Hasty Treat - Time Block Planning

Welcome to Syntax in this Monday hasty treat. We're gonna be talking all about time block planning, what it is, how it can help you, and how it's helped, well, at least to myself. And I don't know if Wes has been doing it, but we're gonna be talking all about the opportunities there that you can get some sweet productivity gains while keeping yourself sane. My name is Scott Tolinski. I'm a full stack developer from Denver, Colorado. And with me, as always, is the Wes Mahas.

Hey, everybody. I'm excited to hear about this. I don't think I've done time block planning before. But when you kinda mentioned what it was, I said, yes. I would like to learn about that. Yeah. It's talked a lot about in Cal Newport's books. He's a big big proponent of it.

So this episode is sponsored by Sentry, and Sentry allows you to see your errors in blocks. So you can throw your errors onto your time block planning schedule and try to approach them in a more structured way. Now the cool thing about this is that you could just click a button directly from that issue and have it scoot on over to your GitHub issue, even assign it to a specific user directly from Sentry. That way, you can make sure all of your issues are accounted for. Head on over to century.i0 and sign up using the coupon code tasty treat, all lowercase, all Wes warp, and get 2 months for free. Thank you so much for centuries for sponsoring this episode.

So, Wes, let's talk about time block planning. Node, specifically, let's talk about maybe some of the the situations where this thing could come into handy. We'll talk a little bit about what it is, how to how to utilize it effectively, how to what what are some warning signs that you're not utilizing it correctly? So for me, personally, I don't know about you, but things have gotten tougher lately with with planning our time.

Courtney has gone back to work full time. I'm kind of working full time, and what that means is that neither of us are actually getting a 40 hour work week even though we both require it. Yeah. So it's, been in kind of a a struggle situation for us to figure out how to make the most of whatever these 20 hours that we end up kind of getting are.

Have you guys been seeing a similar sort of struggle? I know we've talked a little bit about this before.

Yeah. I'm still getting, I would say, probably 32 hours in a week, certainly not my full full forty.

So not not nearly as bad as as you have it, but we are seeing a bit of a pinch because, like, my wife is still trying to work. She's squeezing in Saturday mornings before while taking breaks. I talked about this a couple episodes ago, but certainly being able to say, okay. I've got this 3 hours, and what can I get done in it or whatever? Like, how do you make that 3 hours the most productive 3 hours as possible? So I'm kinda interested to hear about this. Yeah. And and this is one of those things where we've really, really, like, run into this situation as being a solution

because it has been a difficult road for us. You know, we we've constantly been sort of butting our heads up against each other's schedules since trying to work together from home and and have to manage the the kids on top of this. It's been a very difficult situation for us. And so after really struggling through a whole bunch of different attempts and nonattempts of different things, I had been aware timebox planning. I read all of Cal Newport's books. I listened to his podcast. It's one of my favorite productivity people.

And because of that, I I just had never really fully dove into this time block planning specifically.

In the past, what I've always done is just a to do list. Right? Here's the to do list. Here's your most important things. Let's get them done.

But what happens is that you you see that certain items when you come time to do it, you maybe put it off for the next week and then the next week and the next week or whatever, or maybe you don't give yourself enough time or maybe you're not noticing you're actually accomplishing things.

So time block planning largely is all about blocking off that time for specific goals and specific tasks rather than, like, global tasks.

And it really starts with really removing the time on your calendar that is not open. So the very first thing that we did is we head headed to our our calendar. I use Google Calendar, so does Courtney. We both have our own schedules, but we could both can see each other's schedules, and we both start just adding our stuff.

For instance, I added all of the time, typically, with the exception of Mondays, I am on dad duty until noon. So every morning until noon, I'm on dad duty. And every day afternoon, I'm on work duty.

So by just sort of blocking off all of that time to say, alright. This is the time I'm on day of duty. It's, you know, 8 to 12. I don't even think about that time. I don't schedule that time. I know it's the same every week, and you think, well, my why even put it in your calendar? Because it it's so visual, and who knows down the line, maybe you'll schedule something here or there. But either way, you're blocking off this time individual for very specific things. Okay? Mhmm. So first and foremost, you wanna block out all those regular appointments. You wanna block out all of the stuff that you gotta do every day. So me, personally, I throw dinner around there. Here's the time from, like, 4:30 to, you know, 6:30. It's like, alright. We're either I'm either going to be making dinner or I'm gonna be watching the kids while Courtney makes dinner. And then after that, it's, you know, hang out with the kids and then bath time. So I make sure I have all that time blocked up so I can see exactly what my open blocks of time are. Mhmm. And then you can start scheduling things.

