As I’ve started to lean on time blocking, the approach has been to throw individual tasks into the calendar. However, I’ve found more success in time blocking a type of work.

Code Reviews are recurring 1-hour block. Every day, I know I have that time set aside for that task alone. I might not use it all up, but it feels much more natural than capturing code reviews as individual tasks.

What if I did the same for other types of tasks? Time blocking for writing code, documentation, etc. It could even be something like:

1. ongoing feature work
2. bugs/tech debt
3. documentation
4. discussions
5. management (project statuses, etc.)
6. hacking on personal projects

This would probably pair well with a change in how tasks are captured. Tasks would fall into one of several buckets that map to the type of time blocks. They would be ranked by priority, and I would simply grab the highest priority item. If there aren’t enough tasks to fill in a time block, I can adapt and jump into a different type of task, or use the extra time for writing, reading and/or personal projects.

References

Related Notes or Links

• A triage system for my evergreen notes
• Thirty Percent Feedback
• Practice over process
• Reduce friction