Discover Your Energy Flux Cycle!
The secrets to successful time blocking
Welcome to All the Tasks Fit to Print, my weekly newsletter on all issues productivity-related for authors (and other solopreneurs)!
One of the most popular current methods of time management is “time blocking.” It is definitely a super useful tool, but if it has not been working for you the way you want it to, it’s time to re-evaluate.
Time blocking is very simple, in theory: create “blocks” of time in your schedule to do things.
This might simply sound like a fancy version of “schedule your time” but it’s actually a bit more holistic than that, as it gives you both time to focus and the freedom to be flexible with that focus.
For instance, if you block two hours for “project development” then you are free to work on whatever is the priority for that day. If you block an hour for "respond to emails" then you can choose which are a priority, or respond only to the ones related to a current marketing effort.
Most people who use time blocking tend to become disappointed in it, though, and eventually quit time blocking entirely, or create a franken-schedule that is a mix of various productivity approaches.
If that's you and your unique time management system is working for you, congratulations!
If, on the other hand, you are one of many, many people who are not happy with the result of cobbling a calendar schedule together, time blocking might yet be your savior!
You just need to implement it efficiently.
Fortunately, that's easy to do: the solution is to understand the difference between time spent on quality versus time spend on quantity.
Time blocking is much more effective when you can identify each block according to your energy flux, a.k.a. the type of energy that time requires.
People stumble over time blocking when they look at their schedule and put in blocks of time whenever time is available for whatever immediate need they think is a priority. That is the general approach to most time management systems, to be honest: prioritize by deadlines or some other metric of "urgency." Of course it is important to, as Steven Covey tells us, put "first things first," but that still leaves a lot of space on the calendar to fill up and it doesn't take into account your energy flux throughout the day.
Do you need to work on fine-grained quality work such as editing something you've written, or on the details of a new business project? Or do you need the brute-force energy of creating a bunch of short social media posts, or packaging up a bunch of items for delivery?
If you have a task list already created, sit down and label each thing for the type of energy it needs: quality or quantity. If you are not sure, or think it might be both, default to "quality." You can always change it later.
Now for the hard(er) part: figuring out what time of the day/week your specific energy is at its peak.
An easy way to look for your best "quantity" time is when you are most efficient/dedicated to completing household chores. If you do all the laundry on Tuesday right after lunch, then you can safely extrapolate that right after lunch is when your brain is ready to knock out a lot of heavy but not-too-brain-intensive work. That's your quantity time, when you get a lot of shit done by brute force of will. (Can you tell I hate doing laundry?).
Likewise, those times when you are feeling very creative or very nit-picky about things might be the best time of day for quality work.
For example, the litany of advice out there tells us to never to check emails first thing in the morning in order to use that time to "focus on what is important!"
Except, well, I'm not a morning person. Oh sure, I get up early, but that's to walk my dog! My brain never has and never will be fully on-line before 10:00 or 11:00 am. Doesn't matter if I get up at 5:00 am or 9:00 am, I won't be good for much. So, I use that time to check email, read my rss feed for news and interesting articles, scan my socmed accounts for replies to my posts…that is to say, work that does not require a great deal of mental energy. That is quantity energy, where I'm ripping through a list of things to do that are not very fiddly (as Poppa would say).
My best creative time, that is, my best quality time, is after lunch and in the early evening. It's not uncommon for me to work intensely on things like writing this newsletter or designing a new digital product from 1:00 to 3:00 pm, take a break, and then do several hours of creative fiction writing after 7:00 pm. I know I'll have time to hit up email replies and my to-read list the next morning.
Obviously, I cannot follow that exact routine every single day. But knowing my own energy flux, I can set my time blocks accordingly.
In another example, I was talking to a friend who wants to get back to her drawing practice. I gave the usual advice of "do 30 minutes every day!" a la Atomic Habits and many other productivity gurus; she countered that given her ADHD, she will make better progress doing five hour chunks of dedicated drawing once a week. She knows her own energy flux patterns and thus is able to block her time according to what will actually get her to her goal, as opposed to how other people say she "should" do it.
One thing I really try to get clients to understand is that the best time management system in the world is the one that works for you. You can implement an endless number of to-do apps or notetaking apps or productivity systems, but none of them will for for you if you are not taking into account your energy flux along with your priorities, projects, timelines, and responsibilities.
I can attest that this time-blocking practice really works. I include blocks pretty much every day for walking and writing. The lower-priority stuff can be fit in as needed.
Time Blocking would be neat if it worked for me. My schedule is so backward from everyone else. I work 7p-7a, sleep 8-4, get up, try to write for an hour, get distracted, get ready for work, go to work.