So I like to do this on a Sunday evening where I kinda sit down with my to do ESLint, and I used to do list, but it's basically just a big old to do list. I sit down with my to do list, and I just start adding stuff. Anything that pops into my head that I have to do for the week. Alright. Gotta release a course, gotta push an update, gotta send this person an email, gotta connect with this person, whatever. I I put it all into my just inbox of to do ESLint, and then I can sort of see everything in a glance. I can see how much time I have available over the the course of the week, and I put each individual task into a a real time slot. So instead of just saying, alright. I'm gonna work from noon to 4. Right? Yeah. I'm gonna work it so up in the air or even still up in the air. I'm gonna code from 12 to 4.

What am I gonna code? What's the end result gonna be? How far am I gonna get? What am I gonna try to do? Those things are not answered by just throwing just some generic thing in. And if you say, hey. Oh, on my to do list, you know, I'll just I'll just approach my to do list. But sometimes it really ends up happening where you have this to do ESLint, you have these things that you wanna do, you have coding time, but then something else nudges you away within that coding time. Your your calendar says it's coding time, and I was supposed to be working on I'm supposed to be working on this aspect of the checkout flow, but instead, oh, I've decided to refactor this little thing because, well, it's still coding time. It fits under the description.

And what you find is is that if you block out specific amounts of time for specific tasks, I e, I am going to work explicitly on the checkout flow for this thing right now, then it it makes it so much easier for your brain to just say, this is what I'm doing, period. This I'm not doing this else. I'm not doing this other thing. This is what I'm doing. I'm doing this checkout flow. And it really helped me. One of the things that in in the past I would do is that I would go to record for my tutorial series. And for the most part, you know, I'm prepared or whatever. I have my material there. I'm I got my notes ready to go, and I start recording.

But then I kinda because, you know, I have all this time blocked off. I have 8 hours blocked off for recording, and I gotta get, like, 6 videos done or something like that. Then you just kinda make it fill into the time.

But now what I'm doing is it's like, alright. I'm gonna spend this hour specifically to read over my materials before I record. Then I'm gonna spend these 2 hours explicitly to record and only these 2 hours to record. I'm gonna take a break. I'm gonna do something else. It allows you to schedule in breaks. It allows you to schedule in very specific everything, and it prevents things falling from the wayside. Also, if you do it weekly, you you definitely get a a good handle on, like, what are the key things that I need to accomplish this week. It's not just about today. It's not just about tomorrow. It's this whole whole week.

And when you get that stuff out of your brain, like, I know I do. I'm not sure if you do. I have so many floaties in my brain of. Yeah. Yeah. What what what did you what did you pick a couple of shows ago? The the water noodles? I have so many water noodles floating around the side of my brain of just ideas, and I just wanna it it's so easy to feel like you have a handle on all that stuff. Like, oh, I got a handle on this. I got a handle on that. Whatever. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, you work on something else. You work on something else. You're like, oh, shoot. I forgot about this thing. Here it JS. I'm hitting my deadlines, whatever. So by time blocking planning, as long as you throw everything into your to do list, then you give it a specific time and a specific duration and everything like that, it really has made both of our Courtney and I's working life so much smoother.

Yeah. I think the key thing you said there is that, like, the task will just expand to the amount of time that you give it. Yes. And that is so true. Sometimes, like, I hate time blocking and stuff like that, and I just like to, like, sit down with literally nothing on my calendar and and just work. But I know that I probably would be more productive if I were to give myself an amount of time. Like like this morning, I had 2 hours before. I had my wife had to run an errand, so I had to take the kids. I had 6 videos or something like that that I wanted to edit. And I got them all done, but it was because I knew I had a hard out at 11:10.

And I had it had it, like, be done that, and I didn't wanna, like I hate when I'm, like, halfway through editing a video, and I have to pick it up the next day because I'm not in the, like, headspace or whatever like that. So being able to block it off with those time blocks seems like a a really good idea because it it definitely does work. I I definitely do that for stuff that is not related to stuff that I enjoy. So whether that's phone calls or taxes or big stack of mail that I have to go through or, like, all of that, like, annoying stuff, email, stuff like that, I'll definitely block off time for. But when it comes to my, like, creative work, when I'm coding, creating courses, recording, I often will just sort of give myself and I think just unlimited time. And I think the the problem with that is, like, I don't I'm not good at estimating how long something will take. So, like, how do you deal with that if you're like, oh, well, I have 2 hours to do this, and you're like, oh, well, I didn't get anywhere near what I wanted.

