Time blocking

Hard thinking usually needs at least an hour of unbroken attention before real progress is made. Most days are cut up by messages, notifications and a calendar that anyone can drop a meeting into. Without a fixed block, the urgent crowds out the important week after week, and the strategic work never starts. Blocking time is how a person takes it back deliberately.

It also shows what is realistic. Once a task has to fit into a visible slot, an overloaded week becomes obvious on Monday, not on Friday.

• Record a week of how time actually goes before protecting any of it.
• Separate work that needs deep focus from work that can be done in small gaps, such as email and approvals.
• Begin with two or three blocks a week. Early mornings often work best.
• Put the block in the calendar you really run the day from, and mark it busy so others cannot book over it.
• Tell colleagues what a block means and keep to it consistently, so it becomes a norm.
• Add buffer blocks for overruns and for the unexpected.

Instead of keeping a to-do list and hoping to find time for it, you place the work in the calendar itself. A block might be "Write the Q4 proposal, Tuesday 09:00 to 11:00". Computer scientist Cal Newport helped popularise a stricter version in which the whole working day is planned in blocks and revised when it goes off course.

The principle matters more than the format. Time that has a purpose is harder to lose than time that is merely free.

• Planning every hour, then giving up the first time the day changes. A block that moves is fine. A block that disappears is the problem.
• Blocking time for work without deciding what the work is.