Comments on: When to block your calendar

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:05:22 +0000

Great discussion here. From my point of view this is OK as long as the Spirit of the Calendar is respected– what is on the calendar is sacrosanct, and is the “hard landscape” for the day.

So do not DARE put a block of time on your calendar if you won’t use it. That could be the beginning of a slide into all kinds of craziness and anxiety.

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:24:39 +0000

Very good advice! I’ve tried this with very mixed success and recently realised another key factor in making this successful. I work in an open plan office, with interruptions common (typically at least once in every 10 minutes). This can completely shatter all your planning when booking out time to work for 2 hours on one thing.

I’ve met some success in countering this by actually booking a meeting room or going to a quiet study area to do the 2 hour effort. You may have some success by setting the expectations of colleagues, but that did not work for me. An alternate location was what turned it around in my case.

By: Helen

Helen — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:26:36 +0000

Interesting article with plenty of very good advices!

Being productive is one of the biggest problem of all around the world people. It’s true. we don’t have anymore the gold rush but we really have a bigger problem now : productivity rush.

Day by day, at work, at school, at home, we have to do the tasks/things better and faster. Where we’re gonna get in the end ?

By: Vivian

Vivian — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 02:50:30 +0000

I think that the student schedule (or freelancer’s schedule) is a bit of a different beast. For the 9-5er, there are at least somewhat defined blocks of time in which to get work done: basically, when you’re at work and not eating lunch or at a meeting.

But a freelancer or student, while they do have meetings and/or classes, these tend to be more spread out and it sometimes feels like the whole day can be the workday. This can lead to the feeling that either there is no downtime, or there is all the time in the world (neither is good for productivity).

As a grad student myself, I was thrilled to find the Study Hacks blog and the Getting Things Done for College Students system in particular:

http://calnewport.com/blog/?p=15

I’m trying it out for the first time this fall; so far I already feel much more on top of things than I did last semester. We’ll see if the rest of the semester bears it out.

By: Kim Nielsen

Kim Nielsen — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:52:07 +0000

A very good question from Micahel and very good points and advice from Janet. It makes good sense to block a certain amount of time to get some time intensive work done.

I have through long time been keen on getting work done from my list and have been somewhat stuck between:
*the advice from GTD on not to making To-do-lists day-to-day and instead working off my lists and making sure all of my extracurricular and personal projects are moving forward.
*the advice from my student counselor to schedule my calendar with both classes and time to do some self-studying and homework e.g. Monday: 08-10.30 prepare for class, 10.30-13.30 classes, 13.30-15.00 post-class work and review, 15.00-15.30 commuting,15.30-17.00 nothing, 17.00-18.30 prepare and eat dinner, 18.30-19 scan the text for the next day, 19.00-? nothing.

How do you guys balance blocked-time and “open-slots”, what is your approach or what is your opinion on this dilemma?