For me, what I've done, it depends on what the deadline of said thing is. If the deadline is not today and whatever, I found myself getting ahead of things a little bit more with this time of planning. For instance, like, I've been I I've I've been scheduling in time to work on next month's series in the current month that I'm working on 1 series, and I never had done that before. And you might think, well, that's crazy. Just start working on the next month series when the current month's series isn't even done, and maybe you see the time line, you know, getting closer and closer to being finished. And, because maybe the time that you've prepared for, the time that you've spent for this month's series isn't being totally utilized or isn't being finished on time. I don't know. Project estimation overall has been very difficult. Yeah. I think as long as you give yourself enough outs, maybe potentially, like, some flex time to say, alright. Here's Monday. I'm gonna work on this, you know, from 9 to 9 to 11. Right? I'm gonna work on this one thing till 9 to 11, and then maybe it didn't get done. So then you could have a flex time later in the week or maybe even later in the day to say, alright. Whatever's going in here is going to be something that I couldn't finish before, but still scheduling that that flex time. And I think for me, the biggest thing has been scheduling, scheduling, scheduling, utilizing the calendar. Like, my calendar and my productivity has been at its highest. My stress level has been at its lowest when my calendar is absolutely full. It's absolutely full of nonmeetings, nonthings, and whatever. One of the biggest small aspects of this one of the biggest small aspects is really that that Courtney can look at my schedule and not have to ask me anything. Like, sometimes, like, just coordinating our schedules was the most most difficult aspect of this whole thing.

And to say, like, look at our our calendars and say, oh, can I schedule this for this or whatever whatever? And now we know if it's, like, the next week coming up and my calendar is filled out, that she can schedule things in the time that she has available that I whatever. That all just works without having to have that additional layer of meaningless communication. Right? Like, because I'd rather spend the time talking to Courtney about things that aren't, like, calendar and schedule and whatever. Yeah. That's not the fun stuff. You know? Will often be like, oh, like, can

can you do this during this time? And I'm like, just check my calendar. Like, it's it's not a conversation I need to have. Over and over again. I don't wanna have to think about it. I don't wanna have to like like, it's unnecessary overhead

when you've got so much else floating around in your brain. Yeah. And it's it causes decision fatigue. It's asking it's pulling you out of your contacts to make a decision on something that you hadn't thought about. And that was such a huge that was a huge problem for us too because either Courtney would be in the middle of some work, and I would interrupt her to ask her a Wes, or I'd be in the middle of some work, and she'd interrupt me to ask me a question that was, like, could be answered by looking at the calendar, but we weren't using the calendar effectively. So now that everything that we're both doing is going to be in in in in the calendar, like, it's been, like, crystal clear Pepsi for us just, like, really having a good time with it. So I think it's been a huge upgrade for me. The biggest difficult component to it is, as you alluded to, not giving yourself enough time to do the right tasks or specific tasks or get the task done in time, but being able to work around that. And to me, personally, I think that's coming with a little bit of experience, feeling a little bit better about, alright. This is how much I need for this. But we all know as software developers, bugs don't happen like that. I mean, you could work on a bug that you might think is, you know, 5 minute bug. And the next thing you know, 4 hours later, you stumbled into the gates of hell, And you don't know what's going on, and you don't know what you're doing.

And those things can be rough. But the way I've I've really solved that problem is by giving myself some flex time, you know, later on in the week and actually putting a a pin in it and saying, you know what? This is this difficult problem. The deadline JS in today.

Let me go ahead and just say, like, I'm gonna sit on this problem until tomorrow. Mhmm. And that's a hard thing. We all know that right when you get into, like, the actual mess of something is, like, the moment when you wanna keep going. And sometimes that's worth it, and other times, you just end up wasting a whole bunch of time. So I don't know. It's still something that I'm I'm learning quite a bit about. The Cal Newport books are good. His podcast, I think it's called, like, deep work with Cal Newport or something JS is very good. He talks a lot about time block planning. So if you want a a greater greater depth of time block planning, his book, Deep Work, is really good, and then his podcast is Deep Questions, Calmingport.

Both of those, resources are fantastic for learning a little bit more about this, but I found both Courtney and I stress levels have been definitely made quite a bit less intense from doing this, especially during quarantine here.

Beautiful. Well, thank you for sharing that. Definitely gonna have to give that a shot. I've read Deep Work a lot, but I I don't think that I took away the the time block planning of of that type of thing. So I'm gonna have to give that a shot. Yeah. Definitely do. It's very worth it.

And me, personally, I I've just been getting very into it, putting everything, everything, everything on the calendar. So my calendar is becoming the source of truth, and

it reflects that. It looks very good. Beautiful. Alright. Well, thank you so much for tuning in, and we'll catch you on Wednesday.

Peace. Peace.

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