Time Blocking - How to Get the Most Out of Your Blocks
Summary:
Ben: I really love a the concepts of your podcast, especially attention capital in time blocking. But i’m really struggling to successfully implement time blocking in my day. Ike: There are some tactics that can help here. Ben: Make sure you’re giving things enough time. Ike: You have to basically embrace some discipline. ben: It is more structure, but it is self imposed structure,. Ike: So it’s not oppressive structure. Just keep doing this.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
name is ben, and i’m the founder and principl of a roughly 200 million dollar longshort equity hedge fund. I really love a the concepts of your podcast, especially attention capital in time blocking, but i’m really struggling to successfully implement time blocking in my day. I own the planter and make a plan for the day. O, but i have trouble in two areas, actually doing what i say i’m suposed to be doing in the time block without going off schedule, and to actually transitioning from block to block like i’m supposed to. Sometimes i’ll set an alarm to remind me to transition, or else that calendar alert, but e for whatever reason, i say, well, i haven’t gott enough done, or i don’t a, or i just ignore the transition for some reason, because i’m too a, i’m unable to for some reason. Adhere. Well,
Speaker 1
this is a common problem, especially for people that are new time blocking and used to a more list reactive approach to organizing their day. There are some tactics that can help here. One, make sure that your blocks are sufficiently long and sufficiently broad in terms of their granularity. So if you have really small blocks, and you’re breaking up your work into too many small things, and therefore you have a ton of transitions from block to block, that’s hard to get right, that can be fatiguing. It’s better to combine things into one larger block. Make sure th tyou’re giving things enough time. So make sure the issue here is not just you’re not giving yourself enough time, and your mind knows that as we got to get this done, so we got to keep working. So you often need more time than you think, especially at first. Also, make use of contingency transition blocks. So here’s a big block for this. Now here’s a block that could be for ing this up. And if i, if i’m done with it, you surrest the time to check email and just time andgende and to record progress. And in time in general, just a transition to the next major block that can really help. So if something runs a little long, it just goes into the contingency block. And if it doesn’t run long, then you can use that block for other things. So that can be useful. And third, be pretty disciplined about fixing your schedule. So you need to actually have the back pres ore of the annoyance of needing to correct your schedule when you run past the blocks, it’s critical that you move on to the next column, move on to the next column. Next time you get a chance fix your schedule. That is incredibly effective stimuli response, right? So if your mind learns, when i break the block, i have to redraw the schedule. That’s a pain or i don’t like it, you are going to sublimely be more likely not to do that. So say, if i gon o do anything, i’m definitely going to redraw the schedule. I’m not allowed to just give up on the schedule for the day. That back pressure really will help overtime. Beyond that though, you have to basically embrace some discipline. You know, it is hard. It is more structure, but it is self imposed structure, right? So it’s not oppressive structure. It is self imposed structure. You have to at some point just say, this is what i’m doing because i’m gong to get two acts more done. And yet my alarm goes off and i don’t want to deal with it. I kand of one, just keep doing this. There has to be another part of your brain at some point that just says, get up, you know, get to the proverbial, pull up ar get after it. Ike, either we’re going to work with discipline or not. (Time 0:36:53)