that is you dictate the terms. You dictate when you're available for work, meetings, and other things.

Now I do live in reality and understand that things come up but if you can set your boundaries and maintain them most days, you'll be way more successful than someone who just accepts every calendar invite.

How many time blocks do I need?

This is up to you. I know people who literally block and color code in 15-minute intervals. I'm a bit looser and prefer 3-4 big ones that allow me some flexibility within them. You'll have to find what's most helpful to you but I'd recommend starting more broadly (my way) and then adding more if you really need them.

Block #1 - Triage Time

I start every single morning with Triage Time. Every. Single. Morning. This is where I get set up for the day. I check emails, I look at my open projects in Asana, and primarily I put together a list of what's getting done that day.

I'll usually use Asana but sometimes a Post-it is just easier—again, you gotta do what works for you.

The most important thing that Triage Time allows for for me is the ability to not just list what's important but prioritize it as well. On top of that it allows me to scope the tasks too. Remembers those five minute tasks that require prep work? This is where I do the prep work so that the task actually takes five minutes.

I learned to do this as a side effect of creating an intake process. We'd start getting requests all the time and there was no SLA meaning the expectation was a nearly immediate response. Can you imagine how distracting it was to get and respond to requests all day long? Let's just say productivity dipped until Triage Time was created. Once we did create it we set the precedent that requests would get responded to on a daily basis from 10-11a ET. Mischief managed!

You'll notice in the graphic above that I didn't include Triage Time for makers. While I still believe they should be thinking about their day and strategizing, for most makers a PM or manager is dictating tasks so they're spelled out for them. 

Block #2 - Quick Hits

Respond to an email, update a typo on the website, create a quick graphic, there are so many little things to do on a daily basis that require little to no thought but they do require time. Don't do them during the day, create a quick hits window and knock them out all together.

This is why triage is so important because when you get to quick hits you just close tickets—it feels like a race sometimes—but you can't do that if you start chasing information. Have your quick hits ready to go and you easily get 5-10 wins under your belt every morning. And what happens if you don't finish all the quick hits? Nothing. You move on and finish them tomorrow. If they were urgent you'd either do them first or they'd get raised in a different fashion.

Side note on quick hits: there are so many quick hits that can be handled by other people (ex. typos by the CROs, redirects by SEO) that eventually you start tagging them in too and it becomes a team sport.

Block #3 - Focus Time

This used to be affectionately known as "The Dmitry Doctrine." It said that from 1p-5p ET my team was not to be bothered. No meetings, no slacks, no shoulder taps, nothing. The goal was to create uninterrupted focus time for highly technical and creative work.

It was hard at the start but this was a place I had to put my foot down. I touched on context switching before but if you've ever had to think deeply about something, it doesn't matter how small a distraction there might be, it usually takes a good 15-30 minutes to get back to that point. If you get distracted more than once you've basically lost the day. I couldn't have that.

Once we got it down life was good but then something wild happened that flipped things on their heads—we started hiring internationally. I'll never forget it, on September 30th there were three of us in Cambridge, MA, and on October 1st, there were four in Cambridge and two in Dublin. I needed to offer the same protection to my team abroad so we more or less inverted the calendar for them. They got their focus time in during AM hours in Ireland then we overlapped for a bit so there was still time for triage and quick hits in the afternoon for them.

Focus time is the most important block, in my opinion, because this is where you get work done. When you're a manager you tend to have less focus time (primarily because of meetings) so it's important you find time to do the work you need to do otherwise you're sacrificing your nights and weekends (no, thank you).

Focus time is also the big question mark when it comes to lots of blocks or few blocks. This is a real dealer's choice. For me, I know what I need to do and how much time I'm going to allocate so I'm not trying to create individual blocks. For you, you may prefer having firmer guardrails. Pick one and iterate.

Block #4 - Meeting Time

I know what you're thinking, with all of this time dedicated to work when are we gonna have any meetings? I guess if we have to then we need to dedicate time for it.

Meeting blocks are important because of the guardrails they create not just for you but for your colleagues as well. For you, it ensures you're not in meetings all day and can get work done (you can't ignore invites and be unproductive, that's no good). For your colleagues, seeing the block on your calendar forces them to think about if this meeting is more important than deep work. If they're unsure they can always ask and if they don't you can always suggest a new time.

This block is probably the biggest differentiator for managers and makers. Managers are going to have a much larger meeting block. It may eat into focus time. Makers are going to have meetings as well (stand ups, kickoffs, review sessions, etc.). I prefer to have them earlier in the day so that they then can focus on the work.

This is the one you unfortunately need to be the most flexible on because sometimes an all hands pops up, maybe there's a major issue that needs to get resolved, or you need to have an urgent conversation with someone. We do need to be realistic about life. That said, do your best to not make that a habit. There are some people who will tell you to say "no" no matter what, I tend to be more practical here but if it turns out that I took time away from something important for a meeting that could've waited (or been an email), there's no fooling me twice.

Take Control of Your Calendar

As I said earlier, if you don't protect your calendar nobody will. What's fun to see though is that once you start doing it, others will too. People will show more respect for your time (and you'll reciprocate, right?). You'll be able to align more on no meeting days or with async comms. Priorities will become clearer. Productivity and skills will grow. It's hard to believe that this can happen as a result of a few calendar blocks but it's true. If you set them and stay disciplined you'll see for yourself.

Anybody else messing with that Coauthor Linkedin Year in Review? Results have been hit or miss for some folks, but I absolutely LOVE mine.

You're on break. You don't want to think about work. So all I'll say is if you're looking to "transform creative chaos into scalable systems" you know where to find me.