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When we have a mountain of things to do, it’s very easy to lose sight of the big picture as we work our way through lists of things to get done. When I was in school, I remember that the first thing I had to do at the start of every new term was write out my timetable so that I’d know what class I had to be in, and what books I needed to bring for each period. It turns out that organising my adult life using the same principle makes life much easier too. That’s not to say that I micromanage each day by the hour… far from it in fact, but every now and again I like to step back from my todo lists, and block out time to work on my currently active projects throughout the week. That way, I know how many hours I’m assigning to each project each week, and when my free time is if I need to schedule a last minute errand or meeting.

The process is quite straight forward:

1. Start by filling slots for fixed commitments: eating, sleeping, martial arts classes.
2. List all other recurring projects and tasks along with the amount of time you want to commit to them.
3. Block out time for these projects and tasks, shuffling things as necessary to minimise context switches.

It’s important to leave some breathing room for context switches too, so that if I’m right in the middle of something complicated when the block of time allocated to it runs out, I can keep at it for a little longer to find a more convenient place to stop. It also means that there’s some wiggle room for shuffling things up or down by half an hour to make room for the unexpected without blowing up the schedule altogether.

You should also take into account that most of us have rhythms that make us more alert at certain times of day. I’ve found that I am completely unproductive for about an hour after waking even when I take a shower and eat breakfast. Consequently, I don’t start work for an hour, and any spare time I have after breakfast in that first hour can be devoted to reviewing my schedule and other menial tasks.

Part of the weekly review process should involve comparing where the time actually went compared to the schedule, and maybe shuffling time blocks to improve the odds of being able to follow the time chart effectively.

It sounds more complicated than it is, and once you’ve tackled writing one out a few times it is a great way to set up a loose framework for structuring the week in exchange for just 10 or 15 minutes every month or two. Currently my time chart looks like this:

I could have charted my weekends too, but at the moment I’m leaving those days free to catch up on all of the scheduled weekday items that I didn’t keep.

If you have any ideas to get more mileage out of the idea, let fly in the comments!